Emcor's CEO MacInnis Runs His Business Smartly

Take a look at this interview with the CEO of portfolio holding Emcor (EME).

My first thought about the interview was MacInnis speaks like someone who's trying to run a business, not please a bunch of analysts quarter to quarter. I was particularly impressed by how he sees himself as an asset allocator, constantly negotiating risk/reward tradeoffs. He doesn't fashion himself an empire builder.

Note MacInnis' claim that EME successfully steered clear of doing deals with dot-com businesses, sidestepping the meltdown's impact on business spending and capex. A low margin business had better be right if it's going to tether itself to a highly speculative customer base. I'm sure EME's prospective dot-com customers were dangling visions of contracts to build and maintain massive server farms and the like in front of EME's sales group like mad, yet the company had the backbone to pass on those deals.

I have two main takeaways from this interview. One is that I like how my CEO views his job: don't build an empire, run a business to make money sustainably for the owners. Second, if you follow the pack, you should expect pack-like results.

Disclosure: Author is long EME