Creating Strategic Value: Applying Value Investing Principles to Corporate Management

The principles of value investing have resonated with savvy practitioners in the world of finance for a long time. In Creating Strategic Value, Joseph Calandro Jr. explores how the core ideas and methods of value investing can be profitably applied to corporate strategy and management. Calandro builds from an analysis of traditional value investing concepts to their strategic applications. He surveys value investing’s past, present, and future, drawing on influential texts, from Graham and Dodd’s time-tested works to more recent studies, to reveal potent managerial lessons. He explains the theoretical aspects of value investing-consistent approaches to corporate strategy and management and details how they can be successfully employed through practical case studies that demonstrate value realization in action. Calandro analyzes the applicability of key ideas such as the margin-of-safety principle to corporate strategy in a wide range of areas beyond stocks and bonds. He highlights the importance of an “information advantage”—knowing something that a firm’s competitors either do not know or choose to ignore—and explains how corporate managers can apply this key value investing differentiator. Offering expert insight into the use of time-tested value investing principles in new fields, Creating Strategic Value is an important book for corporate strategy and management practitioners at all levels as well as for students and researchers.

Table of Contents:
Foreword—Professor Sris Chatterjee, Gabelli Chair in Global Security Analysis at Fordham University Introduction Appendix: Common Ground and/or Areas of Further Research Part I Preface: Theory 1. Value Investing and Corporate Management: Overview 2. Corporate Strategy and the “Margin of Safety” 3. Cash and Competitive Advantage 4. Corporate Management and “Security Analysis” (including an interview with Seth A. Klarman) 5. Value Creating Corporate Management: Henry E. Singleton Appendix 5.1: Evaluating a Stock Buyback Appendix 5.2: Managing Funding Obligations 6. Managerial “Rationality” 7. Corporate Management and “Modern Security Analysis” (including an interview with the late Martin J. Whitman) 8. Value Realization Is “The Most Important Thing” Part II Preface: Practice 9. Value Realization at GEICO Appendix 9.1: Note on Estimating Growth Value 10. Value Realization at GTI Corporation 11. Value Realization at the Union Pacific Conclusion and Information Advantage Acknowledgments Notes Index

About the Author :
Joseph Calandro Jr. is a managing director of a global consulting firm and fellow of the Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis at Fordham University. He is the author of Applied Value Investing (2009) and a contributing editor to the journal Strategy & Leadership.

Review :
Understanding values is the key to corporate success, and Graham and Dodd is the Rosetta Stone of unlocking values. In this book, Joseph Calandro Jr. continues his application of core value investing principles into both strategy and management. A must-read for corporate managers and investors alike. I loved this book. Calandro has written a highly engaging work on an incredibly important, often overlooked topic: how corporate managers should allocate capital according to the principles of value investment. He draws on theory and practice to deliver a resoundingly persuasive argument. The book is fantastically well written and a pleasure to read. Every director, officer, and general manager should read it. A riveting blend of skill sets on strategy and management in the corporate world. Information sharing and analysis at the speed of the internet, animated by the experience of an author whose findings and recommendations are both thoughtfully and practically displayed. Joseph Calandro’s book about value investing and corporate management is timely: for more than ten years ‘value’ stocks have underperformed ‘growth’ stocks. If we assume that we will find value stocks among depressed and neglected sectors of the market, it follows that there is now ‘double value’ in the stock market; double value arises from unpopular shares and from a completely neglected investment strategy that value investing has become. I highly recommend Calandro’s book as we shall move away from passive investment styles to more active management. Value investing is more than a capital allocation strategy. It is a philosophy of business based on the idea that the best way to navigate a volatile marketplace is not with gut, instinct, and savvy, but with facts, verifiable data, and a margin of safety. Joseph Calandro’s Creating Strategic Value expertly shows how the principles of value investing can be applied to business strategy and management. Calandro wastes no words in building the case for applying the precepts of value investing to general corporate management. He illustrates those precepts with portraits of the careers of a host of accomplished practitioners, from old Jay Gould to the immortals Benjamin Graham and Henry Singleton to the contemporary standouts Howard Marks and Seth Klarman. Find your “information advantage” is the theme of this fine and useful volume—and you can begin your quest in these very pages. The lessons of classic, mixed, and contemporary value investing, through interviews with accomplished value practitioners, inspiring anecdotes, and thought-provoking case studies, leave the reader well equipped to see value creating opportunity and avoid value destroying activity. An invaluable resource for both corporate capital allocators and those who evaluate their effectiveness. Every corporate decision maker will emerge a more “intelligent investor” as a result of reading this essential book. This book fills a much needed gap for those in corporate strategy and management. Utilizing sound research and leveraging examples by thought leaders in the field, Calandro illustrates how to apply the principles of value investing theory for corporate success. Reading it will definitely give you a leg up on the competition! Through historical example and financial analyses, Joseph Calandro does an excellent job showing executives how to manage corporate value over the long haul. First: how to identify and then control the companies' greatest risks. Second: How and when to pounce on cheap assets offered up by companies not so enlightened. Creating Strategic Value is exactly the guide to read after a decades-long bull market has created amnesia towards financial cyclicality. Thanks to its readable text and non-technical approach, this book will be a valuable resource for business students, their instructors, and management practitioners.