RWC Global Horizon Fund celebrates three-year track record with 19% return

RWC Global Horizon Fund celebrates three-year track record with 19% return
The RWC Global Horizon Fund has celebrated its three-year track record with a return of almost 19%, with manager Louise Keeling using a long-term global perspective to maximise the opportunities from companies around the globe.
Keeling, whose fund has returned 18.8% over the period versus the benchmark return of 12.0%¹, has concentrated on buying undervalued businesses, believing investors with shorter time horizons may not have the ability to see latent value in such stocks. As a result, the fund has a high active share and a below-average turnover of just 14% per annum. This approach has allowed the fund to outperform not only the index but also its peers: the fund is rated by Lipper as top 5 percentile since inception².
“We use a long-term global perspective to maximise opportunities, rather than as a basis for allocating resources,” Keeling says. “Allowing stock selection to drive asset allocation can lead to different outcomes versus approaches with a CIO function which may determine whether index constituents of a country are in aggregate cheap or expensive.”
The Global Horizon strategy is pure “bottom-up” and agnostic to the geographic base of companies, with Keeling arguing there is often little correlation between the domicile and operational exposure of a company. “It is therefore reassuring that stock selection effect has driven the vast majority of the fund’s outperformance,” she says.
The manager also believes strongly in alignment of interests throughout the investment process: a philosophy of “owning” rather than “renting” companies means that the fund’s objectives are more closely matched with those of end investors. “We aim not only to align ourselves with our clients by having a fee structure which shares performance risk, but also an investment approach which emphasises whether investee company management are incentivised to be effective capital allocators,” Keeling says.
 

1. Performance shown is for the RWC Global Horizon Fund (B USD share class net of all fees) over the period 26 November 2013 – 30 December 2016. Index referenced is the MSCI AC Net World TR Index USD.
2. Source: Lipper, as at 30 December 2016, the RWC Global Horizon B USD share class is ranked as 5^th percentile versus the Lipper Global Equity peer group.