Barings Emerging EMEA Opportunities

BEMO aims to provide capital growth and an attractive level of income via investments across emerging Europe, the Middle East and Africa...

Economic and Political Monthly Roundup January 2023

A collation of recent insights on markets and economies taken from the comments made by chairs and investment managers of investment companies – have a read and make your own minds up. Please remember that nothing in this note is designed to encourage you to buy or sell any of the companies mentioned.

Economic and Political Monthly Roundup January 2023

A collation of recent insights on markets and economies taken from the comments made by chairs and investment managers of investment companies – have a read and make your own minds up. Please remember that nothing in this note is designed to encourage you to buy or sell any of the companies mentioned.

Same same but different

To many investors the thought of investing in emerging markets may sound somewhat exotic, with the prospect of high returns, while to others the first thing coming into their heads will be the risks and volatility of past events, as well as how investors got burned by events such as the numerous defaults by Argentina, the Russia crisis in the late 1990s and the multitude of political uprisings in individual countries which have upset foreign investors.

Barings Emerging EMEA Opportunities

BEMO offers exposure to both sides of the energy transition…

Finding value in a haystack

Non-income value strategies are becoming increasingly scarce, but the holdouts represent attractive near-term opportunities

Fight or flight

Two of our analysts debate the impact that war in Ukraine could have on investors' portfolios

No humbug

“Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.” Like everyone else in the country we like to kick back and relax in the office with some cheese and wine. It was with these words from the great English poet, William Wordsworth, ringing in our ears that we did so in the week before Christmas, to take a look back at the research we have produced in 2021, aiming to identifying what are, in the opinion of our analysts, the ‘best articles’ of

Beyond the Middle Kingdom

China was flying high at the start of the year, having performed strongly during the initial impact of the pandemic and then again during the reflationary rally. Looking back over five years investors had made 189% in the MSCI China Index on a total return basis compared to just 112% in the MSCI ACWI. China’s performance was the key factor behind the strong performance of the broader emerging Asia markets.

Barings Emerging EMEA Opportunities - Overview

Barings Emerging EMEA Opportunities (BEMO) offers the potential for capital growth and income from a diverse region which has little representation in mainstream indices and funds. BEMO was known as Baring Emerging Europe until November 2020 and is run by the same team with the same strategy, but in a wider region with more varied drivers of growth, including both domestic and global themes. Current key themes driving the portfolio include growing demand for the materials used for electric vehi

Winter is coming

Markets have been fairly quiet over the summer, with the MSCI ACWI grinding 2% higher since the start of July. This followed a tumultuous first half of the year, with violent rotations between growth and value, large and small cap, and conflicting information and concerns over new variants which could prolong the pandemic. We think many issues stand at something of a junction. As investors return to their desks and (we suspect) critical developments become apparent, new trends could start to bec

A bumper harvest?

In Russian roulette, as in life, we’re often enjoined that: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again”. Central banks have clearly taken this dictum to heart, and remain highly committed to trying to inject inflation into the global economic system, despite repeated failures in Japan and the West. The immediate impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been deflationary. As a massive economic contraction took place, and an associated output gap opened, demand shortfalls (although butt

Underground bangers

In recent years smaller investment trusts have been under pressure. The demand for smaller vehicles has been reduced by two factors: the consolidation in the wealth management industry and the increasing prevalence of centralized buy lists used by DFMs and advisers. If a large amount of money is being managed to a model, then allocations can be impossible to deal into a small trust. Anecdotally, the lower limit of viable size for professionals has been rising. £200m is a more realistic cut off p

Baring Emerging Europe - Overview

Baring Emerging Europe (BEE) aims to generate strong total returns – latterly with a substantial contribution from dividends – by investing in emerging European equities. In practice this means Russia, Poland and Turkey, which together make up almost 90% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Europe 10/40 benchmark. Manager Matthias Siller has a strong track record of alpha generation, with the trust being in the top quartile of emerging market trusts for alpha and Sharpe ratio, as we discuss in the Perfo

Gimme shelter

The coronavirus pandemic has caused dividends to be cancelled or cut across the world, but the impact has yet to be fully felt – with more bad news likely to come in the second half of the year. Pressure has come through reduced revenues, due to a slowdown in economic activity and a regulatory interference in dividends being paid by industries which have received taxpayer support. The task for income investors is to identify the regions and sectors which are expected to be less affected; to whic

LIBERUM: Plus500: Strategic progress pays dividends

Tatton Asset Management (TAM LN) - Record net inflows

Tatton, the leading on-platform discretionary fund manager (DFM) and IFA support services Group has released a trading update ahead of its results to 31 March 2024, due on 18 June 2024.

Hardman & Co Insight: 2023 was an annus horribilis for Quoted UK Infrastructure and Renewable Energy

The focus of Hardman & Co Research is on the nine quoted Infrastructure Investment Companies (IICs) and on the 22 Renewable Energy Infrastructure Funds (REIFs): the stocks analysed are all members of the Association of Investment Companies (AIC). We are updating our publication of January 2023, assessing both the lacklustre share price performances during 2023 and the key issues, including interest rates, inflation and power prices. As a 31-strong group, its combined market capitalisation is no

Ondo InsurTech FY24 Trading Update

Ondo InsurTech has released a brief post-YE update revealing its good progress continued through 2H24 and consequently FY24 will be in line with market expectations.

Foxtons Group (FOXT LN) - 1Q24 IMS shows real momentum

Foxtons Group plc first quarter revenue rose 9% to £35.7m (1Q23: £32.9m) with growth delivered across all business segments. Trading is in line with management's expectations.

BlackRock World Mining

BRWM’s managers: we see all the classic signs of high commodity prices...

Morning Note – 18 April 2024

NextEnergy Solar Fund - Attractive Refinancing

The refinancing of a £135m revolving credit facility and the extension of a similar £70m facility gives NESF firepower as development opportunities for new solar are especially attractive thanks to lower module prices in Europe. They give the fund key financial flexibility at a critical time as it pursues its capital recycling programme.

Foxtons Group - FY24 underpinned by market share gains

Foxtons Group’s Q1 revenue grew by 9%, supported by growth in all three divisions as the strategic initiatives continue to gain significant momentum, driven by investment in staff, best-in-class bespoke IT and data platforms. This implies that Foxtons’ medium-term targets are now coming into focus. Market share is being gained in all divisions, which puts Foxtons in a good position as the sales market stabilises. We maintain our valuation of 132p/share and believe that if interest rates stabilis

NextEnergy Solar Fund – High- and growing-income opportunity?

NextEnergy Solar Fund (NESF) is almost 10 years old. Since launch, it has built a £1.2bn, 933MW portfolio of 100 operating solar assets, powering the equivalent of over 330,000 homes, declared dividends totalling £333m, and avoided the emission of about 2.2 Mt CO2e. NESF is on track to pay 8.35p in dividends, with forecast dividend cover of about 1.3x. Share price weakness that has afflicted the whole sector means that dividend translates to a yield of 11.1%, one of the highest in its sector, a

The Hardman & Co Monthly: April 2024

Feature article: Steady as she goes, but could be better: A review of investment company liquidity since 2016 Liquidity is the lifeblood of equity markets. The measurement of liquid asset availability to a market or company is a way of gauging a market’s health. This article builds on our previous work, which analysed the liquidity data for non-financial trading companies, by applying the same analytical techniques to the investment companies (IC) space. We analyse liquidity for ICs as a whol

Initial Equity Trading Comments - 19 February 2024

M Winkworth+ (WINK, House Stock at 163p) - Solid FY23A results, well placed to grow

Hybridan Research: Sector Review: Artificial intelligence in UK cybersecurity: the human uplift 17/04/2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a double-edged sword in cybersecurity. Whilst new AI models, architectures, and innovations are emerging to protect the security posture of organisations, attackers are also benefiting from deepfakes, sophisticated phishing, and automation of malicious codes. To ensure the impact of AI on cybersecurity to be a net-positive, we need to pit good AI against bad AI. Point solutions enhanced with machine learning: Global cybersecurity has been built with point soluti

Resilient FY24, confident long-term outlook

Vp’s full year update highlights sector-leading results, once again benefiting from the diversity of its end markets and the quality of its specialist businesses. With results expected to be broadly in line with expectations, we trim our FY24 PBT forecast by c.5% to £39.0m, a shade below the FY23 outturn (£40.2m). We consider this an impressively resilient performance set against a mixed market backdrop. Under new leadership, a strategic refresh is underway and management is confident in long