Global Infrastructure – an essential growth & income component for investors

$550bn. The amount of money that is ear-marked by the US Inflation Reduction Act to build and rebuild US infrastructure. Everything from roads and bridges to water infrastructure, security resilience, energy infrastructure, the internet and communications networks.

October 2023. The date when abrdn introduced Infrastructure as an asset class into their long-term, strategic asset allocation.

January 2024. The first time ever in the UK that clients will have the chance to hear from Josh Duitz who manages the recently launched abrdn Global Infrastructure Equity Fund, abrdn’s first infrastructure pooled fund outside the US.

Leading consumer brands: investing in a changing world

Investing in consumer brands companies has historically generated above-market returns at sub-market volatility, making this theme attractive to investors looking for growth, inflation protection from the companies’ superior pricing power; and optionality from high cash generation, which is reinvested to drive growth or returned to shareholders. The secular rise of the emerging middle class consumer overlaid with demographic changes offers long-term tailwinds for an investment strategy focused on leading consumer brands. Consumer preferences are evolving in terms of sustainability as well as towards experiences – active management is key to separating the winners from the losers.

Brown to green materials: overlooked until now

Hannah's presentation will centre around her team's unique perspective on investing in the transition towards a low-carbon future. During her session, Hannah will focus on why her team sees an opportunity in companies that specialise in producing materials required for advancing low-carbon technologies. Additionally, she will delve into why her team believes investing in relatively high-emitting companies becoming greener is vital for the world and has the potential to deliver returns in excess of broader equity markets. Hannah will also expand on the team’s stock selection process, which involves on-site visits to mines, in-depth engagements with management teams, and modelling companies.

Winds of change sweeping across Japan

With growth set to accelerate, driven by stronger domestic demand and economic re-opening, the attractiveness of Japan’s investment landscape has recently drawn significant investor attention, while the favourable shift in corporate governance alongside supportive economic conditions continue to catalyse positive momentum. Columbia Threadneedle Investments believes their quality, core investment style; repeatable process; and experienced research expertise are well suited to generate consistent alpha in Japan through different market cycles over the long term.

Uncovering long-term opportunities in a marketplace enchanted by short-term outcomes – HSBC Global Sustainable Long-Term Equity

Sustainability of positive corporate outcomes is an obvious pre-requisite for the long-term investor. Yet both the buy-side and sell side are extremely short-termist, showing little regard for long-term corporate outcomes and shunning this most fundamental tenet of investing. By applying a credit driven framework to equity investing, characterised by deep proprietary financial analysis and rigorous stress-testing, HSBC AM seek to identify only those companies with the most stable and predictable long-term profitability. The result is an unconstrained high conviction portfolio of resilient growing businesses that can withstand multiple macroeconomic scenarios over the long term to deliver more durable positive returns.

Maximising returns through social impact

Impact Investing is what ESG wanted to be when it grew up: the intentional commitment of capital to drive measurable real-world outcomes is both a societal imperative and an attractive financial opportunity. The impact sector is at a significant inflection point in terms of attracting capital and has now broadened to include public markets while moving away from an explicit environmental focus. Martin Currie is delighted to present to you one of the first socially focused impact products, the Martin Currie Improving Society Fund, which aims to deliver compelling returns along with broad based, measurable social impact from the products and services portfolio companies provide.

A purist quality approach to US equities

The US stock market outperformance in recent years has been deserved based on its underlying fundamentals. In essence, it is the highest quality market in the world. However, much of this outperformance has been driven by a small number of companies, masking several long-term secular growth opportunities throughout the US that remain relatively underappreciated. Ninety One’s William Nott explains why a differentiated quality approach - selecting niche leaders with dominant market positions and more resilient revenue streams - has helped American Franchise deliver significantly greater profits growth than the S&P 500, in addition to offering protection in more challenging times.

Re-thinking the Emerging Markets rule book

What works in Emerging Markets? Most people will instantly think of growth stocks, and equity market returns with strong positive correlations with GDP growth. So most people would also be surprised to hear that Value has outperformed Growth in Emerging Markets over the long-term. This makes perfect sense: a value investing style was born in the 1930s in the US when the market had many of the characteristics that are present in Emerging Markets today. While we have seen a style rotation in favour of value over the past 3 years, we believe the stars are now aligning for value over the next decade. The opportunity set is looking extremely compelling – with relatively low valuations across a lot of countries and sectors – making it the ideal great hunting ground in which to construct an attractive and well-diversified portfolio. The atmosphere today may be of fear and uncertainty, but we are ready to steer the ship through these stormy waters. And as the saying goes, a ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.