Templeton Emerging Markets (TEM) invests in stockmarkets of emerging countries with a bottom-up driven, stock-specific approach. It has more of a value tilt than any of its peers in the AIC Global Emerging Markets sector, and the managers tend to take a five-year view on companies’ growth potential. The trust has outperformed a passive investment in the emerging markets over the past year, and over three- and five-year periods, thanks largely to the themes and stocks brought into the portfolio after a change of manager in 2015. We analyse the performance in detail in the Performance section below. Chetan Sehgal took over as manager in February 2018, having worked with the previous manager Carlos Hardenberg, who took over in October 2015. He was joined by Andrew Ness as co-manager in 2018. We think the changes in the management team may be one reason the trust trades on a wider discount than the sector average, despite the strong performance. The discount is currently 11.6%. Although the trust focuses on capital growth, recent policy changes have seen it become more income-friendly, and the payout has increased, as we discuss in the Dividend section.
