Investment Cones
Our “investment cones” are based on proven company building principles: repeatability, scalability, predictable cash flow and project execution (no matter what).
Our Investment Philosophy
We are building platforms that will generate long-term predictable cash flows. We achieve this by taking a repeatable, manufacturing approach to project development – using standards and scalable design principles that win over the long-run. Our platforms (and returns) get better with time.
We focus on being the best absolutely, not relatively. Example: We don’t compare project costs to competitors, we start with a blank sheet of paper and seek the best of what is possible.
Integrity – doing what you say, on time and on budget – are core to Conifer companies.
How We Invest
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We like industries where companies and project developers have historically taken a one-off, site specific approach to building things. We seek to develop a repeatable design based on standardization and scalable design principles (not technology risk). This approach leads to meaningful competitive advantages for our platforms and better returns through reductions in time and costs.
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We don’t want to do a project one time. We want to deploy a proven development approach to a growing list of attractive projects. We look for industries where we can do the same thing many times over, supported by favorable supply and demand dynamics.
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We don’t know the future. We don’t try to predict price. We don’t like cyclicality. We seek to underpin base case returns with long-term fixed price contracts with strong counterparties.
We also care about predictable inputs. We are looking for knowable resources with minimal input variability (i.e. low flow variability hydro, low-decline helium reserves, appreciating landfill gas curves). This is the foundation of a predictable cash flow machine.
We don’t know what will happen with government subsidies, environmental attributes and regulation. We work hard to remove these elements (and everything that is outside of our control) from our underwriting models. We have to make satisfactory returns without these features.
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Whether we are building a new platform from the ground up or investing in an existing company, we prioritize people—the right people. We look for the qualities that drive revolutionary success: speed, extreme accountability, radical efficiency, and a mission-driven urgency. The most successful teams don't just work hard; they challenge every assumption to build and deliver faster than anyone else.
How We Build
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Conifer believes that “doing what you say” —delivering projects on-time and on-budget — is critical to building a competitive advantage and consistent returns.
Conifer’s leaders have experience executing projects and will impart their mindset and methods to our platforms.
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Conifer platforms have a manufacturing approach to development, achieving dramatic cost reduction and speed to COD.
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A repeatable development process gets better with time and results in continued timeline reductions. This has continued improvements on capital returns. Process driven thinking extends across organization – business development, permitting, and operations.
How We Operate
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Our selective investment process enables us to maintain significant control over the platforms we help build, playing an active role in their operations and project execution.
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As platforms mature and deploy Conifer's expertise in corporate leadership, capital allocation and project management, our involvement becomes more strategic than operational.
“Through its adaptive strategy that has allowed it to survive over hundreds of millions of years, the patient and persistent conifer teaches us that it is far better to avoid direct, head-on competition for scarce resources and, instead, to pursue the roundabout path toward an intermediate step that leads to its eventual position of advantage.”
— Mark Spitznagel, The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World