Focus
Focus is essential for increasing productivity, and it allows us to direct energy toward what matters most. As a family-owned investment manager, guided by our own experience and by future looking risk-adjusted return prognoses, we have decided to focus on high-end retail properties and mixed-use high-end retail/office properties, located in the dynamic and vibrant large cities of the United States and Europe (opportunistically and very selectively). This allows us to focus on relationships with service providers associated with these property types and locations including sales, leasing, and managing agents; debt and equity providers; architects, contractors, and other owners.
Work Hard
Central to Ceres’ business model is the belief that if you have a good business plan and you work hard at it, you will succeed. Seemingly insurmountable problems can be solved through keeping working at them. We find that the most valuable work is done in advance of taking action in that it is essential to be properly prepared with alternative plans of actions thought through and then evolving circumstances and personal interactions will suggest the best course of action.
Be Respectful
We strive to respect every other human through fair-dealing, honesty, and kindness. We listen to and respect all opinions – rarely is anyone 100% right or 100% wrong. We extend this respect to animals as they too have vibrancy and feelings and to our natural environment in partial fulfillment of our obligation to our children.
Be Informed
Macro trends are ignored at one’s peril. Consider the many investors who in the 2022 to 2025 period lost significant capital by over-holding office properties even though working-from-home was well established before Covid, particularly among Millennials seeking a more balanced work/life relationship; or in the early 2010’s run-of-the mill retail properties were decimated by online shopping. These sorts of trends reinforce our strategy of exiting investments once value has been created – why wait, particularly when we live in a period of incredibly rapid technological change?
A potential future example is residential development and investment. We know that global population growth, apart from sub-Saharan Africa, is trending negative. Does it make sense to keep ploughing new capital into this sector when we know at some stage that the macro demographic trend will lead to fewer occupiers?
Being informed goes well beyond keeping up with macro trends – it calls for following these trends all the way down to the sub-market and individual property level. Equally important factors include understanding where real estate sits relative to fiscal & monetary policy; being informed as to the availability, focus and cost of debt and equity; and being cognizant of the relative returns of alternative asset classes.
Perform
In our view, investment performance is the only true measurement of success. Successful investment performance does not just happen – it is the outcome of every element of the investment process being intelligently and effectively executed and it is why we are so very proud of our investment track record of generating a multiple of 2.95 times on equity invested.
Dream
In 1995 Ceres’ founder John X Myers and his future wife Helen visited New York’s Ellis Island. From there the views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty caused them to dream and to fall in love with the United States and the promise of freedom and opportunity that it offers. Two years later John and his newly married wife Helen emigrated to New York. They have never stopped dreaming.