PIMCO GIS US Hi Yld Bd E Acc

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|24/04/2024

by Jeana Marie Doubell
Longtime Pimco High Yield manager Andrew Jessop will retire at the end of June 2023, the firm recently announced. As a result, Morningstar has placed all of Jessop’s rated strategies Under Review, which includes Pimco High Yield, Pimco High Yield Spectrum, Pimco GIS U.S. High Yield, and Pimco GIS Global High Yield.

Jessop’s retirement comes after more than 30 years in the industry. Prior to joining Pimco in 2009 and beginning to manage its high-yield portfolios, he was managing director and head of high yield at Goldman Sachs, where he spent 12 years.

Jessop’s Pimco responsibilities will be taken over by comanagers Sonali Pier and David Forgash, among others. While Pimco’s resources are vast, this pending departure is the latest among a series of personnel changes at the firm, which in turn puts more responsibility on those who remain.

 
Pimco GIS US High Yield boasts a solid investment process, but its management team is still settling in after recent leadership changes.

This team of experienced managers has worked together for roughly one year now. David Forgash took over this strategy, and the leadership of Pimco’s high-yield bond team, from his predecessor Andrew Jessop in April 2023 prior to Jessop’s June 2023 retirement. Forgash is an experienced investor but lacks a public track record running US high-yield bond mandates, having overseen Pimco’s leveraged loan business in recent years. Nonetheless, this management team boasts significant firepower. Seasoned global credit specialist Sonali Pier, who oversees sibling fund Pimco High Yield Spectrum and best-in-class multisector credit strategy Pimco Diversified Income, has been a comanager here since 2019. European high-yield expert Charles Watford joined the roster in January 2023, followed by leveraged loan specialist Jason Duko in February 2023. The foursome is still settling into its new configuration, and more time is needed to gain conviction in their ability to work together at this strategy.

The new manager cohort has largely retained Jessop’s disciplined and conservative approach to high-yield bond investing but has also made some tweaks. It formalized a system for flagging and discussing deteriorating credits while also increasing the size of individual credit bets to more strongly emphasize the team's favorite bottom-up ideas (it can now own up to around 75 basis points of active exposure in its highest-conviction ideas, up from typically 50 basis points in the past). The strategy's key focus is on fundamental bond-picking, supported by a roughly 80-strong analyst team that surfaces high-conviction ideas to populate the portfolio. The new managers have indicated they might increase the portfolio’s exposure to bank loans and non-US high-yield bonds at the margins going forward, which should not be a concern given their effectiveness at using those sectors in other sibling strategies.

The time-tested approach has served investors well over the long term. The strategy has beat the high-yield bond Morningstar Category's average over one, three, five, 10, and 15 years through March 2024. Still, more evidence of the new managers working together well is needed to build deeper conviction in the team.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Roster changes continue to settle in.
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Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAverage
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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