Welcome to Sunday’s Idea Brunch, your interview series with great off-the-beaten-path investors. We are very excited to interview Anthony Fruci!
Anthony is currently the chief investment officer of Halvio Capital, a value-oriented long-only fund that invests separately managed accounts. Before launching Halvio in April 2025, Anthony worked as a CPA and CBV in Canada specializing in tax, restructurings and valuations.
Editor’s Note: Sunday’s Idea Brunch is always looking for exceptional off-the-beaten-path investors to interview. If you know of someone underfollowed who is a good fit for Idea Brunch, please email edwin@585research.com or hit reply.
Anthony, thanks for doing Sunday’s Idea Brunch! Can you please tell readers a little more about your background and why you decided to launch Halvio Capital?
Thanks for inviting me, Edwin. You’ve had a ton of great guests, and I’m honored to be one of them.
I don’t have a typical investment background as I haven’t worked in the industry. I was always good with money and math from a young age and wanted to be a doctor. I even went my first year at university to study Life Sciences but thought it wasn’t for me and switched to getting my business degree. Both of my parents have business backgrounds and were accountants, so I figured, why not? During my business undergrad, I qualified for some education financing, even though I didn’t really need it, and my dad suggested I should take it anyway and invest it into some real estate. This was 10 years ago, when Canadian real estate wasn’t so expensive, plus the loan didn’t have to be paid back for 4 years.
Looking back, the loan was essentially “float” for 4 years and I bought a duplex by the University I went to. The property ended up doing pretty well as: 1) Someone else was paying down the mortgage, creating equity for me, 2) I was earning a profit for most months, and 3) the house was appreciating in value. This got me looking at other things to buy and I discovered stocks and got the investing bug. I opened up a brokerage account and read everything and anything. I once read that an investor said they read all the VIC pitches one summer, so I made it a goal to do that too, to see what worked vs what didn’t work.
I then got my CPA with a focus in tax and went to work for the family accounting practice. Being able to not only put together financial statements, but reading and analyzing them all day has provided some great training. I also came across all sorts of different businesses and would try to think why they were good or bad businesses. The best one was probably a management company that owned a stake in a Duty Free on the Canadian-US Border. There are limited licenses given out for them so no one can come in and set up shop next door and everyone likes buying cheap goods so they’ll always go in and buy without having to pay taxes when coming back into the country.
After a bit of time I decided to get my business valuation credentials here in Canada as certain tax restructurings require a valuation to be done. So I wasn’t only packaging and putting together a company’s financials, but then taking those numbers and putting a value on the overall business. All at the same time making investments and trying to figure out my style and approach.
I launched Halvio Capital because I wanted to keep some of the family money I manage up to date on how it’s being invested, but also to put my thoughts out there to get feedback and connect with similar investment-minded people. It’s been great so far and I’m glad I took the leap. For instance, this interview would have never had happened if I hadn’t started posting and sharing my ideas.
In your excellent first letter to investors in April, you outlined your investment process will revolve around two themes: “special situations” and “general value.” Can you tell us a little more about your investment approach and these two distinct strategies?
Sometimes these strategies will overlap but for the most part my “general value” theme is probably more correlated with the market. It’s just cheap stocks that I think will do well given enough time and should beat the market. One thing I absolutely need for these stocks is a strong balance sheet and profitability. If the balance sheet isn’t strong it’s usually a pass. A larger portion of the portfolio falls into this “bucket”.
A “special situation” is less correlated with how the market acts. It’s tied to a specific event that will affect the share price, like a liquidation, spinoff, a forced seller, etc. For example, a liquidation I own is Net Lease Office Properties (NYSE: NLOP — $435 million), which is winding down. It’s selling its properties and just started returning capital to shareholders. This shouldn’t move with the ups and downs of the market, but on future asset sales and dividends received.
You have a pretty diverse portfolio – ranging from a “Japan basket” to a Canadian furniture retailer. How are you able to come up with off-the-beaten-path ideas in an industry with so much groupthink?
I’m not sure I have a great answer. I just go to wherever I see some type of value. That can be extremely illiquid securities or larger companies. I don’t think I’ve ever used an investment screen before as some of the best ideas don’t screen well in my opinion. I like finding ideas by going through each company on an exchange, eliminating them or adding them to my list if I think they are interesting. It’s a bit of a grind but when you find something interesting it makes it worth it. I’m a big fan of this method because in order to have the best portfolio suited to your style, you need to compare it against everything that’s out there. You can’t do that if you aren’t constantly looking. I try to set a minimum of 25-50 stocks to look at per day using this method and it’s usually the first thing I do each morning. I’m also a pretty curious person and just follow that curiosity wherever it takes me. As with most investors, I read a lot. Books, newspapers, investment pitches on Twitter, or the usual investing websites.
Regarding the Japanese basket, Japan’s been a dormant market for years where value has sat on the financial statements and not in shareholder pockets. I read a couple of pieces put out by some investors last year that got me extremely interested, and I decided to look for myself and summarize my thoughts here. The number of undervalued securities trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is quite staggering and the TSE have been implementing reforms to help unlock this value. Obviously, I can’t invest in them all, so I have started narrowing them down to some factors like returning capital, discount to book value, or parent-child potential takeout.
You seem to read a lot about investment history, including a book about Buffett’s early investments, and other old value investing blogs. What have you learned from studying the great value investments of the past? And does traditional value investing still work today?
I’m a big fan of reading market history or old investment write-ups and why they did or didn’t work out. Looking at a couple of key factors that made the situation so interesting. I think studying these helps develop what you can potentially look for in an investment today. Some of my favorite old investing blogs were Alpha Vulture, OTC Adventures and Whopper Investments. But I also think Turtle Bay on Twitter has some great case studies of investments from the past that are rarely talked about and you can learn a lot from. But at the same time, you can only read so much until you have to actually start investing and learn by doing.
Traditional value investing might mean something different to everyone. To me it means buying cheap companies at low multiples, that are profitable with strong balance sheets, and where there’s a large margin of safety. To others it might mean buying lousy companies that are losing money at discounts to book value. Too many people try to put a label on what it was or wasn’t but investing is just simply figuring out what something is worth and paying a lot less. If you do that then yes, traditional value investing will work.
What are some interesting ideas on your radar now?
I’m excited to share 3 in 3 different countries: A European, a Canadian, and a US stock.