Ann: Half Yearly Report and Accounts December 2015, page-9

I understand the investment thesis with SDI, but the biggest query for me is: How good are they are at hiring and training their sales teams? I don't doubt their products are good, but it seems they've been almost constantly restructuring their Brazilian, US and European sales forces over the last 5 years. The best companies are those that have innovative and distinguished products, and know how to sell/distribute them (either via a proprietary platform like ARB, or via 3rd party platforms like BRG). Dentists are a really tough & finicky lot to sell to, and i'd want to see further evidence that their most recent sales force restructures are actually delivering before diving in.

As an aside, there is a unquantifiable but real tail risk that something highly adverse happens to the company's Brazil operations, undoing the years of work they've put in there. I don't normally bother with macroeconomics etc., but Brazil right now is in the midst of its worst economic downturn in a century, there's a widespread political corruption scandal that runs all the way to the top and there's a chance of it all tail-spinning. Information recency prompts us to categorize Brazil as a stable, market-based economy as that's the way it's been in the last 20 years, but it was a basket case before that and could become one again if things really unravel.