Larry Robbins Quotes

101 Larry Robbins Quotes (Glenview Capital Management)

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[In 2011.] There are only two things that matter in investing. What are they going to earn, and what multiple are people going to put on that. Let’s not make our business any more complicated than this.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] We like businesses that are simple to understand and simple to discuss.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] You can really prove to yourself whether you know something or not if you can give a five-minute elevator pitch. If you cannot summarize a complex situation in a three to five minute discussion, you do not really understand it.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011 on company research.] What we’re trying to do is complete a jigsaw puzzle, and we’re collecting more and more pieces. If I asked you to solve a Wheel of Fortune problem but only gave you two letters, you would have a hard time coming up with the answer. What we’re tyring to do is uncover as many letters as possible and put together the mosaic.
Larry Robbins

[In January 2014.] The road from market genius to village idiot is exceedingly short.
Larry Robbins

[In July 2013.] The hedge-fund industry acts like traders, not owners.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] The stock market was great, because it doesn’t know your age. You don’t need a rolodex. You don’t need to have contacts or connections. It is a level playing field where 25 year olds compete with 55 year olds, and whoever works the hardest and the smartest can do the best job.
Larry Robbins

[In January 2014.] We try to think and act like owners
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] You never know when that lucky break will be…
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Consistency of effort… makes the difference between who wins and who loses.
Larry Robbins



[In 2011.] It’s not about what you did before but about… persistence and continuity of work effort.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] We define a good business as a business with high recurring revenue stream, defensible, cash generative, etc.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Every six months, we have a ‘what grows’ session in which we take a giant step back and say, ‘We’re not venture capitalists, we’re not smart enough to figure out who’s the next Facebook or the next Groupon, but where’s the growth going to come from over the next three, five, ten years secularly, and how can we position ourselves to take advantage.’
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] We look for businesses that have a good medium and long-term growth outlook and are cheap relative to the cash flows that they are currently generating. In general, we’re looking for low-teens or better growth.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Expect the unexpected…
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Be humble about just how many… things you can control…
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] To a certain extent, you need to trade against the market and not overreact to every little thing that can change.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] If you can lay out the bear-case and explain why it is wrong, that should enhance your conviction.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] We are habitually early like most value investors are.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] If you really want to be a good investor, you cannot just be involved, you have to be committed.
Larry Robbins



[In September 1997 on Ryder CEO Anthony Burns having announced the sale in May of Ryder’s auto carrier division for $175 million in cash and debt.] Good riddance. The division had three customers in a highly cyclical industry where you had no pricing power and Teamster labor. I could not describe a worse set of circumstances.
Larry Robbins

[In July 2002 on praising Sears.] Conservative credit culture.
Larry Robbins

[In July 2002 on Sears at the time with a stock price of around $49.] Relative to other large-cap retailers, Sears represents, the best value. The company is at a long-term inflection point. It is being priced to be a perennial market-share donor to others. We think it will be able to demonstrate better earnings growth and come out stronger after Lacy's restructuring efforts. As investors start to discount 2004 earnings of $7 a share, and if the stock trades at 13 times earnings, you'll see a $91 stock in '04.
Larry Robbins

[In March 2009 on being caught in a short squeeze in Volkswagen when it opened Monday morning at $273 a share and by the end of Tuesday it was selling at $1,303.60 per share. At one point on Tuesday it became the world’s most highly valued company with a total market capitalization of $456 billion. Equivalent to 5% of the current value of the entire U.S. equity market.] We did not anticipate the prime brokerage community could view an automotive company at 1 to 300 times earnings – and greater in value than Exxon Mobil – to be the riskiest short in the marketplace, necessitating multiples of capital posted as margin. Our imaginations were not large enough.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Like most kids, I thought I was going to return to the place that I grew up and into the same business that my father was in. My father was an accountant.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] When everybody in the last year of school was interviewing for consulting firms or investing firms, I did not know what an investment bank was, but decided that it would be a good idea to interview there.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] For my summer internship I was trading options for O’Connor and Associates on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trad and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and I absolutely loved it, growing up from a horse racing background. I was scared though, that if I learned that business and then wanted to do something else seven years later, I would only know how to trade options. So investment banking seemed to give a pretty broad foundation for whatever you wanted to do afterwards.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] While the hours were long, you learned a lot in a short period.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] I wanted to work on and learn about forty or fifty companies a year, not four or five.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011 on his first job at Gleacher & Company.] Gleacher & company was a fantatic first place for me… At 24 years old, I did not have a rolodex of clients to bring in so I could not be a senior person at Gleacher. But educationally, it had done such a good job of exposing me to a variety of transactions that I had reached a plateau. So between twenty-four and a rainmaker, there was not much to do other than manage people and process, which I had no interest in.
Larry Robbins



[In 2011 on leaving his first job at Gleacher & Company.] It was not out of the love or passion for investing, but really out of the desire to learn more and see different situations that I left.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] It was almost by accident that I went into the hedge fund and investment business…
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] I worked for almost six years for
Leon Cooperman at Omega Advisors… He saw that I was a hardworking kid who wanted to learn and gave me an opportunity.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Omega had a down year in 1994 so I was coming into a high-watermark situation. I was so young and inexperienced, that I did not realize how risky that was to walk into a high risk situation… Nonetheless, I got a great education.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] You never know when that lucky break will be, so you always need to be working hard and paying attention.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Consistency of effort often makes the difference between who wins and who loses.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] What differentiates people in hockey who win games and who don’t is the consistency of effort.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] Our firm, Glenview Capital, is named after Glenview, Illinois, where I first started playing hockey when I was 5 years old.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] As much as I learned from [the] University of Pennsylvania, and the great lessons I got from Eric Gleacher &
Leon Cooperman, a lot of the lessons that I learned growing up as a kid in the Midwest were just as important for me going forward.
Larry Robbins

[In 2011.] I don’t think that I have met someone who is very good in the investment business who isn’t hard-working, bright, talented, and focused.
Larry Robbins



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