NEWS
Performance Report: The Airlie Australian Share Fund
22 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Airlie Australian Share Fund rose +1.86% in December, taking 12-month performance to +8.30% vs the ASX200 Accumulation Index's +1.40%. Since inception in June 2018, the Fund has returned +9.43% p.a. vs the Index's +7.45%.
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22 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: The Airlie Australian Share Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The Fund is long-only with a bottom-up focus. It has a concentrated portfolio of 15-35 stocks (target 25). Maximum cash holding of 10% with an aim to be fully invested. Airlie employs a prudent investment approach that identifies companies based on their financial strength, attractive durable business characteristics and the quality of their management teams. Airlie invests in these companies when their view of their fair value exceeds the prevailing market price. It is jointly managed by Matt Williams and Emma Fisher. Matt has over 25 years' investment experience and formerly held the role of Head of Equities and Portfolio Manager at Perpetual Investments. Emma has over 8 years' investment experience and has previously worked as an investment analyst within the Australian equities team at Fidelity International and, prior to that, at Nomura Securities. |
| Manager Comments | Airlie noted the Fund's outperformance in the first half of 2020 was partly driven by their focus on financial strength as many Australian companies were forced into equity raises, often at substantial discounts to already beaten-down share prices. They believe their focus on balance sheet strength typically pays off during times of crisis. Mineral Resources was the Fund's strongest performer over the year, with the share price rising +127% in 2020. This was driven largely by the uplift in iron ore prices, as well as management articulating long-term plans to substantially increase iron ore production in WA. Other positive contributors included James Hardie, Nick Scali and Metcash. Key detractors over the year included Medibank Private, Aurizon and Suncorp. Airlie feel there is plenty of 'value' in the portfolio yet to be fully appreciated by the market. They believe Australia is well placed relative to the rest of the world, and so they expect continuation of strong economic conditions during the first half of CY21. They think worries about the 'cliff edge' of reduced stimulus are misplaced given the extraordinary surge in household savings. |
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Performance Report: Bennelong Emerging Companies Fund
22 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Bennelong Emerging Companies Fund rose +2.33% in December, outperforming the ASX200 Accumulation Index by +1.27% and taking CY20 performance to +14.06% vs the Index's +1.40%. Since inception in November 2017, the Fund has returned...
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22 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Bennelong Emerging Companies Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The Fund may invest in securities expected to be listed on the ASX within 12 months. The Fund may also invest in securities listed, or expected to be listed, on other exchanged where such securities relate to ASX-listed securities |
| Manager Comments | The Fund's Sortino ratio (since inception) of 1.10 vs the Index's 0.46 highlights its capacity to avoid the market's downside volatility over the long-term. The Fund's up-capture ratio (since inception) of 328.06% indicates that, on average, it has significantly outperforming during the market's positive months. The Fund has maintained up-capture ratios above 225% over the past 12, 24 and 36 months. True to the Fund's investment style, Bennelong continue to seek to invest in high quality companies that they believe have solid growth prospects over the foreseeable future. They noted that, despite the inevitable ups and downs of the market in the short term, they believe the portfolio's investments are all incrementally building value which they expect will underpin decent returns over the long-term. The portfolio remains reasonably diversified across sector and risk-return drivers. Bennelong believe it is currently well set up for attractive returns over the long-term, regardless of the market's short-term activity. |
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Performance Report: Ark Global Fund - Class B AUD Hedged
21 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Ark Global Fund - Class B AUD Hedged rose +2.66% over the December quarter, taking annualised performance since inception in July 2017 to +6.11% with an annualised volatility of 9.03%.
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21 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Ark Global Fund - Class B AUD Hedged
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The investment objective of the Fund is to achieve long-term capital appreciation with low correlation to global equity markets through investment in the Underlying Fund. Fund One is a global macro fund that utilises quantitative research including machine learning techniques and fully automated trading algorithms which will aim to generate positive uncorrelated returns relative to any significant equity benchmark. The traded instruments are either major FX pairs or the most liquid exchange traded stock index, bond, and commodity futures across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The algorithm backtests over 10 years of tick data and in order to do so effectively requires machine learning to filter noise and identify meaningful signals, which results in statistically significant prediction of price movements. In production this processing is done in real time and the portfolio reacts to asset movements by rebalancing automatically to the desired risk exposure through the market impact optimised execution logic. Risk management layers built into the algorithm have been developed using the experience the team has gained from their decades in highly liquid fast-moving markets in the proprietary High Frequency Trading world. This allows the system to trade autonomously but safely to all trading opportunities and potential system issues, and to alert the team to any behaviour outside of strictly controlled bounds. The Fund is a 'feeder fund' which indirectly gains exposure to the underlying assets by investing all or substantially all of its assets in the Underlying Fund. The Fund may retain a certain amount of cash from the investment in the Fund for the purpose of payment of costs, fees, hedging and expenses. |
| Manager Comments | The Fund returned -0.02% in December. The best performing assets for the month were: TOPIX Index (+1.85% of NAV), Hang Seng Index (+1.43% of NAV) and Silver (+0.89% of NAV). The worst performing assets were: Mini Nikkei 225 (-1.02% of NAV), S&P/TSX 60 Index (-1.59% of NAV) and Euro STOXX 50 Index (-2.51% of NAV). |
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Performance Report: Cyan C3G Fund
21 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Cyan C3G Fund rose +1.35% in December, taking 12-month performance to +7.93% vs the ASX200 Accumulation Index's +1.40%. Since inception in August 2014, the Fund has returned +16.49% p.a. vs the Index's +6.85%.
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21 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Cyan C3G Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | Cyan C3G Fund is based on the investment philosophy which can be defined as a comprehensive, clear and considered process focused on delivering growth. These are identified through stringent filter criteria and a rigorous research process. The Manager uses a proprietary stock filter in order to eliminate a large proportion of investments due to both internal characteristics (such as gearing levels or cash flow) and external characteristics (such as exposure to commodity prices or customer concentration). Typically, the Fund looks for businesses that are one or more of: a) under researched, b) fundamentally undervalued, c) have a catalyst for re-rating. The Manager seeks to achieve this investment outcome by actively managing a portfolio of Australian listed securities. When the opportunity to invest in suitable securities cannot be found, the manager may reduce the level of equities exposure and accumulate a defensive cash position. Whilst it is the company's intention, there is no guarantee that any distributions or returns will be declared, or that if declared, the amount of any returns will remain constant or increase over time. The Fund does not invest in derivatives and does not use debt to leverage the Fund's performance. However, companies in which the Fund invests may be leveraged. |
| Manager Comments | During December, Cyan initiated two IPOs and enjoyed a solid return from Playside Studios which closed the month up +130% on its IPO price. Other top contributors included City Chic Collective and Kelly Partners Group. The only moderate negative contributors included Service Stream and Quickfee which both retraced by 20% with Quickfee impacting the Fund somewhat more due to its higher weighting of around 3.5%. Cyan highlighted a number of factors which they believe will influence markets going into 2021. These included: premium pricing (particularly the overpriced tech and retail sectors), fundamental challenges faced by the travel, tourism and education sectors which are still impacted by COVID, economic uncertainty as a result of continued lockdowns, and geopolitical instability. Cyan believe their current portfolio of 27 stocks is well balanced from a risk/return perspective (no individual holding accounts for more than 7% of the total Fund) and has a combination of both higher growth businesses and established cash-flow generative income investments. |
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Performance Report: Atlantic Pacific Australian Equity Fund
20 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Atlantic Pacific Australian Equity Fund rose +1.11% in December against the ASX200 Accumulation Index's +1.06%, taking CY20 performance to +26.45% vs the Index's +1.40%. Since inception in June 2013, the Fund has returned +9.44% p.a....
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20 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Atlantic Pacific Australian Equity Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The primary objective of the Atlantic Pacific Australian Equity Fund is to generate a mixture of capital and income returns for investors with a high risk profile, over a 5 to 7 year investment period. The Investment Manager believes that markets are fundamentally inefficient and that active investment management will result in higher than 'benchmark' returns. The Fund has adopted the S&P/ASX200 Accumulation Index as the benchmark for its performance. The Investment Manager also believes that, on review of many markets globally, no individual style or method of investing will always ensure outperformance in terms of return on investment. In light of this, the Investment Manager may adopt a 'value', 'growth' or 'momentum' style bias, for example, depending on where the market is in its investment cycle. Further, the Investment Manager believes that actual and forecasted events underpin absolute and relative price movements of securities. The Investment Manager will utilise a number of frameworks to assist in positioning the Fund's portfolio of investments. These include fundamental research, quantitative analysis, and macro and catalyst research. |
| Manager Comments | The Fund's capacity to significantly outperform in falling and volatile markets is highlighted by the following statistics (since inception): Sortino ratio of 1.59 vs the Index's 0.62, maximum drawdown of -7.10% vs the Index's -26.75%, and down-capture ratio of 21.15%. Positive contributors during December included City Chic Collective (long), Fortescue Metals (long), Iluka (long) and Terracom (long). Key detractors included Electro Optic Systems (long) and Mesoblast (long). With the start of a global inoculation phase, APSEC are of the view that economies will reflate faster than expected. They have started positioning the portfolio into relative value, commodities and long yield beneficiaries, keeping in mind that markets could revert. Cost push inflation is what they are looking out for, and they expect this will set the stage for higher bond yields if they accelerate. |
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Webinar| Laureola Review: Q4 2020
20 Jan 2021 - Laureola Advisors
Please join us for our quarterly webinar. The webinar will give a short intro to Laureola, followed by a dive into performance and key drivers. Tony (our MD) will also cover our market outlook going forward. It should be informative to...
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20 Jan 2021 - Webinar| Laureola Review: Q4 2020
By: Laureola Advisors
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Wed, Jan 27, 2021 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM AEDT Please join us for our quarterly webinar where we will discuss the following: 1. Introduction: Laureola Advisors 2. Q4 2020 performance review 3. Analysis of current portfolio and where we are now 4. Upcoming developments across 2021 and what we're projecting for the future 5. Q&A
ABOUT LAUREOLA ADVISORS Laureola Advisors was founded with the belief that investors deserve access to the unique benefits of Life Settlements, with the advantages of a specialist and focused asset manager. The best feature of the asset class is the genuine non-correlation with stocks, bonds, real estate, or hedge funds. Life Settlement investors will make money when others can't. Like many asset classes, Life Settlements provides experienced and competent boutique managers like Laureola with significant advantages over larger institutional players. In Life Settlements, the boutique manager can identify and close more opportunities in a cost effective manner, can move quickly when necessary, and can instantly adapt when opportunities dry up in one segment but appear in another. Larger investors are restricted not only by their size and natural inertia, but by self-imposed rules and criteria, which are typically designed by committees. The Laureola Advisors team has transacted over $1 billion (US dollars) in face value of life insurance policies. |
Performance Report: Prime Value Emerging Opportunities Fund
19 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Prime Value Emerging Opportunities Fund rose +3.23% in December, outperforming the ASX200 Accumulation Index by +2.17% and taking 12-month performance to +23.35% vs the Index's +1.40%. Since inception in October 2015, the Fund has...
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19 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Prime Value Emerging Opportunities Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The Fund is comprised of a concentrated portfolio of securities outside the ASX100. The fund may invest up to 10% in global equities but for this portion typically only invests in New Zealand. Investments are primarily made in ASX listed and other exchange listed Australian securities, however, it may also invest up to 10% in unlisted Australian securities. The Fund is designed for investors seeking medium to long term capital growth who are prepared to accept fluctuations in short term returns. The suggested minimum investment time frame is 3 years. |
| Manager Comments | Key positive contributors in December included City Chic, Pinnacle Investment and Mainfreight. Key detractors were Helloworld Travel, United Malt Group and Austal. Prime Value noted the Fund's return over CY20 were broad-based with downside protection. 18 stocks contributed more than +1% to returns while no stocks detracted more than -1%. Prime Value remain positive on the outlook for 2021 while highlighting the challenge of forecasting the direction of markets in the short term. At the stock level they are still seeing many attractive investment opportunities and expect the coming year will provide more. To uncover these opportunities they continue to undertake an active company meeting program, averaging more than 2 meetings per day. |
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Performance Report: L1 Capital Long Short Fund
18 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The L1 Capital Long Short Fund rose +4.16% in December, outperforming the ASX200 Accumulation Index by +3.1% and taking performance over CY20 to +27.98% vs the Index's +1.40%. Since inception in September 2014, the Fund has returned...
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18 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: L1 Capital Long Short Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | L1 Capital uses a combination of discretionary and quantitative methods to identify securities with the potential to provide attractive risk-adjusted returns. The discretionary element of the investment process entails regular meetings with company management and other stakeholders as well as frequent reading and analysis of annual reports and other relevant publications and communications. The quantitative element of the investment process makes use of bottom-up research to maintain financial models such as the Discounted Cashflow model (DCF) which is used as a means of assessing the intrinsic value of a given security. Stocks with the best combination of qualitative factors and valuation upside are used as the basis for portfolio construction. The process is iterative and as business trends, industry structure, management quality or valuation changes, stock weights are adjusted accordingly. |
| Manager Comments | L1 Capital noted the Fund's robust returns in 2020 were driven by strong stock picking across a wide range of sectors. Returns were further supported by decisive buying during the crisis in March and positioning the portfolio for vaccine success in November. They believe the vaccine rollout will trigger a rotation into value and cyclical stocks (which lagged the market in 2020) and they expect this to be a major positive tailwind for performance heading into 2021. Key contributors to performance in December included Imdex Limited (long, +26%), Lyft (long, +23%), Teck Resources (long, +10%), Liberty Financial Group (long, +30%), Metcash (long, +17%), and Cenovus Energy (long, +16%). The portfolio ended the month most heavily weighted towards Australia/NZ, followed by Europe, North America and Asia. |
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Performance Report: Bennelong Kardinia Absolute Return Fund
15 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Bennelong Kardinia Absolute Return Fund rose +1.07% in December, taking performance for CY20 to +9.13% with a volatility of 13.61% vs the ASX200's return of +1.40% with a volatility of 27.24%. Since inception in May 2006, the Fund has...
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15 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Bennelong Kardinia Absolute Return Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | The Fund's discretionary investment strategy commences with a macro view of the economy and direction to establish the portfolio's desired market exposure. Following this detailed sector and company research is gathered from knowledge of the individual stocks in the Fund's universe, with widespread use of broker research. Company visits, presentations and discussions with management at CEO and CFO level are used wherever possible to assess management quality across a range of criteria. Detailed analysis of company valuations using financial statements and forecasts, particularly focusing on free cash flow, is conducted. Technical analysis is used to validate the Manager's fundamental research and valuations and to manage market timing. A significant portion of the Fund's overall performance can be attributed to the attention and importance given to the macro economic outlook and the ability and willingness to adjust the Fund's market risk. |
| Manager Comments | Since inception in May 2006, the Fund has returned +8.77% p.a. with an annualised volatility of 7.66%. By contrast, the Index has returned +5.99% p.a. with an annualised volatility of 14.48% over the same period. The Fund's capacity to perform well in falling and volatile markets is highlighted by its Sortino ratio (since inception) of 1.22 vs the Index's 0.25 and down-capture ratio (since inception) of 48.7%. Key contributors for the month included Fenix Resources, Fortescue Metals, Harvest Technology, MACA and Xero. Detractors included Worley, Flight Centre, Ardent Leisure, Qantas and the Fund's short book. Kardinia highlighted in their latest report that a key contributor to the equity market's performance in CY20 has been global central bank monetary policy, including interest rate cuts and quantitative easing by the RBA. They expect this policy support to continue in CY21. |
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Performance Report: Paragon Australian Long Short Fund
14 Jan 2021 - Australian Fund Monitors
The Paragon Australian Long Short Fund rose +9.14% in December, outperforming the ASX200 Accumulation Index +7.93% and taking 12-month performance to +26.67% vs the Index's +1.40%. Since inception in March 2013, the Fund has returned...
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14 Jan 2021 - Performance Report: Paragon Australian Long Short Fund
By: Australian Fund Monitors
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| Fund Overview | Paragon's unique investment style, comprising thematic led idea generation followed with an in depth research effort, results in a concentrated portfolio of high conviction stocks. Conviction in bottom up analysis drives the investment case and ultimate position sizing: * Both quantitative analysis - probability weighted high/low/base case valuations - and qualitative analysis - company meetings, assessing management, the business model, balance sheet strength and likely direction of returns - collectively form Paragon's overall view for each investment case. * Paragon will then allocate weighting to each investment opportunity based on a risk/reward profile, capped to defined investment parameters by market cap, which are continually monitored as part of Paragon's overall risk management framework. The objective of the Paragon Fund is to produce absolute returns in excess of 10% p.a. over a 3-5 year time horizon with a low correlation to the Australian equities market. |
| Manager Comments | Positive contributors for December came from battery minerals (Pilbara), base metals (EM2) and precious metals (WAF & Investigator) holdings. Paragon noted supportive drivers for precious metals remain, with US real rates resuming a downtrend of -1.08%, coupled with US$ breaking 2-yr lows of 89.5c, pushing cycle lows. Gains in gold, silver, copper and Brent Oil collectively represent great tailwinds for the portfolio going into 2021. Paragon believe unprecedented US Fed monetary stimulus and US fiscal stimulus has markets well placed to continue their secular bull run into 2021. As at the end of December, the portfolio was most heavily weighted towards Electric Vehicles, Technology, Base Metals and Gold. |
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