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A diverse range of global, regional and sector based equity, multi-asset and fixed income investment strategies and funds
In this video, Head of Australian Equity Growth Dushko Bajic discusses the changing macro environment and navigating volatility within the investment process.
The portfolio managers are supported by a large group of equity analysts with a proven track record of fundamental bottom-up stock research.
Concentration in equity markets has reached unprecedented levels. While this has driven remarkable returns for a narrow slice of the market, it raises critical questions about diversification, valuation, and risk for equity investors.
Concentration in equity markets has reached unprecedented levels, particularly in the United States. A select few mega-cap stocks, colloquially referred to as the "Magnificent 7," now dominate market indices, reflecting a convergence of technological innovation, speculative enthusiasm, and the allure of generative AI.
In the following video, Head of Australian Equity Growth Dushko Bajic discusses the impact of rising rates on company valuations and the economy.
RQI Investors’ quantitative value strategies have a long history of outperformance versus peers and value indices. Our disciplined, highly active, and repeatable value investing process provides investors with a benchmark unaware, diversified equity portfolio that is cost competitive versus fundamental active stock pickers.
There was a large jump in capital raisings – in April alone 26 companies in the S&P/ASX300 issued new stock. By the end of 2020, 104 of these companies had undertaken raisings - the most number of companies that had ever raised equity in single year - totalling almost $40 billion.
Our recent paper on Extreme Concentration focussed on the US (and so Developed Markets). This was the natural as the central issue of concentration was among the top 10 stocks in the US, among them, the “Magnificent 7”.
Better profit margins, higher return on equity and superior share market returns are hallmarks of listed companies with more diverse executive teams, new research shows.
Andrew Greenup and George Thornely explore the performance of the Global Listed Infrastructure Securities asset class and look ahead to the main themes expected to impact this asset class over the years ahead.
From growing companies to up-and-coming names, our range of active, research-driven approaches to the Australian share market aim to deliver above market returns over the long term.
The mid caps space is characterised by successful companies with strong growth profiles, which can offer attractive diversification benefits to Australian equity portfolios. Yet they comprise only a small proportion of a typical broad-based portfolio. In this article we highlight some of the attractive characteristics of this often-overlooked segment of the market.
American Listed Infrastructure (ALI) has seen a significant increase in Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity. Private market and foreign corporate buyers are paying premiums of 25% to listed markets, often for non-controlling stakes. This M&A illustrates the intrinsic value available to investors in the ALI asset class. We expect M&A will continue for a number of years. This will deleverage balance sheets, reduce equity needs and recycle capital from non-core to core activities, thereby raising the quality of the ALI asset class.
Despite the extraordinary events since its launch in June 2007 – including the Global Financial Crisis, volatile commodity prices, and political upheaval in many parts of the world – the strategy has delivered strong, consistent returns through a focus on valuation, quality and active management.
Global investment manager, First Sentier Investors, today announced changes to its investment capabilities within Australia.
People are are at the heart of our success as a leading global asset manager
The Realindex Australian Share Value-Class A Fund is a real achiever that, since its inception in 2008, has delivered long-term outperformance compared to its benchmark for investors.
The outlook for the global economy and financial markets looks more uncertain today than it has for a long time. Both interest rates and inflation have risen sharply. There is a growing consensus that much of the world will shortly be experiencing slowing economic growth.
Equity markets are currently at all-time highs. This has generated returns which, we believe, are unlikely to continue, so we need to think about where returns are likely to come from over the next 10 years. We need to think about how investors can position themselves to take advantage of this. This note highlights why Emerging Markets (EM) Value looks to be a market segment which appears – relatively speaking – to be attractive.
Global listed infrastructure underperformed in 2023 owing to rising interest rates and a shift away from defensive assets. Relative valuations are now at compelling levels. Infrastructure assets are expected to see earnings growth in 2024 and beyond, aided by structural growth drivers.
Deputy Head of Global Listed Infrastructure, Andrew Greenup, tells Livewire the most compelling reasons for investors to consider listed infrastructure as part of their portfolios, some common misconceptions, and shares a high conviction stock pick; the world's largest renewables owner.
We are entering a new era. The year 2024 will be unpredictable and clouded by many uncertainties. It will be marked by geopolitical risks, the ongoing taming of the inflation beast, and how the US Presidential election will impact markets.
Discover how our equity managers with one of Australia's longest track records provide capital and income growth by investing in the Australian share market.
First Sentier Investors' David Wilson and Christian Guerra unpack August’s reporting season — the most volatile on record. From banks and insurers to industrials and hidden tech plays, they explore what moved the market and why volatility might be here to stay.
We crossed six US states meeting over 70 infrastructure management teams as well as customers and suppliers at three conferences. We visited three corporate head offices, several regulators and toured the country’s largest nuclear power plant.
Head of Global Property Securities Stephen Hayes: Global city populations continue to grow, driven by urbanisation. The provision of housing for growing populations is a major challenge for many countries and cities. Adequate housing is a factor that influences a city’s mobility of labour, social wellbeing and commerce levels. Government housing policies are typically viewed holistically with policies covering social, private and rental housing. New supply is not always efficient and can be problematic particularly in densely populated cities.
Podcast: Why a Silicon Valley exec bought into Breville’s global ambitions | First Sentier Investors
It’s much harder to innovate consistently than build one great idea, but some companies are up to the challenge. Breville CEO Jim Clayton tells First Sentier Investors’ Dawn Kanelleas why he left the fast-paced world of private equity, management consulting and South Korean conglomerates to drive a little-known Australian company with a knack for innovation forward.
In September 2023, I met more than 30 global listed infrastructure companies and stakeholders from the UK, Europe and China. The following travel diary summarises my impressions and findings from these meetings.
I recently returned from a two-week, coast-to-coast trip across the United States, talking to institutional clients, pension funds and investment consultants. The mood on the ground is one of caution. Rising inflation and interest rates are on everybody’s mind. A war in Europe and spiking oil prices are creating uncertainty. And the possibility of recession hovers at the edge of conversations. During such a period, it’s easy to wonder if there are any safe ports in the investment storm. In this environment, we believe that infrastructure has an important role to play in portfolios. Investments in assets such as toll roads, airports, railroads, utilities and renewables, energy midstream, wireless towers and data centres show their worth in such times. These types of investments have high barriers to entry, structural growth and strong pricing power, giving them the potential to withstand inflation and generate consistent earnings, regardless of the broader economic backdrop. With this in mind, below are three reasons we believe infrastructure investors may be well-placed to weather the geopolitical storms ahead.
Australia currently has a unique opportunity to set up a framework that can support investment aligned with the nation’s sustainability goals, by means of the Australian Sustainable Finance Strategy (“the Strategy”).
This final paper is somewhat shorter than the first two, and simply aims to look a little deeper into whether zombie firms appear in Realindex portfolios, and how a Quality factor acts as a repellent for these stocks. This is more important in Value-oriented portfolios as the potential appearance of lower quality “junk” firms, or even zombies, is higher here than in broader universes.
Infrastructure describes the physical assets that provide basic services to modern society, including utilities, transport and communication assets. The fundamental, essential nature of the services provided gives global listed infrastructure qualities that can be beneficial to an investment portfolio.
This article was produced in partnership with First Sentier Investors. We firmly believe that active management is crucial when constructing a geared portfolio. A geared investment strategy can be considered a more complex strategy that borrows to invest, ultimately magnifying an investor’s exposure to rising or falling markets.
Incorporated in 1885, BHP began as a silver, lead and zinc mine in Broken Hill, Australia. Over the next century the company grew into one of the largest diversified resource companies in the world with operations including oil and gas, steel production and mining of a variety of commodities including copper, potash, coal and diamonds. It listed on the Australian stock exchange in July 1961, making it the oldest company currently trading, and throughout much of this time it has been the largest company on the ASX by market capitalisation (currently it is ranked third). In 2001 BHP announced it would merge with fellow resource powerhouse Billiton. Billiton also had a long history dating back to a single tin mine in 1851 before growing into a major producer of aluminium, alumina, chrome, manganese, steaming coal, nickel and titanium. The company was Dutch controlled from inception before being acquired by South African firm Gencor in 1994. As the world’s largest metals and mining corporation, BHP Billiton began trading in July 2002 and operates as a dual listed company (DLC) – a corporate structure in which two companies have merged into a single operating business but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings (in this case Australia and the United Kingdom ).
Recently I attended the largest US utility conference, the 2024 Edison Electric Institute (EEI) Financial Conference, in Hollywood, Florida. I met with management teams from 26 regulated electric and gas utility companies.
We pose the question – what if we could develop a way of predicting which companies are more likely to be suffering distress, and which were not? The idea contains three parts: A. Certain individual observations or metrics can separately tell us about stocks that might – in the near future – find themselves in trouble. B. If we combine enough of these metrics together – without overfitting – we can get synergy between the factors. C. If we build a smart model that is designed specifically to target corporate distress, then we can apply and refine the predictions from the metrics in a better way.
This year’s August 2024 reporting season has concluded with most ASX-listed companies disclosing their profit results and guidance for the 2025 financial year ahead.
The push for achieving a decarbonised economy will see sweeping social and economic change across regional communities in Australia. The new frontier in the march for a greener future in Australia is a focus on a just transition, supported by a Federal Government-backed Net Zero Authority, to ensure workers, industries and communities can seize opportunities in the nation’s net zero transformation.
Over the last decade the electricity sector has been at the forefront of decarbonisation, ahead of transport, industry and agriculture.
2024 was a good year for global listed infrastructure. Strong earnings for energy midstream and a step-change in the earnings growth outlook for utilities helped the asset class to shrug off rising bond yields and political uncertainty.
The energy crisis in Europe has boosted global demand for LNG. Global listed infrastructure companies pioneered the US LNG industry, investing US$50 billion since 2010. The energy crisis is providing an opportunity for LNG to secure its role as a transition fuel. With reliability and security of supply increasingly front of mind, US LNG exporters stand to gain market share, underpinning a further US$50 billion of investment over the next decade. An increased need for natural gas infrastructure will also benefit the broader North American midstream sector.
The global political economy is rapidly evolving. The rules, norms and institutions that govern interactions between nation states are being upended, and the nature of capitalism is changing again. Having evolved in the past from laissez‑faire to Keynesianism to free market neoliberalism, it is now turning to nationalism with more state intervention.
2024 was a year marked by global inflation and economic growth concerns against a backdrop of worldwide elections. As we head into 2025, volatility will remain an enduring constant.
Over the last 5 years, China has been on the rise within the Emerging Markets. We have all heard the story of the China Dragon and the impressive growth that the Chinese economy has been able to achieve relative to other large economies since the early 1990s. Even more recently as its growth has reduced it is still achieving more than double the growth of the United States. We believe the increase in regulatory risk from both the US and domestically in China has been a large contributor to this fall. The question for investors is this: will it continue and where does the next risk lie?
Last quarter I visited infrastructure companies in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. The trip included visits to ten corporate head offices and three site tours. This paper seeks to share some of the key findings from my meetings with Japanese passenger rail and utility companies.
Benefits of the rapid recovery of airport and toll road volumes far outweigh the operational issues they now face as a result. We expect higher load factors to compensate for airline capacity cuts, meaning traffic will continue to edge towards 2019 levels. European toll roads have a positive role to play in the decarbonisation of the transport sector, providing both societal benefits and investment return upside.
Australia has fewer homes per adult than most of the developed world. First Sentier Investors Head of Global Property Securities Stephen Hayes is joined by Stockland Development CEO Andrew Whitson to unpack the challenges in meeting Australia’s growing housing demand – and where growth may emerge next.
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