What is the purpose of an LP Meeting?
Is it to inform the limited partners about the performance of their investments? I don’t think so.
The LPs already know the numbers. They don’t come to the meeting to hear the numbers. They come to hear what the manager thinks about the numbers.
There’s a big difference.
Numbers are, we hope, facts about the past. They are commodities—everybody has them, and their value is depressed.
What we think about the numbers are opinions. They have the potential for being unique and differentiated, and their value can be considerable.
When a manager expresses a clear, compelling and fact-based opinion at an LP meeting, he has a chance of differentiating himself and his firm from the pack.
LP meetings have more to do with opinions than with facts. If performance is down, a manager’s opinions about why are important, as are his opinions about the future.
And investors arrive with opinions about the numbers, and with a desire to hear the opinions of the manager.
Not only that. Investors arrive with opinions about the manager and his team, and the manager seeks to use the meeting as a branding opportunity to reaffirm positive opinions about his operation, and alter the less-than-favorable opinions of the fence sitters.
Facts and opinions have to work together of course. Facts are the bricks, opinions the building.
LP meetings are based on facts, but they’re about opinions.