BGF Euro Bond E2 (USD)

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|10/04/2024

by Evangelia Gkeka
BGF Euro Bond has been placed under review because of the departure announcement of lead portfolio manager Michael Krautzberger. The following text was published on June 30, 2023.

Investors in BGF Euro Bond benefit from the depth, quality, and experience of its management team; the consistent and disciplined approach applied over the years; and a strong long-term track record. The Morningstar Medalist Rating of the clean D2 share class remains unchanged at Silver. Ratings for other share classes range from Gold to Neutral depending on fees.

Michael Krautzberger, head of BlackRock's euro fixed-income team, has managed the strategy since October 2005. His experience in managing global fixed-income portfolios and working as part of large fixed-income teams is particularly relevant. Krautzberger's expertise lies in combining the team's views, analysts' relative value ideas, and inputs from BlackRock's wider resources into a portfolio that takes an appropriate level of risk for its performance objective. Since August 2019, Ronald van Loon has become comanager in recognition of his contribution to the investment process. Van Loon has been a member of the team for 12 years and is also managing institutional aggregate mandates.

The investment approach centres on building a portfolio of diversified risks and adding value in a consistent, incremental manner through a broad range of primarily relative-value strategies. Krautzberger is cognisant of the benchmark but is willing to shift asset allocation in response to his views, though kept in check by the strategy's tracking error, which usually ranges from 0.7% to 2.0%. The portfolio is typically diversified and includes 40-60 relative value investment ideas at a time.

Recent returns have been below peers as a short UK inflation position, short US duration, and long emerging-markets government bonds detracted in 2021. Moreover, during a very difficult 2022, the strategy underperformed peers by 4.3% but was just ahead of the Morningstar Category index. This underperformance was mainly driven by the lower duration of funds within the peer group. Moreover, the strategy’s attempt to find diversification from high-conviction safer market segments such as government bonds and covered bonds also didn’t work in 2022 as they recorded significant losses. Lastly, a short in UK inflation in the first quarter of 2022 was another detractor. For the year to date as of end-May 2023, the strategy is ahead of peers and the category index with duration, government bond, and sector selection helping.

Over the long term, however, the fund has generated consistent returns during Krautzberger's tenure, outperforming both its peers and category index. The breadth of added value across virtually the entire range of underlying ideas employed in the portfolio is impressive and highlights both Krautzberger's ability to blend the positioning into a coherent portfolio and the quality of ideas generated by the team.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Still a high-conviction strategy within the EUR diversified bond category.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
ParentAbove Average
 
Morningstar Medalist RatingMorningstar assigns the Medalist Rating to funds that are qualitatively and quantitatively assessed through manager research and algorithmic processes. The assessment turns on three key “pillars” – People, Process, and Parent – that yield an estimate of how well a fund will perform before fees but after adjusting for risk.
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