Sandhill Investment Management

Jack McHugh, the firm's founder, serves as CEO and Senior Portfolio Manager and has final authority on portfolio construction. He is supported by Edwin S. Smith, a long-tenured Senior Portfolio Manager, and Andrew K. Plewinski, who leads the firm's research effort as Director of Research. The three form the core of a small, stable investment team that has worked together for decades.

The firm believes that long-term stock price appreciation is ultimately a function of earnings growth. The team seeks companies with durable competitive moats, high returns on invested capital, and management teams that allocate capital effectively. They build a concentrated portfolio of 25 to 35 names, buying when near-term market sentiment or temporary operational hiccups create a discount to the firm's assessment of intrinsic earnings power.

Sandhill's primary vehicle is a US large-cap growth equity strategy, managed via separate accounts and as a sub-advisor to a publicly available mutual fund. The firm does not offer fixed-income, international equity, or alternative investment products. It has remained single-strategy throughout its history, deliberately avoiding product proliferation.

The firm views its distance from major financial centers like New York and Boston as a structural advantage. Operating outside the consensus-driven culture of Wall Street reduces career-risk incentives to hug benchmarks or chase near-term performance. This independence allows the team to hold a concentrated portfolio, run cash when opportunities are scarce, and maintain a genuinely long-term holding period without pressure to conform to peer positioning.

Yes. The firm is privately held and substantially owned by its senior investment professionals, including founder Jack McHugh. This ownership model aligns the team's incentives with long-term client outcomes rather than short-term revenue growth, and has contributed to exceptionally low senior-level turnover over the firm's four-decade history.

Sandhill manages assets for a mix of institutional investors, including corporate pension funds and endowments, as well as high-net-worth individuals and families. The firm operates on a direct, relationship-driven model without intermediary platforms. Specific fee schedules are negotiated bilaterally with each client and are not publicly disclosed.

No. The firm has explicitly avoided mission creep into small-cap, international, or value mandates since its founding. The portfolio remains exclusively focused on US large-cap equities that meet the Earnings Driven criteria. This discipline means the strategy will underperform in sharply risk-on, speculative markets that reward unprofitable growth, but the firm accepts that trade-off as consistent with its long-term compounding objective.