PIMCO GIS Emerg Lcl Bd E USD Acc

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|25/03/2024

by Shannon Kirwin
Pimco Emerging Markets Bond benefits from prudent portfolio construction and a large and well-resourced team. Continued improvements to its investment process have earned a Process Pillar upgrade to High from Above Average.

This team has seen elevated turnover in recent years, but its strengths are enough to offset those concerns. Lead manager Pramol Dhawan joined Pimco in 2013 and took over this strategy, and the leadership of the entire emerging-markets bond team, in 2019, when former leader Michael Gomez left the firm. Dhawan initially shared responsibility for this strategy's day-to-day management with fellow local-currency debt expert and Pimco veteran Ismael Orenstein, but Orenstein left Pimco in early 2023. His replacement as comanager here is Michael Davidson, an experienced local-rates specialist who joined the team in 2017 and has helped run the strategy since 2020. Orenstein's departure came amid a recent flurry of turnover; in all, six portfolio managers have left the team of 31 emerging-markets bond investors in the past two years. Nonetheless, the team has been able to backfill the positions and remains larger, more experienced, and better resourced than most industry peers—especially considering that has the backing of Pimco's army of quants, macro experts, and corporate credit analysts.

The strategy’s approach, which draws upon Pimco's strong macroeconomic expertise and vast analytical resources, has undergone positive changes and remains robust at its core. The team looks for local bonds and currencies that it expects to outperform because of positive inflation and monetary policy trends, improvements in economic growth and terms of trade, or other idiosyncratic factors. This fundamental approach is augmented by a diverse set of quant-driven strategies aimed at reducing trading costs and exploiting inefficiencies in the emerging-markets debt market. These include models that select between cash bonds and derivatives, seek to optimize the timing of portfolio rebalancing to account for index changes and market flows, or look for relative value across yield curves and currencies. Strict limits on individual country and currency positions aim to reduce single-name risk.

This structured approach, backed by significant technological and personnel resources, puts the strategy head and shoulders above most in the emerging-markets local-currency bond Morningstar Category. It has also resulted in an improved risk profile and benchmark- and peer-group-beating results since Dhawan's 2019 promotion to lead manager. All things considered, investors here are in very good hands.

 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™This investment process stands out from the crowd.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessHigh
 
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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