Competitive Advantages

We believe the quality and consistency of our results stem from our diligent investment process that focuses on downside protection, asset preservation, and risk management; the strength of our team; and our commitment to superior client service.

Intellectual Capital

Post was founded by Larry Post, our Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, who has over 43 years experience in the investment industry. He founded the High Yield Bond Department at Smith Barney, served as Director of High Yield Research at Salomon Brothers and as Co-Director of Credit Research and then a Senior Trader at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Larry’s expertise in the high yield space has been instrumental in elevating Post to its position as a recognized leader in high yield investing.

Larry started Post to focus exclusively on high yield investment management, and his commitment and expertise in the field extends throughout our team. Larry has built a business and culture designed to sustain the firm’s success that includes strong mentoring of investment professionals; sharing of market insights and deep knowledge of the high yield market; and connecting the investment team with his extensive network of industry contacts.

Our Portfolio Managers (“PMs”) have, on average, over 20 years of experience, and our investment professionals have an average of 13 years industry experience. Turnover has been minimal and the team has worked together over many market cycles. At Post, we recognize the importance of intellectual capital and are committed to having a preeminent analytical team to implement our disciplined investment process. We believe that this approach gives us with the best opportunity to outperform the market over a market cycle while maintaining below market volatility and build long-term relationships with clients.

Collaborative Organization

Post fosters a collaborative team culture within our organization. This culture encourages innovative and creative solutions to complex investment challenges. Post management stresses accountability and responsibility while encouraging participation by PMs in all stages of the investment process. PMs work closely with analysts, welcoming ideas and encouraging active participation of all team members. Our commitment to maintaining this culture has allowed us to attract and retain a team of talented and effective professionals. We are active managers, not “buy and hold.” Our portfolio holdings are generally uncorrelated to benchmark indices.

Disciplined Investment Process

At Post, our exclusive focus is on fixed income securities, primarily bonds and bank debt, and our team of research analysts complements Post’s value-oriented philosophy. Our investment process has remained consistent since the inception of the firm and captures both income generation and capital appreciation in order to maximize investment opportunities. Our philosophy of value identification, downside protection and risk management is applied to all market segments and sectors.

Our portfolio construction process is driven by our fundamental bottom-up credit analysis of a company’s business model, scale and competitive position; operational and financial prospects; free cash flow characteristics, and return on investment on its capital investments. We focus on the company’s most important value drivers to understand and project volume and pricing trends, product mix, cost structure, and operating margins. In addition to understanding a company’s business fundamentals, we also focus on the company’s corporate structure, capital structure and covenant package to assess both absolute and relative value, with an emphasis on capital preservation and downside protection, both from a fundamental standpoint as well as from a trading standpoint.

To supplement our fundamental analysis, our investment team also constructs an industry framework to understand and project how industry dynamics will change over time and through an economic cycle. Understanding how different competitors will react and compete under different market conditions is critical to understanding fundamental value.

Our investment process is further enhanced by the use of our Proprietary Value Scoring Model and a host of other statistical tools to spot attractive risk/reward opportunities. Finally, we also rely on long-standing capital market and trading execution relationships.

Proprietary Value Scoring Model

Our investment process is strengthened by the utilization of our proprietary “Value Scoring Model” which is a 100-point system, developed and refined over 30 years by Larry Post, that screens securities based on a variety of quantitative and qualitative criteria which we believe have an important bearing on credit quality and expected yields. It was the first such model created to provide a risk/reward snapshot for high yield securities. Our Value Scoring Model is the starting point of Post’s process for identifying what we believe to be attractive investment opportunities. Our unique modeling system complements, but in no way supplants the judgment of our team. It is just the beginning of our research process but instills a certain discipline when trying to compare hundreds of companies.

Active Risk Management

Post’s active risk management approach is designed to mitigate the three major risks in high yield – credit risk, interest rate risk and concentration risk – at every stage of the investment process. Credit risk is, by far, the most important of the three. We seek to find the right companies in attractive industries, with good management teams and prudent capital structures. We then analyze the company’s debt securities and seek the best risk/reward possible. We try to mitigate interest rate risk by constructing a portfolio whose average life and duration is somewhat shorter than the index. We then construct a portfolio utilizing proper security diversification, portfolio weighting and compliance systems. Specifically, each investment portfolio has exposure and/or diversification limits by issue, issuer, industry, security type, duration, maturity, and credit rating. While our risk management is primarily driven by fundamental analysis rather than technical factors, we are also very aware of high yield bond supply and demand dynamics, the mix between LBO and corporate issuance, inflows and outflows out of high yield bonds as well as leveraged loans, market sentiment, and momentum. We also track conditions and potential risks in other credit markets such as U.S. treasuries, investment grade bonds, and structured products because those credit markets impact the attractiveness of the high yield bond market from a relative value standpoint and also impact investors who invest across different credit markets. In addition, we utilize state of the art systems for securities trading to comply with clients’ investment guidelines and specifications.

Client Focus

Post is committed to meeting the needs of our clients and providing attractive returns over time and through evolving market cycles. We take a client-centric, proactive approach to all client queries and communications. Post recognizes the importance of client satisfaction and strives to ensure clients’ wishes are heard and met.