Why Moats Matter
Interview with Todd Wenning, President and CIO of KNA Capital
We are back to start a very busy year for the Compounders Podcast with a great interview with Todd Wenning, CFA, the President and CIO of KNA Capital. Many of our listeners might have come across Todd’s excellent discussions of moats during his time at Morningstar and Ensemble Capital—or on his Substack Flyover Stocks. Todd founded KNA Capital in early 2024 and I was eager to speak with Todd about:
· What pushed him to start his own firm;
· Why economic moats are so important to him and his process;
· How he decided on the right level of concentration;
· What he finds so valuable about the process of teaching undergrads; and
· Why nostalgia can be a very attractive theme to invest behind.
Please enjoy the episode here:
Back in 2017 Todd created an insightful diagram that contains the concentric circles of management, moat, and price that describes how he evaluates companies. In this clip, Todd describes how he came up with the framework and how he assesses situations where one of the key pillars is missing.
The end of the year was a little bit slow in terms of releasing episodes. As such, we have a bunch of insightful interviews we are going to be sharing over the next few months. Please stay tuned to listen to those and to hear from our latest sponsor.
Hope 2025 has started off well for you,
Ben Claremon