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" JIM COULTER: One of the challenges in the investment business is what I’ll call uncommon wisdom. Common wisdom is what people think about a situation; it’s usually not that valuable because it’s something everybody sees. What is valuable is if you find uncommon wisdom, which is where you see something that the rest of the world sees one way and you see a different way. So when I first ran into CAA, my reaction was actually common wisdom that Hollywood agencies might be difficult to invest in, because they’re people businesses, and maybe not great stewards of capital. What surprised me is the deeper I looked, the more uncommon wisdom showed up, and things that I might have expected to be true weren’t necessarily the case. In 2010, when we first looked at the company, their sports business was still new, still in start-up phase, and still in cash flow negative. We looked at that business and could say, “Here’s something that represents a breakout opportunity for this business.” Concert touring was a much bigger business than I would have expected from the outside, and the strength of the TV business was stronger than I would have expected. The stickiness of CAA’s businesses and the resilience of their businesses were much stronger than I expected. The light went off for me that this is not only an agency; it is a content play because of their extraordinary access to a very large pool of content. As the value of content increases around the world, an investment in CAA would be the most diversified and interesting way to be in that marketplace. "

James Andrew Miller , Powerhouse


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James Andrew Miller quote : JIM COULTER: One of the challenges in the investment business is what I’ll call uncommon wisdom. Common wisdom is what people think about a situation; it’s usually not that valuable because it’s something everybody sees. What is valuable is if you find uncommon wisdom, which is where you see something that the rest of the world sees one way and you see a different way. So when I first ran into CAA, my reaction was actually common wisdom that Hollywood agencies might be difficult to invest in, because they’re people businesses, and maybe not great stewards of capital. What surprised me is the deeper I looked, the more uncommon wisdom showed up, and things that I might have expected to be true weren’t necessarily the case. In 2010, when we first looked at the company, their sports business was still new, still in start-up phase, and still in cash flow negative. We looked at that business and could say, “Here’s something that represents a breakout opportunity for this business.” Concert touring was a much bigger business than I would have expected from the outside, and the strength of the TV business was stronger than I would have expected. The stickiness of CAA’s businesses and the resilience of their businesses were much stronger than I expected. The light went off for me that this is not only an agency; it is a content play because of their extraordinary access to a very large pool of content. As the value of content increases around the world, an investment in CAA would be the most diversified and interesting way to be in that marketplace.