POWERED BY MOMENTUM MEDIA
Aubrey builds Australian presence
Edinburgh-based boutique fund manager Aubrey Capital Management is hoping a strong track record and differentiated approach to investing will attract interest from Australian institutional investors.
Part of Treasury Group's stable of boutique fund managers since late last year, Aubrey launched a managed fund in the local currency around three months ago that is a direct replica of its UK Global Conviction fund that has performed well since its inception in 2007, according to Aubrey.
The partnership with Treasury Group is already yielding key access to products and entry points for potential clients, according to Aubrey's chief executive, Barry McCorkell.
Fund manager Lynne Thornton said Aubrey currently has around A$250 million in funds under management in its UK fund, with a solid base and income stream in Europe.
Aubrey is a global growth thematic fund manager that uses five key thematic drivers to identify sectors and different areas of the market to invest in, she said.
One of those drivers is behavioural change, so for example there has been a huge increase in the number of internet users in China over the past 10 years, and 140 million people in China bought something over the internet in the past 12 months. Companies that are geared into that space are benefitting from that behavioural change and there's a tailwind for growth, Thornton said.
The other drivers are prosperity, innovation, maturity and sophistication. Aubrey divides the world into macro factor plus and macro factor minus regions based on factors such as gross domestic products, demographics, governance, taxation and interest rates. Countries such as China, India, Turkey and the US scored above average in the macro analysis.
"Because we're a growth investor we're targeting 15 per cent growth or more, we're trying to position a portfolio very much in those higher growth areas of the world," Thornton said.
"We have a 10-year track record with the global opportunities product that we manage for First State Investments in the UK that was managed with the same approach. From 1999 to 2006 it returned 112 per cent against 3.8 per cent for the index."
Some of the main stocks Aubrey is invested in include Bank Rakyat, a micro finance company in Indonesia, Indian jewellery company Titan Industries, Chinese toilet paper manufacturer Hengan and Turkish bank Turkiye Garanti.
"The types of companies we're targeting [are] quite unique stock stories that are playing into specific themes that are squarely positioned in higher growth areas of the world," she said.
The size of the fund is a key differentiator because many of the opportunities for a fund with less than $300 million don't exist for a fund with $30 billion, Thornton added.
"We're benchmark agnostic - our portfolio doesn't look anything like the benchmark," she said.
"We're an all cap fund but we have a lot of mid cap companies in the US that have the potential to double or triple. We have some pretty exciting Asian consumption stocks. It's the outcome of the portfolio that's quite different and because we've been doing this for a very long time we know the universe very well."
McCorkell said that while it's easy to think that emerging markets are now where all the growth opportunities lie, a real focused growth stock manager also finds huge opportunities in dynamic and entrepreneurial countries like the US.
"Diversity is the key both in market and in opportunity. Australian investors have had a good run domestically and been shielded from the GFC [global financial crisis] but we may be near the buying opportunity of a generation in markets that were heavily affected by the GFC."
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
Recommended for you
Australians are losing millions weekly in unpaid super, yet payday super laws have not made it onto Parliament’s agenda.
First Nations Australians have faced systemic barriers accessing super, with rigid ID checks, poor service, and delays compounding inequality.
“Slow and steady” appears to be the Reserve Bank’s approach to monetary policy as the board continues to hold on to its wait-and-see method.
AFCA’s latest data has shown a decline in complaints relating to superannuation, but there is further work to be done, it has warned super funds.
TOP PERFORMING FUNDS
ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND
Fund name
3y(%)pa
1
DomaCom 465 Calder Road Calder
96.54 3 y p.a(%)
2
DomaCom DFS Mortgage
85.26 3 y p.a(%)
3
Global X 21Shares Bitcoin ETF
78.55 3 y p.a(%)
4
BetaShares Crypto Innovators ETF
50.39 3 y p.a(%)
5
Global X GlobalX FANG+ ETF
47.50 3 y p.a(%)
