Jupiter European Growth L EUR Acc

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|10/05/2023

by Jack Fletcher-Price
Jupiter announced in June 28, 2022, that chief executive officer Andrew Formica intends to retire from his role, effective from 1 October 2022. Formica will be succeeded by Matthew Beesley, the group's chief investment officer, who joined the firm in January 2022. Until he formally takes over, Beesley is promoted to deputy CEO with immediate effect and will retain his global chief investment officer responsibilities during the transition.

Formica, who is planning to relocate to his native Australia, will remain in the business until 30 June 2023 to ensure a smooth leadership transition and to assist with a number of strategic objectives, such as supporting the Asian business and development of the Australian market offering.

Beesley has nearly 25 years of experience in the investment industry. He joined from Artemis, where he had been CIO since April 2020. Previously, Beesley was head of investments at GAM Investments from 2017 to 2020, and before that head of global equities at Henderson. There, he crossed paths with Jupiter’s current CEO, Andrew Formica, who at the time was CEO at Henderson.

The Parent Pillar rating of Above Average remains in place. But leadership transition and a new incoming CIO bring some uncertainties that we will try to clarify when we meet with Beesley as part of our upcoming parent review.
 
The Jupiter European Growth strategy continues to benefit from a distinctive, high-quality approach. There is no change to the People and Process ratings of Above Average, resulting in a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Bronze for all share classes, including the clean I share class.

Lead managers Mark Nichols and Mark Heslop assumed responsibility here in October 2019 following the departure of Alexander Darwall from Jupiter. They both joined from Threadneedle, where Nichols comanaged Threadneedle European Select and Heslop managed global and European smaller-companies strategies. Since then, the team running European equities at Jupiter has filled out and settled, now representing an experienced group of European quality-focused investors in a sound structure. Upon taking over, Nichols and Heslop were set to make the portfolio their own—selling names they didn’t have conviction in, notably Wirecard, and working to get other position sizes more appropriate. The portfolio now better reflects the process being implemented by the team.

The investment approach is similar to how Nichols worked at Threadneedle, targeting quality growth companies with enduring competitive advantages and the ability to reinvest at strong growth rates. The managers aim to add value through capitalising on the short-term outlook of the market by investing in companies that can maintain competitive advantages and therefore sustain excess returns on capital well beyond a typical investment horizon. In order to focus on the most suitable ideas, the investable universe is first whittled down by excluding companies viewed as having commoditised products or services, having no pricing power, or subject to heavy regulation.

Understandably, this can manifest in large relative sector weights, most notably zero energy exposure. We expect quality metrics, such as return on equity and return on invested capital, to remain higher than the index and peers going forward. While acknowledging the portfolio can appear expensive on a multiple basis, we deem the valuation analysis undertaken as appropriate given the long-term investment horizon considered by the team.

Performance was expectedly poor in 2022, given the market was led by low-quality, commoditised, cyclical names, which this process tends to avoid. Looking forward, the focus on high-quality companies with the ability to maintain their competitive advantages should reward investors if well executed and they allow compounding to work its magic.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™The focus on high-quality businesses should help the strategy outperform over the cycle.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAverage
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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