The Beartooth Group’s business model focuses on buying distressed properties—primarily ranches—shepherding habitat improvements, and then selling the ranches at a profit to wealthy clients.
Robert Keith was an equity analyst in New York and then a venture capitalist in California before co-founding the Bozeman-based Beartooth Group with a friend in 2004.
During an interview with Bloomberg published in 2021, Keith said buying distressed properties from distressed buyers can yield a good return for investors when high-net-worth buyers want wide open spaces in the West.
“So, we can get a nice price on the way in, and then we can add value through habitat restoration and resell them,” he said.
The Beartooth Group helped shepherd the acquisition and then sale of three inholdings in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest to the Forest Service. The parcels are south of Ennis and west of Yellowstone National Park.
In essence, the Beartooth Group got its start as ranch flippers.
Yet not all the company’s transactions follow this formula.
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James Dockery, vice president, said some Beartooth Group investors consider enhancing grizzly bear habitat to be a genuine return on investment.
“What we are really about first is wildlife and conservation,” Dockery said.
