Ormer Equity Partners

Ormer Equity Partners owns a collection of 15-20 exceptional businesses: rare, resilient, and self-reinforcing. They are run by management teams with meaningful skin in the game, just as we are. They are smaller, overlooked by institutional capital, and trading at prices that don’t fully reflect their quality.

Strategy

We spend our time turning over rocks. We apply three tests to every business we own and reapply them continuously. An exceptional business. Aligned management. An attractive price. Passing these tests once is not enough. What made a business exceptional yesterday may not make it exceptional tomorrow. We hold because we keep validating, not because we once believed.. We focus on high-quality companies that are overlooked or misunderstood by the broader market, particularly at the smaller end where institutional capital is often absent and investment bank analysts often do not provide coverage, creating an inefficient market.

• Exceptional businesses are rare, resilient, and self-reinforcing. Rare, because their assets cannot be replicated. They are often built over generations in ways new entrants cannot shortcut. Resilient, because customer delight creates pricing power and strong balance sheets create patience. Self-reinforcing, because their moats widen with time, and every stakeholder wins. Those are the businesses that truly compound.

• Aligned management protects and nurtures what makes a company exceptional. We look for meaningful skin in the game: founders who think in decades, and not quarters. Those whose financial interests are the same as ours. As Munger observed: show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.

• Attractive price is a level at which we can acquire an ownership interest with the potential for outsized long-term returns. We optimise for the best business at a fair price, not the cheapest. Many exceptional businesses sit on our watchlist, waiting for the right moment. We are happy to wait. 

Companies that meet our criteria are rare, which is why we hold only 15 and 20 of what we believe are the very best. We apply our three tests before we buy and reapply them continuously. When facts change, we change our minds. When they don’t, we hold. We measure success in years and decades, not in months or quarters. Our responsibility is to stay disciplined, learn from our mistakes, and remain fully aligned with our partners.