Global Emerging Markets Sustainability

Regional (Mexico: Financials) was the first of the new positions we initiated. The founding owner-managers, the Rivero Santos family, continue to act as stewards here, and have a history of delivering steady, conservative growth. Regional is focused on lending to Mexican small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), maintaining long relationships and steadily deepening access to credit across the country. The combination of conservative stewards, history of profitable lending, and runway for growth led us to initiate a position in the bank at reasonable valuations.

Secondly, we initiated a position in AirTAC International (Taiwan: Industrial), the second largest pneumatic equipment provider in China. AirTAC has consistently strengthened its competitive positioning in the country, gaining market share in a consolidating industry. Barriers to entry in this business are high, with clients looking for customised solutions delivered in short spans of time. The founder and long-term managers remain stewards of the business, continuing to reinvest in the growth of the franchise and preserve the strength of the balance sheet in a cyclical industry.

Milkyway Chemical Supply Chain Service (China: Industrials) was the final company we initiated a position in this quarter. Milkyway is a third-party logistics provider focused on the safe and reliable transport of chemicals across the country. Founder Yin He Chen continues to grow the business with a focus on quality of customer relationships over price-led volume growth, which has led to enduring, sticky relationships with key customers. This is a business where cost of failure is high in dealing with hazardous chemicals, and reputation matters, so Chen’s focus on quality has led to Milkyway gaining market share in a fragmented industry.

Globant (Argentina: Information Technology) is an IT services company that primarily serves US corporates in their digital transformation projects. Globant’s co-founders remain at the helm of the company, and the franchise continues to focus on strengthening their deep relationships with existing clients. We have met Globant a few times since 2016 and, recently, valuations have come down to very reasonable levels with concerns around potential spending slowdowns if there is a recession in the US. While we have no predictions of the macroeconomic environment, these IT service businesses have proven resilient through past cycles. When the short-term concerns of markets gives us opportunities to accumulate shares in great companies at reasonable prices, we will certainly do so.

We also continued to add to some high-quality companies where valuations have become more reasonable in the face of some of these nearer term concerns, including EPAM Systems (US: Information Technology) and Aavas Financiers (India: Financials). Similar to Globant, IT services provider EPAM remains a resilient business with long-term client relationships that they continue to invest behind. Equally, Aavas Financiers, a rural Indian mortgage provider has spent the last decade setting up the foundations for their growth and, with low leverage on the balance sheet, has a great runway to continue expanding over the years ahead.

During the course of this quarter, the investment team also travelled to Mumbai and Bangalore to meet with the management teams of some of our largest Indian holdings and spend time finding new ideas. Trips such as these continue to help us reiterate the quality of the businesses we own on behalf of clients and the people managing them, as well as helping us to build conviction in smaller positions. Our conviction in our holdings in India continues to remain high in the context of the growth opportunities these companies have available to them in the decade ahead.

As ever, we continue to focus on bottom-up analysis of the fundamental quality of stewards, franchises, and financials and the sustainable growth tailwinds these businesses might enjoy. We believe this remains the best way to continue protecting and growing clients’ capital in emerging markets.

We sold out of a small holding in robotics company Estun Automation (China: Industrials). Nothing significant has changed in our view of the quality of the company. However, we felt that after some share-price strength, which has taken valuations towards extremes, the opportunities for attractive returns have diminished significantly and there are now more attractive alternatives available.

We also exited MediaTek (Taiwan: Information Technology), a Taiwanese chip designer with earnings primarily driven by smartphone demand in China. As consumer sentiment has returned with the re-opening of that country, the share price has performed well. We feel there are likely companies with better earnings-growth profiles within the semiconductor sector that we would rather own for the long term.

In particular, during the quarter we have initiated a position in German semiconductor supplier Infineon Technologies (Germany: Information Technology). Long held in our Worldwide strategy, the majority of the company’s sales are to emerging markets in Asia. Infineon specialises in chips that control power supply, with 2.5x the market share of the #2 competitor¹. This gives the company great exposure to rapidly growing end markets, like renewable energy, smart grids and electric vehicles.

In making the switch from MediaTek to Infineon, we feel we have exchanged a company primarily exposed to more saturated consumer technology to one primarily exposed to more quickly growing industrial end markets. Given extremely similar valuations, and that it seems more likely that Infineon can deliver sustained earnings growth over the long term, this felt like an upgrade in likely future returns.

In the case of Natura (Brazil: Consumer Staples), we felt that the investment case had changed considerably from our initial thesis. During the last short while, a difficult economic environment has exposed some weaknesses in the franchise, the balance sheet has deteriorated, and the company has changed senior leadership. Exiting a position and realising a significant loss is never a pleasant experience, but it is usually best to avoid sunk-cost fallacy and anchoring biases, and to focus on quality. After much discussion, we decided the company faces a tough road ahead and that we have better ideas at attractive prices today.

These positions were Info Edge (India: Communication Services), Naver (South Korea: Communication Services), Nippon Paint (Japan: Materials) and AK Medical (China: Health Care). Full valuations at Info Edge and Naver, coupled with franchises facing increased challenges around competition and growth, led us to sell our holdings. We exited Nippon Paint due to rising concerns about the quality of management and financials in a cyclical business; and a small position in AK Medical, a healthcare company facing increased regulatory and pricing risks in China.

We used the proceeds from these sales to initiate two new positions over the past months. The first new position was in an Indian financial company, a leading provider of mortgages in rural India. The stewards of the business have focused on creating a conservative credit culture and passing on decreases in their costs to those they finance, building a resilient, long-term lending business. With mortgage penetration in rural India still hovering around 1% and low leverage on the balance sheet, the business has a long runway for steady growth without taking on unnecessary, short-term risks.

The second new position in the strategy is Advanced Energy Solution (AES) (Taiwan: Industrials), a leading supplier of battery packs to e-bikes and uninterrupted power-supply solutions. The business was spun out of Simplo, a company that has a history in making battery packs for consumer electronics. The safety, durability and customisation required in batteries for both e-bikes and servers has led to AES building a more profitable business model compared to battery pack providers in the past. The managers here are also working to build a niche in electric vehicles, providing another leg for long-term growth with a solid balance sheet to support this journey forward. 

Through the past quarter, we also continued building positions in some Chinese companies where valuations provided the opportunity. These include Kingmed Diagnostics Group (China: Health Care), China’s leading diagnostics test provider, Glodon (China: Information Technology), the leading building automation software provider, and Silergy Corp (China: Information Technology), the leading analog chip designer. 

As ever, we do not have a crystal ball to predict broad, top-down macroeconomics. Our focus remains on finding high-quality stewards who can nurture franchises that are resilient through economic booms and busts, based on solid fundamentals and financial strength. We continue to believe that this is the best recipe for creating robust portfolios that deliver strong, absolute returns for clients over the long term.