Back in 1993 a Morningstar analyst made the observation that “Sound Shore Fund cultivates the market’s wallflowers. This fund is something of a flea market shopper, searching for value that is not reflected in a security’s price.”

The value-oriented management and investment philosophy remain strikingly similar to when the review was written, when the fund was already eight years old. The original managers, T. Gibbs Kane Jr. and Harry Burn III, still actively participate in day-to-day investment and management decisions. In 2006, John DeGulis, who had been with the firm a decade, made the management duo a trio.



DeGulis, 49, remembers his first years at the fund, when the dot-com bubble was still inflating. “Between 1996 and 1998, the market was up a lot and we did reasonably well,” he says. “But in 1998 and 1999, momentum took over and the markets moved away from anything but technology. It was a perfect storm for value investors.” The fund, which had risen from virtual obscurity in the mid-1990s to about $2 billion in assets by 1999, shed assets as investors sought greener pastures.

Its fortunes reversed in the early 2000s, when tech-weary investors favored value stocks and performance perked up. “When the broad market was down over 20% in 2000, we were up,” he says. “We succeeded because we didn’t divert from our philosophy. We did what we had always done.”

That conviction has rewarded investors over the long term. The fund’s annualized five-year return as of June 30 was 17.06%, above the 15.03% for the average fund in Morningstar’s large-cap value category, while the Sound Shore Fund’s 7.76% annualized 10-year return bested the Morningstar category’s 6.59%. Over the last 20 years, the Sound Shore Fund realized a 10.22% annualized return, while its average peer returned 7.7%.

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