32. Impact investing: Capitalism created this mess. Capitalism has to fix it!

Bob Rosenfield was the CEO of the second largest company in the $4 billion US auto glass repair replacement and claims services market, and during that time he learned that “it isn't as hard as you think to do the right thing and doing the right thing can be very good for business if you do it right.”

 

He has since founded and is managing director of Cape Vista Capital, a family office investment entity focused on renewable energy, sustainability and broadening the availability of housing, healthcare, and a healthy food supply chain.  The goal: to realize excellent returns on investment and to use the leverage of Cape Vista’s investments to change the shape the environmental issues that we have created.

 

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Links

The Energy Switch

Global Impact Investing Network.

Global Impact Investing Principles

Cape Vista Capital

Quotes

 

Capitalism messed this up, capitalism can fix it.

 

My first experience with impact investing (while a CEO in the auto glass industry) was a tremendous learning experience in two ways: number one, it isn't as hard as you think to do the right thing, and number two, doing the right thing can be very good for business if you do it right.

 

What we see now are vast billions of capital being deployed in an effort to fix problems created by the prior model, which considered all this stuff in externality.

 

Our public equity investments are really segment investments in renewable energy, for the most part, in companies that we think have been and will continue to be more committed to going from fossil fuel energy generation to renewable sources. It's kind of that simple in the public equity space.

We have found that companies that are engaged in combating climate change are finding the cost of capital in issuing private bonds to be desirable for 5% and we've made several investments in solar and other combating climate change items or initiatives that help us generate a solid present income and yield.

 

 

Big Ideas/Thoughts

 

Bob  Some people are still going to believe they could get better than market returns in non-impact, so I think we still need to label it as such, but least in my opinion regular impact investing and non-impact investing are truly converging.  Companies that do not pay attention to what were previously called “externalities” will be outcompeted in the marketplace, so in that way, it's fundamentally capitalist driven.

 

Raza I think, as you have said earlier, the externalities are realities, and I hope that the two worlds keep converging and I think that you're rightly pointing out that that's the fix of the capitalism, that capitalism actually needs to do.

 

Joe The “holy grail” is to be able to do the best thing for the economy, for the environment - for whatever area in which you’re involved - and also have it be good for your business, because the financial incentive is going to drive people to do “the right thing.”

 

Engine No. 1

The whole Engine No. 1 issue is: "ExxonMobil might be paying a 9 or 10% yield now, but if I hold this stock for 30 years, as opposed to another energy company that is paying attention to the future and doing better things, I'm better off with an investment elsewhere.”

 

There are three things that Engine No. 1 did.  First, in general point out that having a carbon-based, fossil fuel-based strategy might just be a losing strategy as an economic argument. But they did two other things to sort of turn that viewpoint into action, and I thought they were really valuable and important lessons in both.

 

They engaged with the Wall Street analyst community because there were institutional investors in there that couldn't decide, do I go left, or do I go right? They helped quantify in the financial analyst community, how do you run the numbers? I mean, every securities firm that has an analyst that follows a company is going to do a 5-year projection or 10-year projection, discount it back, the stocks are undervalued the stocks are overvalued, so they engaged with the analyst in the meantime and pushed them, "What are you doing with these numbers? How could you project that up? That's not likely. Here's why."

They also partnered with another firm, and the business proposition of their partner basically says: "Come to our website, and instead of giving us 100 bucks to support the cause of environmentalism, spend a $100 to buy a share of ExxonMobil and let us vote this year for you." It's democratizing the voice of stockholder constituency. I thought that was really, really, really smart tactics.