VINY 2026 – Juniper’s Ned Reeves Says This Small-cap Which 10xed Has More Room To Grow

At the Value Invest New York 2026 conference, Ned Reeves, Partner at Juniper Investment Company, pitched a opportunity rooted in one of America’s most pressing structural challenges, the shortage of skilled workers. Reeves, who leads investment research for Juniper’s long-term, highly concentrated public equity strategy, presented an idea that benefits from these trends.

Juniper Investment Company is based out of New York. Juniper Investment Company is a hedge fund with assets under management (AUM) of $400M. The firm runs a highly concentrated portfolio of roughly a dozen positions in undervalued companies, taking an engaged, partnership-oriented approach with management teams. Rather than activist fighting, Juniper seeks situations where it can build strong relationships over time, contribute board-level expertise, and help companies execute on strategies that will compound value over years. The firm’s involvement can range from simply being a supportive long-term shareholder to placing a team member on the board and helping recruit qualified directors.

Reeves opened by framing the macro backdrop that underpins his thesis. The skilled trades in America face a generational supply crisis. Vocational and trade programs have been dismantled across the country over the past two decades, replaced by an overwhelming emphasis on four-year college degrees. The result is a massive imbalance, for every one new skilled worker entering the workforce, employers must cycle through as many as 23 hires to find a qualified candidate. At the same time, demand-side tailwinds are strengthening as Gen Z increasingly questions the value proposition of traditional university education, and the rise of artificial intelligence has made some experts  promote physical trades that cannot be easily automated.

The Skilled Trades Supply Crisis

The numbers paint a stark picture. America faces a shortage of roughly half a million skilled tradespeople, and the pipeline to replace them has been hollowed out over two generations. Trade schools were shuttered, vocational programs were defunded, and an entire cultural narrative was built around the primacy of the four-year degree. The consequences are now impossible to ignore, employers across industries from automotive repair to HVAC to healthcare cannot find the workers they need.