BlackRock Frontiers Investment Trust - Flying the flag for developing economies

BlackRock Frontiers posted another year of strong returns in FY23 (ended 30 September) and has continued to outperform into 2024, with NAV and share price total returns over one, three, five and 10 years to end-January 2024 comfortably beating the average of its peers in the AIC Global Emerging Markets sector. The trust offers a highly differentiated proposition, avoiding the eight largest emerging markets, which between them tend to account for around 90% of GEM investment. Instead, co-ma

Around the World in Eight Ideas - Investment Trust Opportunities Beyond the UK

Although the UK now represents a paltry 3.5-4.0% of global equity indices, home bias in the domestic stock market is estimated at c 25% across institutional and retail investors. This persists across asset classes: in the Investment Association universe of open-ended funds, 28.1% of total AUM at the end of September 2023 was invested in UK sectors. This leaves a significant amount of investors' assets exposed to overseas markets that may be unfamiliar and harder to access. In such a situation, t

BlackRock Frontiers Investment Trust - Initiation

BlackRock Frontiers (BRFI) is the only investment trust offering a diversified portfolio of companies in some of the world's smallest and fastest-growing emerging markets. Launched in December 2010, the trust has outperformed global emerging markets peers over one, three, five and 10 years. Co-managers Sam Vecht, Emily Fletcher and Sudaif Niaz, backed by BlackRock's deep and broad research resources, blend top-down and bottom-up considerations to assess investment opportunities in over 40 smalle

BlackRock Frontiers

BRFI has been on a multi-year run of outperformance of the mainstream EM indices…

BlackRock Frontiers

BRFI’s unique investment proposition has outperformed mainstream emerging market funds for two years running…

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.

BlackRock Frontiers

BlackRock Frontiers (BRFI) invests in a unique set of opportunities available in smaller emerging markets (EM) and frontier markets. Often, these smaller markets are overlooked by institutional investors that prefer larger, more established markets such as China that make up the majority of the current EM universe. With a combined population of three billion, BRFI’s investment universe offers substantial growth potential at relatively cheap valuations and remains under-invested by global investo

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

BlackRock Frontiers - Overview

BlackRock Frontiers Investment Trust (BRFI) provides exposure to the smaller and frontier emerging markets, a niche asset class that provides diversification to more mainstream emerging markets (such as China) that investors are likely to already hold. These markets arguably resemble the opportunity presented to emerging market investors a generation ago, with favourable demographics, rapid economic growth and cheap valuations reflecting low allocations by global investors. As discussed in the

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

BlackRock Frontiers - Overview

BlackRock Frontiers (BRFI) invests in the smaller emerging markets and in frontier markets, countries which most investors are likely to have little exposure. Managed by Sam Vecht and Emily Fletcher, the trust is designed to offer access to the high GDP growth rates, development potential and uncorrelated markets within its investment universe. These markets have been out of favour for some years as global flows have focussed on the US and China and on large caps – particularly technology and e

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

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