Value investing comes in different colors. So do those who practice the craft.

In Canada, Gear Energy and Peyto Exploration & Development were simple wagers on a battered oil-and-gas sector finding its feet again. Both traded at giveaways—huge discounts to average earning power and to the value of proven reserves, each estimated using sober, not heroic, assumptions. Their market caps have since tripled, and they now hand us dividend yields north of 25% on our original outlay.

Petrus Resources, our newest foray into the Canadian patch, has not yet turned to distributions. It has, however, tripled production in three years and shows no sign of slowing. The Gray family controls more than three-quarters of the equity after repairing what was once a strained balance sheet.

Don Gray—chairman of Gear, Peyto and Petrus—has stitched together a thirty-year record of growth, profits and straight dealing. When he commits most of his net worth to a fresh production vehicle, we pay attention, especially when it coincides with a multi-decade low in natural gas.

Our pharmaceutical holdings—Idorsia and Knight Therapeutics—each sit on formidable assets: a pipeline rich with potential blockbusters and top-tier research at the former; an unmatched Latin American distribution network at the latter. In both cases, the firms are run by entrepreneurs of the highest quality.

Before Idorsia, Martine and Jean-Paul Clozel built Actelion from garage startup to Europe’s most profitable biotech after Roche pulled funding for their cardiovascular research. Two decades later, when J&J sought to acquire Actelion, the Clozels insisted its R&D pipeline be spun into a new vehicle. Thus, Idorsia.

In the Clozels’ telling, Idorsia holds the seeds of “a second Actelion, if not a better Actelion”. Actelion fetched $30bn; Idorsia listed at $1.5bn. The founders, along with several directors, have been persistent buyers ever since. They also extended the company unusually favorable financing through a convertible note.

Across the Atlantic, Jonathan Goodman turned Paladin Labs into one of Canada’s great healthcare stories—“an overnight success that took nineteen years”, as he puts it. After selling Paladin to Endo, he immediately returned to the fray by founding Knight, bringing much of his senior team with him.

Our interest in Idorsia rose when its valuation compressed to the low-case value of its soon-to-be-approved insomnia drug, effectively discounting ten other assets. Knight drew us in when its licensing-and-distribution franchise was selling for roughly five times operating earnings after adjusting for surplus cash.

Earlier this year, another pharmaceutical name—Generation Bio of Cambridge—offered a similar structure but with more heat on the risk dial. Its enterprise value fell to a level that wildly understated its non-viral gene-therapy platform. We cannot claim expertise in the science. We can, however, recognize exceptional leadership. CEO Geoffrey McDonough—formerly of Sobi and before that Genzyme—has a résumé we have tracked for a decade. The large discount to net cash sat squarely within our circle of competence.

Among industrial holdings, Tessenderlo and Groupe Guillin are both run and majority-owned by superb operators and lead their respective niches. Their valuations sagged for the wrong reasons—Tessenderlo during its merger with Picanol, which will simplify a long-opaque structure, and Guillin while wrestling with a frightening but temporary spike in input costs.

A similar logic informed our investment in Daily Journal Corporation, presided over by Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman Charlie Munger. At purchase, its listed securities and real-estate portfolio nearly covered the entire valuation, leaving only a modest multiple on a steadily growing software business serving courts in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

Daily Journal’s growth remains hidden behind some of the most conservative accounting in corporate America. We welcome the appointment of Steven Myhill-Jones as CEO and hope to expand our position when conditions allow.

Québec-based Richelieu Hardware—112 distribution centers and soon half its revenue in the U.S.—serves a professional clientele and compiles a pristine M&A record. Insiders own heavily, including roughly half the workforce. Under CEO Richard Lord, earnings per share have compounded at 15% annually over a decade. Yet the shares traded at twelve times earnings when we bought them, held back by short-term inventory worries despite strong margins, an excellent balance sheet and ample room for consolidation.

In software, we bought shares in Topicus just after its partial spin-off from Constellation Software. The premise was simple: same founder, same operating philosophy, same playbook. Across decades, “childco” has every chance of matching “parentco’s” results. This may look bold to investors who measure their worth in quarterly increments. To us—benchmarking against our own scorecard, not the index—it was obvious, especially with Topicus insiders buying hand over fist.

Orca Energy, Tanzania-based and BVI-registered, is our oldest shareholding. Run by Jay Lyons in the footsteps of his regretted father David, the company has been paying us a 30% annual dividend yield on our original acquisition cost for some years, on top of providing satisfactory capital appreciation.