Masters in Business

Finding Value Investments with Patient Capital's Samantha McLemore

December 19, 2025

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  • Samantha McLemore, founder and CIO of Patient Capital Management, adheres to a contrarian value investing philosophy, influenced by Bill Miller, which embraces growth potential as a core component of valuation. 
  • The Opportunity Equity Fund, now solely managed by McLemore, maintains maximum flexibility to invest across different types of opportunities, including attractively valued compounders and early-stage companies, to perform well in various market environments. 
  • Despite high market valuations, McLemore believes the current AI-driven market is fundamentally different from the 2000 dot-com bubble due to stronger underlying company fundamentals, high demand, and the fact that widespread fear of a bubble suggests one is less likely to be forming. 

Segments

Samantha McLemore’s Career Start
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(00:03:39)
  • Key Takeaway: Samantha McLemore secured her first job as a junior analyst at Leg Mason by proactively submitting her resume to Bill Miller after a campus speaking engagement.
  • Summary: McLemore transitioned from an initial college major in chemistry to accounting and business, finding her analytical skills better suited there. She joined Leg Mason in 2002 as an analyst, later becoming assistant portfolio manager of the Opportunity Trust in August 2008. Her early career was defined by a 20-year apprenticeship working closely with Bill Miller.
Value Investing Philosophy Evolution
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(00:08:38)
  • Key Takeaway: McLemore adopted Bill Miller’s view that value investing must include high-growth companies, as hindsight shows past best values were often high-compounders like Amazon.
  • Summary: At her core, McLemore identifies as a contrarian value investor, but she incorporates growth prospects into her analysis, rejecting processes that explicitly exclude high-multiple stocks known to be long-term value creators. The Opportunity Trust fund seeks maximum flexibility to invest wherever the best values are found, blending attractively valued compounders with classic value names.
Launching Patient Capital Management
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(00:15:05)
  • Key Takeaway: McLemore launched Patient Capital Management to pursue an independent institutional business track record after developing a successful independent track record running Bill Miller’s personal money.
  • Summary: The firm was launched in 2020, despite the COVID market disruption, to capture institutional business that Miller Value Partners was not pursuing. Patient Capital is now a wholly owned subsidiary, managing both the Opportunity Trust Mutual Fund and the institutional business under one philosophy and process. The mutual fund has more restrictions, preventing investments like Bitcoin until the Bitcoin ETF structure became available.
Bitcoin as a Value Trade
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(00:21:14)
  • Key Takeaway: McLemore invested in Bitcoin in 2020 as a proxy for digital gold, analyzing its potential market cap relative to physical gold, despite initial skepticism and missing early gains.
  • Summary: She initially resisted Bitcoin, viewing it as a potential zero, a mistake she learned from when the price crashed after reaching $20,000. By 2020, she saw potential inflation risk and bought in, analyzing its upside as a proxy for gold’s market cap, projecting a potential future value of $1.3 to $1.4 million per coin.
Innkeeping and Mindset Lessons
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(00:23:19)
  • Key Takeaway: McLemore learned the hard way through an impulsive auction purchase of a Vermont inn that markets are preferable to managing complex, low-leverage operational businesses.
  • Summary: She explored innkeeping after the financial crisis, driven by a desire for a different life path, but quickly realized the operational challenges were not for her. She emphasizes that having the right mindset, utilizing tools like Stoicism and meditation, is crucial for navigating market volatility by focusing only on what is within one’s control.
AI’s Transformational Impact
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(00:29:20)
  • Key Takeaway: Artificial Intelligence is viewed as a completely transformational technology, potentially bigger than the industrial revolution, but current market valuations do not reflect the hysteria seen in the 1990s tech bubble.
  • Summary: McLemore notes that knowledgeable people agree AI’s impact will be huge, though the timeline is uncertain. She points out that current AI infrastructure spenders are highly capitalized companies, unlike the debt-laden telecom buildout of the late 90s. She actively uses AI tools like ChatGPT for research and operational tasks, believing proficiency in using these tools is essential for future employment.
Market Bifurcation and Valuation
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(00:45:54)
  • Key Takeaway: The widespread discussion and fear surrounding an AI bubble suggest psychological extremeness is absent, making a true bubble less likely than in 2000, where narrow sector concentration was the issue.
  • Summary: McLemore respects the market’s pricing, noting that high-quality companies with strong fundamentals justify higher valuations, but wide gaps still exist. She highlights adding to defensive areas like healthcare, which recently traded at 50-year relative valuation lows, to position the portfolio for varied environments. The biggest errors for long-term investors often come from missing out on major compounding moves, not just from individual stock losses.