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Asia Pacific Leaders
The Asia Pacific Leaders strategy invests in large and mid-sized companies which generally have a total stock market value of at least US$1 billion.
Investment objective and strategy
The Fund aims to achieve long term capital appreciation and substainably invest in companies which both contribute to, and benefit from, sustainable development, achieving positive social and environmental sustainable outcomes. The Fund invests primarily in a diversified portfolio of equity securities or equity-related securities of large and mid-capitalisation companies whose activities predominantly take place in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan) and are listed, traded or dealt in on regulated markets worldwide.
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
- Companies must contribute to sustainable development. Portfolio Explorer >
- We invest in high-quality companies with exceptional cultures, strong franchises and resilient financials. How we pick companies >
- We avoid companies linked to harmful activities and engage and vote for positive change. Our position on harmful products >
- 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
Latest insights
Quarterly updates
Strategy update: Q4 2024
Asia Pacific Leaders strategy update: 1 October - 31 December 2024
Over most three-month periods, there should be relatively little change in the portfolio. We aim to build resilient portfolios of high-quality companies with diversified streams of cash flows that have the ability to grow in value over the long term.
Chinese equities gave back some gains from the dramatic autumn stimulus which challenged comparative performance in the third quarter of 2024. The performance of the Indian market index struggled after some of the largest companies in India faced governance issues that became subject to enquiry by the regulator in the United States. The re-election of Mr Trump also seemed to distract global investors from Asian equities. At Stewart Investors we continue to concentrate on bottom-up stock selection rather than overly focus on unpredictable macro news flow.
The portfolio purchased Naver (South Korea: Communication Services), South Korea’s dominant internet search engine which has significantly improved its capital allocation in recent years. We also bought Wesfarmers (Australia: Consumer Discretionary), an Australian conglomerate managing an evolving portfolio of retail and healthcare assets, and Tube Investments (India: Consumer Discretionary), a conglomerate of industrial businesses stewarded by the high-quality Murugappa family.
To control position sizes, we trimmed Mahindra & Mahindra (India: Consumer Discretionary), Kotak Mahindra Bank (India: Financials), Tata Consumer Products (India: Consumer Staples), Marico (India: Consumer Staples), Godrej Consumer Products (India: Consumer Staples), HDFC Bank (India: Financials), Tech Mahindra (India: Information Technology), Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (New Zealand: Health Care), OCBC (Singapore: Financials), Hoya (Japan: Health Care), CSL (Australia: Health Care).
During the quarter, we sold our position in Samsung C&T (South Korea: Industrials) to fund better ideas elsewhere.