Peter Matthew Gilmore

Polestar Investment Research LLC is a value-driven, independent, sell-side research firm located in San Jose, California. Polestar takes a value-driven approach to sell-side research. They recommend equity investments to mutual funds, institutional investors and hedge funds. The firm creates long-term growth by investing in growing companies for the long term. They strive to generate positive alpha as opposed to typical market strategies based upon meeting or slightly outperforming market returns. Polestar employs a contrarian stock-picking approach involving locating companies with solid business models which they feel are undervalued due to short-term or medium-term uncertainties. About 70% of their recommendations are of undiscovered companies or franchises where the market assigns cheap to reasonable valuations. These stocks are usually recommended hold periods of one to two years or longer. The other 30% of Polestar's recommendations involve turnaround situations. This includes companies where mistakes in management execution may have caused the stock to drop, but catalysts and management actions indicate the situation will soon improve. Recommended hold periods for these situations are generally six months or longer. Polestar researches approximately 80 to 90 companies a year across a range of market caps and industry sectors, both domestically and internationally. Market caps of their recommendations range from $1 billion to $5 billion. Polestar employs discounted cash-flow models to determine a company's market value. They pick approximately 10 to 12 of the companies per year to issue research reports on and to recommend to clients. Most picks involve launching companies with strong business models that have declining stock prices due to some controversy, missed earnings or a change in business model.