AFT Capital is a private family office investing in heavy industry, energy, and commodities — where deep operational knowledge reveals what financial analysis alone cannot.
Our Investment PhilosophyHeavy industry and commodity businesses are mispriced when investors lack the technical fluency to evaluate them properly. Process economics, engineering constraints, feedstock dynamics, and regulatory frameworks determine whether a stated asset value is real — yet most investment analysis stops at the income statement.
AFT Capital approaches every investment from first principles. We seek to understand how a business actually works before forming a view on what it is worth. Domain expertise is our primary analytical tool. Financial modeling is the framework we apply once we understand the underlying economics.
We are long-term, concentrated, and willing to engage. Where we identify a gap between intrinsic value and management's capital allocation decisions, we make our position known — directly, constructively, and with the analytical substance to be taken seriously.
Engineering and process expertise enables evaluation of industrial assets at a depth that purely financial analysis cannot reach. We identify the real value drivers — and the real risks — before forming a view.
We look for businesses the market has miscategorized, misunderstood, or mispriced relative to their underlying economics. The most attractive opportunities are rarely obvious — they require doing the work others choose not to.
When capital allocation falls short of what a business can deliver, we engage management directly — with specific, evidence-based proposals. Shareholder activism is a core element of our process, not a measure of last resort.
Canadian-listed producers and developers across the full spectrum of Western Canadian geology. We evaluate reservoir characteristics, production economics, and capital efficiency — not just headline metrics.
Downstream processing and chemical production businesses where integrated process knowledge informs margin analysis, feedstock optionality, and capacity utilization assessments unavailable to generalist investors.
Mining businesses evaluated from ore body to balance sheet — grade, recovery, throughput constraints, and capital intensity assessed against commodity price scenarios and project-level economics.
Process-intensive businesses at the intersection of feedstock economics, regulatory frameworks, and commodity markets — where understanding the production process is essential to evaluating competitive position.
Every position starts with understanding how the business actually operates — its production processes, cost structure, regulatory environment, and competitive dynamics — before touching a financial model.
We hold a small number of high-conviction positions. Diversification beyond genuine understanding is not risk management — it is the illusion of it. Sizing reflects margin of safety and variant perception.
We invest over multi-year periods and are indifferent to short-term price movements. Patience is a structural advantage when competing against capital with shorter time horizons and less domain depth.
AFT Capital manages only family capital and does not accept third-party investments. This structure eliminates AUM-driven incentives and ensures investment decisions are made on merit alone.
Thiago Avila is the founder and Investment Officer of AFT Capital Ltd., a Calgary-based private investment company. He holds the CFA designation, is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.Eng.), and holds a Master of Science in Computer Science — credentials that collectively underpin a genuinely differentiated investment process.
His professional background spans industrial energy systems, process control, distributed generation, power systems, and large-scale software engineering — disciplines that provide direct, hands-on grounding in the sectors where AFT Capital invests. This is not a theoretical edge: it reflects decades of applied work designing, building, and operating capital-intensive systems in industrial environments.
AFT Capital's investment approach is characterized by rigorous bottom-up research, direct engagement with management teams, and a focus on finding value where the market lacks the technical vocabulary to price it correctly. Across oil and gas, heavy industry, and metals, the firm looks for businesses whose intrinsic value is obscured by operational complexity — and whose management teams are open to substantive dialogue on capital allocation.
The firm does not manage outside capital. Engagement from management teams, fellow shareholders, and counterparties is welcomed.
AFT Capital engages with management teams, fellow shareholders, and counterparties on matters of mutual interest. The firm does not manage outside capital and is not soliciting investments.