August, 2021
Among the largest contributors to performance in August were HDFC, Novo Nordisk and Alphabet. HDFC reported results early in August that were stronger than expected helped by a rebound in housing demand. Retail demand was up sharply from June and the third strongest month ever for HDFC. As HDFC has a higher quality customer base and with salaried clients making up 75-80% of the retail segment, it is well-positioned to benefit from both the end of the lockdowns and the longer structural trends of increased homeownership. HDFC should be able to grow retail loans at mid-teens growth rates for many years to come. The shares of Novo Nordisk have been on a solid run as data from its launch of anti-obesity drug Wegovy has exceeded all expectations. Wegovy is now on track to achieve “Blockbuster” status (sales of USD 1 billion) as soon as next year. While the company is coming up against short-term difficulties of being able to supply enough patients due to the strong uptake, longer term this is obviously very positive. Alphabet has outpaced the other internet giants this year by a wide margin. While the company is facing tougher comparative numbers in the third and fourth quarters, core Search is growing faster than its pre-pandemic levels and operating leverage has been impressive for the last couple of quarters. As the company is keeping investments flat this translates into dramatically higher free cash flow and buybacks. Despite a rise in the shares this year, they are not expensive in the light of earnings per share likely growing close to 90% in 2021 and trading at a reasonable level.
File:June, 2021
Investor confidence is rising as the world economy recovers with vaccination levels going up. Paradoxically, the key US 10-year bond yield declined in an environment of strong economic growth, where GDP in the US grew 10%, companies reported strong earnings growth, South Korean exports rose to a 10-year high and economic sentiment in Europe almost reached a 35-year high.
In the quarter, the BNP Paribas C WorldWide Global Equity Trust returned 7.8% net of fees, trailing the MSCI AC World Index, which returned 9.0%. The underperformance can largely be attributed to weakness in some of our Asian investments, partly due to the stronger dollar. Some of the best contributors were Alphabet which reported very strong numbers with revenues growing 35% driven by Search growing 30%, YouTube 49% and Cloud 46%. Microsoft and Amazon were also strong performers as the Covid pandemic is accelerating the digital transformation and transition to the cloud.
File:May, 2021
Hoya saw its IT segment grow 20% when the company reported last month, driven by shipments of EUV mask blanks growing 80% over last year. Hoya’s Life Care segment has been hurt by a healthcare system fully pre-occupied with Covid-19 and its contact and eyeglass business has seen a dampening in demand due to lockdowns. We see the latter two headwinds disappearing while EUV blank sales should remain strong as Samsung and TSMC further increases its use of EUV-technology to supply the most advanced semiconductor chips
The top three detractors during the month were Amazon, Visa and NextEra Energy. Amazon’s shares have been trading sideways since around early summer last year, as investors have refocused on “re-opening” companies. We would argue that the company’s structural position has strengthened due to Covid-19 and observe that while the shares have not done much since late June last year, the company’s net profit saw 55% growth since then, as announced in its latest Q1 2021 report.
Every month we see ongoing evidence of NextEra Energy’s vision that more than 40% of US energy generation output should stem from renewable sources by 2030 gaining support. In late May, a Dutch court ruled that Shell is forced to reduce absolute CO2 emissions by at least 45% by 2030 pointing to a potential acceleration of the energy transition.
File:January, 2021
January proved challenging for performance as the trust trailed the MSCI World Index, giving back a portion of last quarter’s strong performance. Overall, there was no single theme that meaningfully contributed to the trust’s shortfall relative to the benchmark, either in terms of individual stocks or factors. The market appeared to favor those stocks that were in the tails of valuation. As noted earlier, a relatively few number of EM growth stocks far outpaced the market while in developed markets the stocks that did the best were deep value as measured by low price-to-book and low price-to-earnings.
Although we had exposure to the cheaper areas of the market, it appeared that our higher quality stocks failed to keep pace with their lower quality peers in the cheaper areas of the market. Also, within developed markets, the tails within Beta (highest), price momentum (highest), and market capitalisation (highest and lowest) all outperformed the broader market. Again, despite our exposure to beta and smaller capitalisation, our stocks within these areas failed to keep pace. On a sector basis, challenging stock selection within Financials, Consumer Discretionary, and Communication Services offset better performance within the Real Estate and Materials sectors.
Regionally, stock selection within emerging markets (Communication Services, Consumer Staples, Financials) and the U.S. (Consumer Discretionary, Financials, Health Care) were the largest detractors in the month.
File: https://commentary.quantreports.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/BHMS-Global-Equity-Trust-Monthly-Investment-Report.pdfasset_class: Foreign Equity
asset_category: Large Value
peer_benchmark: Foreign Equity - Large Value Index
broad_market_index: Developed -World Index
manager_contact_details: Array
ticker: ETL0434AU
release_schedule: Monthly
commentary_block: Array
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fund_features:
Barrow Hanley Global Equity Trust aims to achieve long-term capital growth exceeding the return of the market by investing in global equities. The Delegated Investment Manager aims to generate excess returns relative to the Benchmark over a 3 year period, before taking fees and expenses into account. The Trust is designed for investors seeking capital appreciation over the longer term by investing in companies CWW believes will have superior growth prospects and returns. The investment style of the Trust is a concentrated stock-picking approach of 30 securities, designed to ensure a sufficient high level of risk diversification both from a country and sector perspective. There may be occasions where the portfolio holds more than 30 stocks if CWW is transitioning out of one stock position and into another.
structure: Managed Fund