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IMPORTANT NEWS: Transition of investment management responsibilities (excluding the Worldwide strategies)
First Sentier Group, the global asset management organisation, has announced a strategic transition of Stewart Investors' investment management responsibilities to its affiliate investment team, FSSA Investment Managers, effective Friday, 14 November close of business EST.
Asia Pacific Leaders
The Asia Pacific Leaders strategy was originally launched in December 2003 and invests in large and mid-sized companies which generally have a total stock market value of at least US$1 billion (hence ‘Leaders’).
This equity-only strategy seeks to invest in between 30 to 60 high-quality businesses in the Asia Pacific region (including Australia and New Zealand, but excluding Japan) that are helping bring about a more sustainable future.
Strategy highlights: a focus on quality and sustainability
- We invest in high-quality companies with exceptional cultures, strong franchises and resilient financials. How we pick companies >
- Our approach is long-term, bottom-up, high conviction and benchmark agnostic
- We focus on capital preservation as well as capital growth – we define risk as the permanent loss of client capital
- Companies must contribute to sustainable development. Portfolio Explorer >
- We avoid companies linked to harmful activities and engage and vote for positive change. Our position on harmful products >
Quarterly updates
Strategy update: Q2 2026
Asia Pacific Leaders strategy update: 1 April - 30 June 2026
Market review
Asian equities staged a strong recovery in Q2, following news of the Middle East ceasefire in April and subsequent peace deal in June. Semiconductors and companies related to the AI supply chain rebounded after a spate of strong earnings results as well as higher capex guidance from US hyperscalers (ensuring a strong demand outlook). In this environment, Information Technology was the best performing sector over the quarter, as well as Korea and Taiwan on a country level. On the negative side, Indonesia was the worst performing country due to the ongoing overhang from the potential MSCI downgrade. China and Hong Kong were also weak as domestic activity disappointed, and concerns about cross-border capital controls weighed on sentiment towards offshore China.
Performance review
Similar to Q1, the top three contributors to performance over Q2 were beneficiaries of the AI boom. While these are high-quality, well-managed companies, AI demand has boosted their valuations to expensive levels, and they would likely be affected by a slowdown in capital expenditure (capex) among Big Tech firms. We have taken advantage of the recent strength to trim our position in all three.
The largest contributor to performance over the period was Samsung Electronics, which continued to benefit from strong demand for its high bandwidth memory (HBM) stacks and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips. Given the supply shortages, memory pricing is on an up-trend and is expected to remain strong until at least 2028. Added to this, customers have become more interested in signing longer-term 5-year supply deals to secure memory chips, which increases earnings visibility, reduces cyclicality and enables more effective capacity planning.
The second largest contributor to performance was MediaTek amid optimism around the potential growth in its AI ASIC business. Its partnerships with Google and other major technology firms to create custom chips for AI applications are expected to contribute a greater proportion of operating profit going forward.