JPM Greater China D (acc) EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|11/03/2024

by Claire Liang
JPMorgan announced that Howard Wang, comanager of JPM Greater China, will relocate to Taipei from Hong Kong for personal reasons and will be removed as a named manager effective 1 May 2023. Rebecca Jiang, who has comanaged the strategy with Wang since September 2017, will continue to run the strategy as the lead manager.

While Wang will no longer be an officially named portfolio manager here, we do not expect this to materially affect the management of the strategy. Wang will continue to contribute as a nondiscretionary investment advisor on the strategy and provide investment advice to Jiang on the strategy’s portfolio management. Furthermore, he will continue in his role as head of the Greater China team and be accountable for the performance and success of JPMorgan’s Greater China franchise.

In the meantime, JPMorgan will name Hong Kong-based Li Tan as backup manager on the strategy. Tan is mainly named to help place trades in case of Jiang’s absence and is not expected to be directly involved in the strategy’s day-to-day management. Tan has 12 years of investment experience, all of which with JPMorgan. He was the team’s previous financial analyst and promoted as portfolio manager in 2020.

Overall, we believe Wang will continue to be deeply involved in the management of the strategy, and we do not anticipate any material changes to the strategy’s investment decision-making process. We are further reassured by the continued presence of day-to-day manager Jiang, who has been comanaging the strategy with Wang for over five years and is a proven and capable Greater China investor with 18 years of experience. We also continue to recognize JPMorgan's best-in-class Greater China team, which has been very stable over the past years and sports one of the broadest coverages among the offshore China equity teams that we rate. As such, we maintain the strategy’s People rating at Above Average. Its cheaper share classes, including the clean share class C, continue to earn Morningstar Analyst Ratings of Silver, while the more expensive share classes remain at Bronze.

 
Despite its recent underperformance, we believe JPM Greater China is equipped to bounce back with a capable investment management team backed by deep analytical resources and a well-structured investment process. We reiterate the strategy’s Above Average People and Process ratings.

The strategy is in the good hands of Rebecca Jiang and Howard Wang. Wang is a Greater China equity veteran with 29 years of experience. He had successfully run the strategy since July 2005 before he relocated back to Taipei and became a nondiscretionary investment advisor here on May 1, 2023. That said, he continues to work closely with Jiang and remains deeply involved in every decision. Jiang brings 19 years of experience and has comanaged the strategy with Wang since September 2017. The duo has shown great synergy, and we think they are capable Greater China equity investors. Li Tan was added as backup manager here following Wang’s relocation, though he is not directly involved in the strategy’s day-to-day management.

The supporting 16-member Greater China analyst team is very experienced, has been highly stable since 2018, and provides the duo a broad coverage of Greater China equities. The team saw a changing of the guard in December 2023, when David Gleeson took over as the new head of Greater China research. Gleeson is tasked with tightening analysts’ modeling and growth forecasts, an area where the analysts have shown some weakness over the past year or so, and we are keeping a close eye on the analysts’ research quality. The team continues to integrate with the onshore JPMorgan Asset Management China’s (which was the Chinese joint venture that JPM fully acquired in Jan 2023) 19-member analyst team, whose direct contribution here remains limited at this stage. However, Gleeson intends to have the onshore team take over coverage of the smaller China A-shares from the offshore analysts, and their future value-add is worth monitoring.

The duo adopts a secular-growth-focused investment approach with a consideration for quality. They have stayed true to the growth-oriented approach even during adverse times. The portfolio has exhibited a long-standing bias toward technology, consumption, healthcare, and new energy-related names. The duo focuses on companies’ five-year expected return in considering stocks’ relative attractiveness, and they can tolerate rich valuations at times if they believe in a company’s ability to deliver earnings growth over time. This has worked well in growth-driven up markets, but it has backfired in the recent selloff of China equities, where some expensive stocks fell short of the team’s growth expectations amid the country’s weak consumer spending. The team is taking steps to correct analysts’ forecasting errors. Moreover, the duo plans to pay more attention to the stocks’ relative valuation multiples and own some cheaper-valued growth stocks, such as Baidu and China Pacific Insurance, to balance the portfolio. While we are monitoring the managers’ valuation discipline, we are confident that the duo remains committed to their growth preference.

Although the strategy’s growth-oriented approach faced persistent stylistic headwinds between 2021 and 2023, its long-term track record remains strong. We still believe it is an attractive Greater China equity offering with many strengths.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™We remain confident on this strategy, though a few watch points exist.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessAbove 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.
Permissions/Reprints   E-mail Morningstar     
A fim de prover consistência para todos os relatórios fornecidos por diferentes Asset Managers, os data points calculados apresentados são gerados usando uma metodologia de cálculo proprietária da Morningstar, que pode ser conferida com mais detalhes em(https://www.morningstar.com/research/signature)
© Copyright 2024 Morningstar, Inc. Todos os direitos reservados.

Termos de Uso        Política Privacidade        Cookie Settings        Divulgações