Schroder ISF China A C Acc USD

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|21/12/2023

by Claire Liang
The strategy remains one of our top picks for China A-shares exposure. Its established portfolio manager, sizable analytical resources, and a tried-and-tested investment approach support a High People rating and an Above Average Process rating.

Portfolio manager Jack Lee is a veteran and capable China A-shares investor. He has 25 years of experience and has run this strategy since its 2013 inception, making him one of the longest-tenured managers in the category. He is a hands-on investor and a proven stock-picker, having consistently impressed us with his in-depth stock and market knowledge. He focuses solely on this strategy. The supporting 17-member Greater China analyst team is well-resourced and experienced. The team has seen greater stability in recent years, and encouragingly, there have been no departures since our last review in December 2022. Meanwhile, the team still has one open position to backfill.

Lee is committed to the team’s quality growth-focused investment process that has proved its worth in the China A-shares market over the long haul. It benefits from a robust and clearly defined framework, where analysts assess a company’s growth prospects by comparing its return on invested capital and weighted average cost of capital. Lee is more active than his H-shares-focused colleagues, and the portfolio’s active share against the MSCI China A Onshore Index has stayed around 80% over the years, which is also higher than the Morningstar Category average of 60%. He is constantly on the lookout for new investment ideas, especially in the mid-cap space, and he has proved able to add value there.

The portfolio has become more diversified with 60-70 holdings since late 2020 from around 50 names before. Lee explained that this is to navigate the heightened market volatility, though we are cognizant that it also coincides with a period of strong inflows for the strategy. It has been closed to new investors since September 2021, and a quarterly subscription quota of USD 25 million was imposed on institutional clients. That said, it has continued to see steady inflows over the past year, and its asset size stood at USD 5 billion as of September 2023. We remain watchful of the strategy’s capacity. Reassuringly, we haven’t seen other symptoms that suggest capacity issues, and Lee has continued to be able to differentiate the product with a mid-cap tilt.

The strategy has delivered strong results over Lee’s tenure, though its nearer-term results have been less compelling, partly because the manager’s quality growth investment style has been out of favor. Nonetheless, we continue to believe this is an outstanding China A-shares offering with many strengths.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™A great China A-shares offering with many strengths.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleHigh
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.
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