Firm Profile

Corporate Profile

Established in 1967, Beutel, Goodman & Company Ltd. is a privately owned, independent Canadian investment manager. We are dedicated to creating long-term wealth for our institutional, private wealth and retail clients by helping them achieve their investment objectives.

We manage a focused set of balanced, Canadian fixed income, Canadian, U.S., international and global equity investment strategies on behalf of our clients via mutual funds, private pooled funds and segregated accounts.

Beutel Goodman is broadly owned internally by employees, with 51% of the shares held in a voting trust. Affiliated Managers Group, Inc. (AMG), a publicly traded and U.S. based asset management holding company, holds a minority non-controlling 49% interest.

Client Base

Our institutional division specializes in segregated and pooled fund management for pension plans, endowments / foundations, insurance companies and corporations.

Our Private Client Group manages the wealth of a diverse group of clients, including high net worth families, Indigenous communities, charitable foundations and endowments.

We also manage separately managed accounts and mutual funds, distributed by leading financial institutions.

Beutel Goodman’s Key Strengths and Competitive Advantages

Our bottom-up value investment philosophy, which is grounded in diligent proprietary research, concentrated high-conviction portfolios and a highly-disciplined buy/sell process.

Our focus on avoiding the permanent loss of capital, which permeates all aspects of our thinking.

Our independence and ownership culture, which aligns our interests with those of our clients.

Our five decades of growth stand as a strong example of stability in an industry that has been characterized by constant change.

Investment Approach

Since the firm’s inception in 1967, the cornerstone of our success has been our strong, independent internal research and disciplined investment process. Our focus is on absolute risk and downside protection, and our unwavering buy/sell process sets us apart from our competitors.

Equities

As bottom-up value investors, we invest in companies at discounts to their business value. We work from a foundation that stocks purchased at a discount to business value provide a margin of safety. This combined with a focus on quality companies with stable, growing businesses with strong balance sheets should mitigate the potential of capital loss. Investments are made when there is a sufficient discount to business value to mitigate the loss of capital in the event of adverse circumstances. Business value is defined simply as the present value of sustainable free cash flow.

We believe business value is best determined by conducting our own internal research on portfolio candidates. Our observation is that on a cumulative basis the client is well served by a manager who aims to protect them from capital loss.

Fixed Income

We take a disciplined, team-based approach to our active management of fixed income mandates, seeking to add consistent value to our portfolios’ benchmark through management of duration, yield curve and credit risk. We continuously challenge the herd consensus and search for opportunities where the market has mispriced risk and reward.

Extensive modeling using proprietary software is employed for scenario analysis, coupled with a comprehensive analysis of all factors affecting the fixed income markets. This results in the development of a portfolio solution, which expresses the outlook that our fixed income team deems most probable.

Asset Allocation in Balanced Portfolios

Beutel Goodman’s asset mix committee steers our balanced asset allocation process, including the over or underweighting of equity and fixed income assets relative to the benchmark. Asset mix decisions for all balanced clients are driven by this process, although the resulting weights may vary based on a client’s policy ranges.

Asset mix decisions are a by-product of our fundamental bottom-up approach to equity valuation and fixed income outlook. When common stock prices are attractive and investment opportunities plentiful, the equity content of a balanced portfolio will approach the upper limit of Beutel Goodman’s or the client’s policy range. When common stock prices are expensive and individual holdings achieve their target prices, they are sold from the portfolio. If market conditions are such that attractive alternatives cannot be found, the invested portion in equities declines and allocations to fixed income increase.

Incorporation of ESG

As value managers, Beutel Goodman’s primary objective is to deliver superior risk-adjusted portfolio performance to our clients over the long term. We pursue this objective through the thoughtful and patient ownership of debt and equity positions in high-quality companies. Environmental, Social and Governance factors have the potential to materially affect the long-term sustainability of a business and are thus an important part of our analytical process.

Each equity and credit research report or update we prepare includes ESG considerations. Further, our own in-house research is enhanced through the use of specialist third-party ESG analytics. Being a discretionary asset manager, we also actively engage with company management on ESG issues through direct contact and proxy voting, where we assess if a motion is advantageous or not to long-term shareholder value creation. In addition, we will strive to promote change where our analysis indicates a company falls short on stated policies or where material, unaddressed ESG issues exist or where ESG disclosure is inadequate.

In keeping with the above, we are signatories of the United Nations-sponsored Principles of Responsible Investing (PRI).

Reporting & Communication with Clients

We have created depth in our client servicing process to reflect our commitment to clients. Each institutional client is assigned a lead and secondary client service contact, both of which are senior investment professionals. This is in addition to support received from our talented and diligent associate staff. Our private clients work directly with a Portfolio Manager, who invests the time required to develop a deep understanding of their profile, circumstances, and goals. This information, combined with our knowledge of the markets, allows us to design a portfolio focused on meeting our clients’ specific needs.

Our client service model consists of a combination of face-to-face meetings and reporting. We send our clients a quarterly reporting package which typically includes detailed portfolio returns, holdings information, a listing of transactions and summary of gains / losses, as well as portfolio and market commentaries. Institutional clients receive a signed compliance statement. Ad-hoc and customized reporting requests, including proxy voting reports and attribution, can also be accommodated.