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Specialist in Asia Pacific, Japan, China, India and South East Asia and Global Emerging Market equities.

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formerly Realindex Investments

Leader in active quantitative equities across Australian equities, global equities, emerging markets and global small companies.

Backed by a unique blend of research, portfolio construction and risk management, focused on uncovering original insights and translating them into investment strategies that are active and systematic, aiming to generate alpha.

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At Stewart Investors, we believe in putting people first. Our investment world-view is of a series of partnerships – with each other, with our clients, with the companies we invest in, the people who buy their goods and services, and with the wider society in which we all live and work.

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Global Listed Infrastructure

Global Listed Infrastructure

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Strategy Overview

Key Facts

Entry Price:

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* The unit price for the Fund will be delayed temporarily given a special distribution is in progress.
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* This is an annualised interest rate from the past seven days. For actual performance for our Cash Funds, please view the performance page.

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Infrastructure to shape our future

We invest in the companies our societies are built on. These are companies solving for the world’s long-term challenges such as urban congestion, digital mobility, and the energy transition. We are unapologetically active investors. We invest for future generations in mind, because a more sustainable world means better outcomes for our investors.

Why invest in the First Sentier Global Listed Infrastructure strategy?

  • Listed infrastructure provides essential services to society, making it less sensitive to the economic cycle. 

  • Growth is being driven by long-term structural themes such as the build-out of renewable energy, the need to ease urban congestion, and increasing reliance on mobile data. 

  • Focus on environmental stewardship and social license to operate supports long-term, sustainable returns to shareholders.

  • Effecting change through ongoing engagement and dialogue with companies. 

What are the risks?

Although all investments carry risk, the level of risk is dependent on the type of investment strategy and the underlying investments. Generally, the higher the potential return of an investment, the greater the risk.

The risks of investing in Global Listed Infrastructure strategies include:

Company risk

Investment in equities is exposed to risks due to changes in that company or its business environment.

Equities risk

Equity securities are subject to changes in value, and their values may be more volatile than those of other asset classes.

Currency risk

For unhedged strategies only, for investments in international assets, which have currency exposure, there is potential for adverse movements in exchange rates to reduce their Australian dollar value.

Emerging market risk

Emerging markets tend to be more sensitive to economic and political conditions than developed markets. Other factors include greater liquidity risk, restrictions on investment or transfer of assets, failed/delayed settlement and difficulties valuing securities.

As with any investment, there are no guarantees on the value of the investment or the income generated from it. Investors may get back less than the original amount invested. For a full description of the terms of investment and the risks, please see the Product Disclosure Statement for each fund. If you are in any doubt as to the suitability of our funds for your investment needs, please seek financial advice.

How we invest in global listed infrastructure

Addressing net zero and the energy transition

Whilst longer term targets such as net zero 2050 are important, our immediate priority is to set medium-term expectations and assess company performance against those measures.

We challenge management on where they expect to get to by 2025 and 2030. We need to be forward looking and also identify the laggards who could be the leaders.

Getting active on the ESG front

Investing in infrastructure is a huge responsibility.

Watch First Sentier Investors' Listed Infrastructure team, led by Peter Meany, explain how we may influence companies for better long-term outcomes and investment returns.

Global Listed Infrastructure strategies

Global Listed Infrastructure strategy

Listed infrastructure provides essential services to society, making it less sensitive to the economic cycle. 

Growth is being driven by long-term structural themes such as the build-out of renewable energy, the need to ease urban congestion, and increasing reliance on mobile data. 

Focus on environmental stewardship and social license to operate ensures long-term, sustainable returns to shareholders.

Effecting change through ongoing engagement and dialogue with companies. 

Questions about investing in listed infrastructure

What is an infrastructure investment?

What are the risks of investing in infrastructure?

Is listed infrastructure an asset class?

In short, yes! While investors have embraced infrastructure as an asset class since the 1990s, the idea of investing in infrastructure via listed securities was developed by a few Australian asset managers between 2005-2007. 

Global Listed Infrastructure (GLIS) is now widely acknowledged as a standalone asset class by asset consultants, investors and the funds management industry. Today we estimate funds under management in GLIS to stand at around US$100 billion.

It’s also worth remembering that infrastructure assets also have their own set of associated risks and return profile and structural drivers distinct from those of stocks. Notably infrastructure stocks tend to provide essential goods and services to society, which can be highly regulated and prices locked in. This means that listed infrastructure has a set of characteristics which tend to be less affected by economic growth, or lack thereof.  

How should I be using infrastructure in my portfolio?

Use of GLIS within investor portfolios has varied over time. Initially we saw it used as a defensive, low volatility equity. This expanded to see it used as a source of income, as declining bond yields increased the relative appeal of its growing divided streams.

More recently, we have seen listed infrastructure form part of the real assets segment of investors’ portfolios, due to the nature of its long-life, hard assets and ability to offer insulation from the effects of inflation as well as offer structural earnings growth. 

We have also seen investors utilise GLIS as a diversified, liquid and lower fee alternative to unlisted infrastructure allocations. 

When should I invest in infrastructure?

I already get exposure to infrastructure through my global equity fund, why would I need to invest in an infrastructure fund?

You will gain a little bit of exposure - but not very much. We estimate that most global equity managers may hold between 2% and 4% (or less) of their portfolio in infrastructure assets, and this exposure could be concentrated amongst a small number of large, well-known utility names. However, much of the alpha generated in our diversified portfolio has come from mid-cap stocks, which are under-researched by global equity managers, such as toll roads, oil storage, mobile towers and water utilities. Hence, if you decide global listed infrastructure suits your investment needs, then you need to make an explicit allocation in your investment portfolio in order to gain a meaningful exposure to the asset class.

Isn’t infrastructure just a low growth, bond proxy investment?

No. Infrastructure assets offer defensive, non-cyclical growth opportunities from a variety of areas. These include:

• investment-driven earnings from the build-out of new transmission and distribution assets by electric, gas and water utilities

• clean renewable energy replacing carbon emitting, coal-fired electricity generation

• increasing equipment on mobile phone towers, to cope with growing data usage on smartphones

• rising traffic volumes on toll roads, as a result of urban congestion

• structural growth in global travel driving more passengers through airports and

• new energy pipelines and storage infrastructure being built to facilitate the world’s changing patterns of energy supply and demand.

To be clear, global listed infrastructure is an interest rate sensitive asset class (and I don’t profess to know the future direction of rates) but it also has defensive growth attributes.

Responsible investment

Our corporate responsible investment strategy is based upon three strategic pillars of quality, stewardship and engagement.

ESG issues are fundamental to infrastructure companies, given they have significant service obligations and moral accountability to the communities in which they operate.

ESG analysis is integrated into our investment process through our quality assessment and ranking model. This model consists of 25 criteria that influence stock returns in general and infrastructure securities in particular. A score is assigned to each criterion; a lower quality score makes it harder for a stock to be included within the overall portfolio. ESG factors are captured both explicitly, through scores for Environmental, Social and Governance quality criteria, and implicitly, where ESG factors are relevant to the other quality criteria we consider.

Learn more about the Global Listed Infrastructure team's approach to responsible investment

Sustainability Report 2022

Our Sustainability Report 2022 provides transparency on how we assessed the environmental, social and governance performance of the companies we invest in, how we engaged with leadership, and insights from our research throughout the year.

Meet the investment team

Peter Meany

Head of Global Listed Infrastructure

Andrew Greenup

Deputy Head of Global Listed Infrastructure

Edmund Leung

Senior Portfolio Manager

Rebecca Sherlock

Portfolio Manager

Want to know more?

Contact your Financial Adviser