Diversified exposure to emerging markets, capturing value and growth

The Fund normally invests at least 80% of its total assets in equity securities of companies located in emerging markets and investments that are tied economically to emerging markets, such as common stock, preferred and preference stock, depositary receipts, including American Depositary Receipts, Global Depositary Receipts, European Depositary Receipts, Swedish Depositary Receipts and other types of depositary receipts, real estate investment trusts (“REITs”) and exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”) that invest in emerging markets securities. The Investment Manager primarily invests in common stock, but will use those other security types referred to above if, for example, they provide greater liquidity, the Fund cannot access common stock through a local market, or the yield rate of preferred or preference stock is deemed favourable. Typically, less than 10% of the Fund’s Net Asset Value will be invested in ETFs, and investment in ETFs will be limited to 15% of the Fund’s Net Asset Value.

The Fund generally invests in companies with market capitalisations of US$500 million or greater at the time of investment. However, the Fund may invest in smaller market capitalisation companies if, based on the quantitative investment approach described below, it finds an attractive investment with a lower market capitalisation and sufficient liquidity. The Fund may invest in any industry or sector, but generally will not invest more than 25% of its total assets in the equity securities of companies in a single industry. Typically, the Fund will hold a diversified portfolio of over 80 equity securities.

The Investment Manager uses a quantitative investment approach to purchase and sell equity securities and those other investments as detailed above for the Fund. The Investment Manager’s quantitative investment approach uses a proprietary computer model that analyses historical financial data, or “factors,” to assist in selecting investments as detailed above. The model currently analyses “stock specific” factors relating to valuation, growth, technical indicators (such as stock price momentum), competitive strength, and “top-down” factors relating to macroeconomics, currency, country and economic sector. Currently, the valuation factor category receives the highest overall weight in the model and stock-specific factors comprise approximately 75% of the score for a company. For each stock, the relative weight assigned to each stock-specific factor differs depending on its classification (for example, value, growth, momentum, capitalisation or other classifications). The relative weights of these stock-specific factors are sometimes referred to as “contextual weights.”. As the Investment Manager is continually seeking to improve model performance, the factors and their weightings in the model may change over time, or if the classification of a stock changes. By ranking companies based on a combination of these factors, the Investment Manager seeks to identify a portfolio of investments that will outperform the MSCI EM Index. In addition to its quantitative research, the Investment Manager’s fundamental research analysts review the quantitative outputs to attempt to identify and address special issues, such as significant corporate actions or management changes, which are difficult to detect quantitatively.

Please see the Prospectus and Supplement for more information. Please contact [email protected] for a Fund Application.

Nav*
€21.87
Inception
February 10, 2016
ISIN
IE00BWT3P209
Benchmark
MSCIEmergingMarketsinUSD
Minimum investment
€1,000,000
Total expense ratio
1.24%
*As of August 12, 2025
Download Fact Sheet Download Prospectus
Contact Us

Strategy overview

The portfolio managers discuss our Emerging Markets strategy.

Portfolio managers

Quantitative Portfolio Manager
Head of Quantitative Research
Quantitative Portfolio Manager
Quantitative Portfolio Manager
Quantitative Portfolio Manager

Performance

Table Header QTD YTD 1 year3 years Since inception
Fund 5.1%7.3%10.5%11.7%8.6%
MSCI Emerging Markets in EUR 1.9%17.5%17.2%10.5%6.1%
Table Header QTD YTD 1 year3 years Since inception
Fund 5.1%7.3%10.5%11.7%8.6%
MSCI Emerging Markets in EUR 1.9%17.5%17.2%10.5%6.1%
Table Header 20242023202220212020201920182017
Fund 23.4%14.8%-17.5%4.7%6.4%18.4%-14.4%21.1%
MSCI Emerging Markets in EUR 15.3%6.5%-14.5%5.2%8.9%21.1%-9.9%21.0%
Table Header 20242023202220212020201920182017
Fund 23.4%14.8%-17.5%4.7%6.4%18.4%-14.4%21.1%
MSCI Emerging Markets in EUR 15.3%6.5%-14.5%5.2%8.9%21.1%-9.9%21.0%

Portfolio (as of July 31, 2025)

Benchmark:
Asset Allocation
Table Header Fund
Stocks 98.2%
Cash 1.8%
Fund Characteristics
Table Header Fund Benchmark
Holdings 175
Weighted avg. market cap (US $MM) $153,942 $0
NTM price/earnings 9.5 0.0
Price/book value 1.5 0.0
NTM EPS revision (wtd. avg.) 10.23
Net assets $10,005,369.60 -
TOP 10 ACTIVE HOLDINGS
Security Country Active weight*
Tencent Holdings Ltd. China 2.8%
China Construction Bank Corp. China 1.9%
REC Ltd. India 1.2%
3SBio, Inc. China 1.1%
NetEase, Inc. China 1.0%
Pop Mart International Group Ltd. China 1.0%
Cosco Shipping Holdings Co China 1.0%
Ping An China 0.9%
Wiwynn Corp. Taiwan 0.7%
Accton Technology Corp. Taiwan 0.7%

A "weighted average” measures a characteristic by the market capitalization of each stock. Price/book ratio is the weighted average of the price/book ratios of all the stocks in a portfolio. The P/B ratio of a company is calculated by dividing the market price of its stock by the company’s per-share book value. The price/earnings ratio is the weighted average of the price/earnings ratios of the stocks in a portfolio. “Earnings-per-share” is the portion of a company’s profit allocated to each outstanding share of common stock. “Earnings-per-share year-over-year estimate growth (next 12 months)” is the average next-12-months earnings-per-share estimate from one year ago for an individual company compared with that estimate today; note that this calculation is done on a company-by-company basis and is aggregated through a weighted average based on the individual company’s weight in the corresponding index. Also note that this characteristic is supplied directly by MSCI.

*Active defined as Fund weight minus MSCI EM Index weight. Holdings are subject to change.

SECTOR WEIGHTS
Sector Fund Benchmark
Information Technology 24.2% 24.8%
Financials 21.3% 23.8%
Communication Services 14.3% 10.0%
Consumer Discretionary 12.7% 12.7%
Industrials 10.5% 6.8%
Materials 4.8% 5.9%
Health Care 3.5% 3.5%
Real Estate 2.2% 1.6%
Consumer Staples 2.1% 4.4%
Energy 1.5% 4.2%
Utilities 1.3% 2.5%
TOP 10 COUNTRIES
Country Strategy Benchmark
China 34.1% 29.2%
Taiwan 18.7% 19.5%
South Korea 15.3% 11.0%
India 13.9% 16.9%
Brazil 3.6% 4.1%
South Africa 2.0% 3.2%
United Arab Emirates 1.6% 1.7%
Turkey 1.5% 0.5%
Saudi Arabia 1.2% 3.4%
Indonesia 0.9% 1.1%
Regional Allocation
  • Emerging Asia 83.8%
  • Emerging Europe, Middle East, Africa 7.7%
  • Emerging Latin America 5.6%
  • Pacific 0.6%
  • North America 0.5%
  • Multi Region Emerging (ETF) 0.0%

Commentary (As of June 30, 2025)

Highlights

  • International equity markets continued their upward trajectory in June, with nearly all developed and emerging market countries achieving local currency gains.
  • A backdrop of stable to falling rates in the US coupled with US dollar weakness is typically a positive environment for EM assets. With the Trump Administration announcing escalating tariffs, particularly with China, EM trade with the US was materially diminished earlier this year. However, the tariff tensions appear to have cooled and the market generally expects tariff deals to be announced in July. This would be a positive development for export-oriented EM countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan.
  • In South Korea, Democratic Party nominee Lee Jae Myung won the June presidential election. In addition to removing a source of uncertainty, the election ushered in a significant set of legislative proposals that appear to be minority shareholder friendly. The most notable one is the proposed amendment to the Korea Commercial Act, which expands companies’ boards of directors’ fiduciary duties to also consider the interests of minority shareholders. The Fund is overweight South Korean stocks due in part to attractive valuations and favorable top-down characteristics.

Portfolio Attribution

The Fund outperformed the Index in June 2025. We use both bottom-up “stock-specific” and top-down factor categories to seek to forecast alpha for the stocks in the Fund’s investable universe. Our bottom-up growth, technical (price momentum), valuation, and corporate events factors were positive indicators in June, while competitive strength was a negative indicator during the month. Our top-down country/sector aggregate was a positive indicator. Macroeconomic and currency were negative indicators.

Investment Outlook

The US Federal Reserve was on hold in the second quarter and Chairman Powell has been reluctant to cut interest rates as he is wary of the inflationary effects of tariffs. Meanwhile, most EM currencies rallied relative to the US dollar during the quarter. Even though real rates are positive in the US, many investors are questioning the sustainability of massive US deficits and debt. A backdrop of stable to falling rates in the US coupled with US dollar weakness is typically a positive environment for EM assets. With the Trump Administration announcing escalating tariffs, particularly with China, EM trade with the US was materially diminished earlier this year. However, the tariff tensions appear to have cooled and the market generally expects tariff deals to be announced in July. This would be a positive development for export-oriented EM countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan.

In South Korea, Democratic Party nominee Lee Jae Myung won the June presidential election. In addition to removing a source of uncertainty, the election ushered in a significant set of legislative proposals that appear to be minority shareholder friendly. The most notable one is the proposed amendment to the Korea Commercial Act, which expands companies’ boards of directors’ fiduciary duties to also consider the interests of minority shareholders. Other shareholder friendly proposals include the separate taxation of dividends which should increase Korean companies’ anemic dividend yields, an inheritance tax amendment, the mandatory cancellation of treasury shares, and a discovery system which would give shareholders access to internal company documents. The Fund is overweight South Korean stocks due in part to attractive valuations and favorable top-down characteristics. In China, data continues to reflect disinflationary trends and gross domestic product (“GDP”) growth is expected to slow into the low four percent range. Chinese authorities appear likely to refrain from aggressive spending to boost consumption. The Fund is overweight Chinese stocks due in part to attractive valuations, but we have trimmed our consumer holdings as lackluster consumer demand is weighing on earnings growth expectations.

The market commentary expresses the portfolio managers’ views as of the date of this report and should not be relied on as research or investment advice regarding any stock. These views and the Fund holdings and characteristics are subject to change. There is no guarantee that any forecasts made will come to pass. Any securities identified and described in this report do not represent all of the securities purchased, sold or recommended for client accounts. The reader should not assume that an investment in the securities identified was or will be profitable. Diversification does not protect against market loss. Current and future holdings are subject to risk.

Documents

Fund information: