About Us
SFA Investimentos
Founded in 2013, SFA Investimentos is an independent asset management firm focused exclusively on equities. As a true partnership, all team members are partners and invest in the funds we manage, ensuring full alignment with our investors’ interests.
The firm’s investment philosophy is centered on selecting high-quality companies for the long term, following a bottom-up fundamental approach. SFA applies technology to improve efficiency and gain informational advantages, and runs a concentrated portfolio to optimize value creation, regardless of sector, geography or company size.
Porto & SFA
In June 2024, Porto Asset and SFA Investimentos announced a strategic partnership under which SFA became responsible for a significant portion of Porto Asset’s equity allocation.
SFA remains 100% independent and can draw on the insights of Porto’s economics and credit teams – which, in turn, benefit from SFA’s equity expertise.
As part of the partnership, the fund was renamed Porto SFA FIF CIC AÇÕES, and an institutional fund, Porto SFA Institucional FIF CIC AÇÕES, was created.
Philosophy / What we do
Our investment philosophy focuses on identifying businesses with the potential to create value sustainably over time. We look for companies with high economic value creation (EVA) and strong competitive advantages (moats), led by management teams with an owner’s mindset.
We firmly believe that business quality is the main driver of long-term stock performance, as it is directly reflected in a company’s ability to create value. Price, in turn, is crucial in determining the margin of safety.
We actively manage the portfolio, implementing hedging strategies across the equity, interest rate, currency and commodity markets, and take advantage of tactical opportunities as they arise, always seeking to optimize returns for our investors.
We believe that generating returns for our investors requires a well-defined investment process run by a first-rate team. The process safeguards our investment philosophy: identifying good, well-managed companies with strong competitive advantages and high potential to create sustainable value over the long term. Our team is fully committed to this philosophy and to the continuity and evolution of the process.
We divide the portfolio into companies:
- Core: Companies that, after the end of the process, have a rating equal to or greater than 3.5 stars, out of 5. It means that they are companies that received the highest marks for management quality and business model, that is, they have strong competitive advantages and growth potential with value generation. These are positions that have greater weight in the portfolio and are invested for the long term.
- Tactical: Companies that are still at some stage of the investment process, but we already have enough knowledge to set up a small position or companies that at the end of the process were not assigned a sufficient rating to be considered core. These are positions of lesser weight and invested intermittently.
It is important to note that valuation is not considered in the rating for classification between core and tactical, but rather helps to measure our margin of safety to size portfolio positions.
Our investment process aims to identify companies with:
- Good management
- Good Governance
- Strong Competitive Advantages
- Growth Potential with Value Generation
For each of the requirements discussed by the investment committee, we assign a score from 0 to 5 stars, which when weighted generate a final score that we call a rating. All companies analyzed by the SFA go through the investment process with the objective of being assigned a rating..
For us, the objective of investing in equities is to invest in companies with long-term growth and value generation and not just buy cheap to sell more expensive. Value creation consists of companies that generate profit above the cost of capital, good companies reinvest all or part of the profit to generate more return above the cost of capital. The true generation of wealth in the economic definition. If a company manages to grow its capital and generate value above its cost of capital for many years, we have a company that generates value and theoretically we can be eternal partners, without selling a share because this way we will have the invested capital preserved and with an attractive compound return for years.
Like a moat in a castle, which protect the castle from enemy invasions, companies with strong competitive advantages are able to remain generating value in the long term because they are well protected from competition, the biggest enemy of high returns on invested capital. We seek to identify and assign better ratings in our portfolio to companies that have one or more competitive advantages:
- Intangible Assets
- Economy of Scale
- Cost Advantages
- Switching Costs
- Network Effects
Foundation
2013
The firm is founded to manage proprietary capital, focused on equities.
100% Independent
2021
The fund opens to outside investors and the firm becomes fully independent.
10 Years
2023
The firm completes 10 years of history, having managed a single strategy since inception.
Porto & SFA
2024
The two groups sign a strategic partnership, with SFA taking over a significant portion of Porto Asset’s equity allocation.
New equity funds
2025
Launch of the long & short strategy (Porto SFA Equity Hedge) and the institutional long-only strategy (Porto SFA Institucional).
Team
