About

KIP Capital Management (KIP) provides discretionary managed portfolio services to high net-worth individuals, family offices and institutions.

Welcome. This blog showcases our philosophy, models and research work.

KIP offers investors a unique approach to wealth management. We believe that preservation of capital coupled with its consistent and steady compounding is the key to long-term wealth generation.

Our investment philosophy is value investing. Our investing universe is limited to businesses with sustainable competitive advantages, also called economic wide-moats. We conduct a rigorous qualitative analysis coupled with a forensic quantitative investigation of a business. If it passes our checklists and filters, we seek to purchase its common stock at prices below our assessment of its intrinsic economic value.

We seek businesses that demonstrate a history of high returns on their invested capital. We also recognize that businesses that can re-invest capital at a high incremental return for extended periods are rare and substantially more valuable. We focus solely on such wealth-compounders. Equally important, we stay alert against and shun wealth-destroyers. For purchasing a short-listed business, our valuation and buying discipline focuses on maximizing a margin of safety, while minimizing the opportunity cost.

Our process is a singular focus in identifying economic wide-moats and exercising a rational valuation and price discipline. In doing so, we ensure that we partner with talented and ethical corporate managers who leverage the competitive advantages of their businesses by allocating capital to only the highest-return opportunities.

About the People

Husain Kothari
Founder, Portfolio Manager

Prior to KIP, Husain has been a serial entrepreneur, capital allocator and a value investor in the GCC region for 27 years. He is a passionate practitioner of the value-investing school of thought and philosophy. He deeply subscribes to investors like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Howard Marks, Seth Klarman amongst others.

He has spent over 45 years in the MENA region and is the co-founder and director of the Zahra Group. The Group, established in 1993, is a Kuwait-based integrated group of companies with investments in the hydrocarbon and financial sector. Husain’s areas of focus are new ventures, investment management and corporate finance.

The Group’s oil and gas businesses have ranged from upstream oil and gas (E&P), engineering and construction, oilfield services and petrochemicals. Husain has led the founding of each of these ventures. For instance, he was the co-founder, shareholder-board member and the ex-CFO of Kuwait Energy (formerly ‘Zahra Oil and Gas’).

He serves on several boards in the private and the non-profit sectors. He serves on the board of a non-profit organization which promotes and develops young entrepreneurs and offers them legal and entrepreneurial advisory service. He speaks extensively on entrepreneurship and its social and economic contributions to society. He regularly publishes articles on value investing.

Husain has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. He fluently reads and speaks several languages including Arabic and Urdu. He and his spouse have two young sons and a daughter. His sons are ardent value-investors and his daughter specializes in philosophy and theology.

Email: hkothari@kipvalue.com

Shabbar H. Kothari
Senior Equity Research Analyst

Shabbar is the lead research analyst at KIP and brings over 10 years of investment management experience. He has played a pivotal role in the development of KIP’s research process since inception.

Shabbar’s expertise lies in identifying ‘moaty’ businesses that are temporarily mispriced. He is skilled at unpacking company and industry reports to reveal economic realities. He regularly contributes to the KIP blog with investment research work.

Shabbar holds the CAVIE certificate by the Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing at the Richard Ivey School of Business (WU). He has a bachelor’s degree in International Business & Management from the University of Missouri-St. Louis (Cum Laude). 

Email: skothari@kipvalue.com

Aamir H. Kothari
Equity Research Analyst

Aamir brings over 6 years of investment research experience.

Aamir is adept at conducting in-depth research of equities and industries, extracting important qualitative insights. He brings a unique behavioral economics perspective to KIP’s process. He regularly contributes to the KIP blog with investment research work.

Aamir has completed the CFA Level 1. He has an Honors bachelor’s degree in Psychology from York University in Toronto.

Email: akothari@kipvalue.com