companies
It has long been embedded in H&F’s DNA to look for quality in enduring franchises and help them invest in their own continuous improvement. We invest for the long haul and care about doing business the right way, striving for resilience and creating lasting value.
Align Goals
We are deeply invested in the success of our companies and believe that people thrive when they are working toward a common and focused goal. We take a collaborative style with management focused on the long-term vision. And with a concentrated portfolio of ~30 companies, we are able to provide appropriate attention and oversight. We have significant skin in the game and strong alignment with both our companies and our investors.
Be Selective
We make only a few investments each year, so each investment really matters. We therefore have to choose wisely. We look for high-quality, growing businesses that look to innovate and improve their products and services.
Grow Value
Valuable companies aren’t created overnight. They continuously look to the future and invest to make themselves better. It may involve a more disciplined focus on product management, ramping up R&D, or capital expenditures that will improve assets and resources. It may also involve capturing a creative, innovative idea they already had, and giving them the confidence to run with it. We will often support our companies making big upfront investments because we are focused on long-term outcomes.
Sustain the Long View
Enduring value. Many companies can be viable for a short time, but far fewer are long-term players that get bigger and better. They have the wherewithal to grow while doing business the right way. These are the winners we look for, and the ones we want in our portfolio. Working across our operating team, we support our portfolio companies, including on sustainability-related initiatives that strengthen long-term performance.
Be Transparent
We prefer to share news with our partners—good or bad. It’s part of our commitment to transparency and building long-term partnerships. We engage deeply with our management teams, seek governance structures with appropriate levels of oversight, help ensure compliance, and much more. As part of this commitment, we collect relevant performance data from our portfolio companies to monitor progress, manage risks, and identify value creation opportunities.
We are committed to driving long-term value to create a positive impact in our portfolio.
Best practices are meant to be shared and can provide valuable information to a growing company. H&F and our companies are committed to strong strategic alignment, culture, leadership, performance management, and communications for cultivating high-performing, high-growth organizations. We facilitate and support the sharing of best practices by bringing together our portfolio companies to discuss relevant functional areas or strategic topics.
Organizations that prioritize inclusion create an environment that respects and values individual differences, leading to improved team productivity, innovation, and retention, and lead to better solutions. Our work with portfolio companies on employee engagement covers topics such as leadership, talent development, mentorship, inclusion best practices, and more.
As part of H&F’s investment philosophy, we take a rigorous approach to investment selection and stewardship. While we invest in many service-oriented businesses that are not significant contributors of waste production or carbon emissions, we assist portfolio companies in identifying opportunities for value-creation initiatives in areas such as energy efficiency, which not only reduces carbon emissions but also reduces operational costs and strengthens long-term competitiveness.
We strive to drive operational excellence, cost optimization, and the right decisions about material purchases, balancing value, quality and risk management. H&F has built a community among procurement leaders across our companies to discuss best practices, collaborate on key initiatives, and drive responsible risk management across supply chains.
Our founder deeply believed in the power of people to accomplish incredible things. He used his success to improve and enrich the lives of countless people. That philosophy lives on at H&F today. We give both our time and our money to the communities in which we live and work. We are proud of the organizations that H&F has supported over the years, each led at the initiative of an engaged employee.
We see information security and data privacy as a primary business risk driver that can serve as both an offensive and defensive pillar of sustainability. In this ever-changing landscape, industry leaders must continually adapt their security posture. To help our portfolio companies, we built a community of security leaders to share best practices, tap into a network of cyber specialists, and host an annual portfolio-wide cybersecurity conference. We also provide software advisory support and offer deep dive webinars with distinguished thought leaders in the industry.
