"The Causeway International Value Select strategy leverages our flagship international value equity investment process with the following exceptions-first, the initial market capitalization screen is $2.5 billion, instead of $750 million. Second, a typical portfolio will have 35-55 holdings versus 50- 80 holdings. It is our belief that this large cap strategy can deliver competitive returns compared to the flagship international value strategy and the benchmark by concentrating the holdings to make up for the loss of small/mid cap exposure. Similar to our flagship international value equity strategy, our goal is to construct portfolios that have volatility in-line or below that of the benchmark. Our investable universe is composed of companies with market capitalizations greater than $2.5 billion ($USD) located in 24 international markets (EAFE markets, Canada and South Korea). This screen helps the team invest in companies with adequate liquidity.
We then screen for stocks with payout yields in excess of their local market averages and which have prospective earnings yields that exceed local ten-year government bond yields by an equity risk premium. This identifies companies that typically have relatively low reinvestment requirements. The second part of the screen examines price-to-cash flow within the relevant industry in conjunction with EPS Estimate Revisions. The screen identifies undervalued companies whose earnings are at a turning point. This part of the screening process identifies approximately 400 securities.
From this list of 400 securities, we identify a company's industry dynamics, financial strength and competition. Some measures of financial strength that we may use are: cumulative profitability, earnings stability, overall profitability, financial liquidity, asset size, ability to cover debt service, and risk with respect to leverage. After these components are analyzed, our universe is reduced to approximately 250 stocks.
Causeway's portfolio managers and research analysts conduct thorough company-specific fundamental analysis on these approximately 250 securities. This analysis includes extensive external and internal research, company visits and proprietary quantitative valuations. Fundamental factors that are analyzed may vary depending on each analyst and his or her level of conviction about the relevant industry. To validate investment assumptions, Causeway commonly interviews sell-side analysts, competitors and industry experts. The process culminates in a valuation estimate for the stock on a prospective two-year time horizon.
After our portfolio managers and analysts have screened and fundamentally researched a company, it is measured according to its marginal contribution to utility. Causeway defines utility as a risk-adjusted, liquidity-adjusted, expected return. Each stock is then ranked from 1 (highest) to 150 (lowest) based on its marginal contribution to utility. We rank these securities based on our risk/return format to: 1) establish our eligible purchase list, and 2) monitor and maintain stocks in the portfolios based on fluctuations in share prices and fundamental data.
The portfolio managers select between 35-55 stocks from this ranking for client portfolios.