Fidelity Asian High Yield A-Acc-EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|23/05/2025

by Arvind Subramanian
Lei Zhu will join as head of Asian fixed income in January 2023 and report to Steve Ellis, global CIO, fixed income. Zhu fills the vacancy left by former head Marty Dropkin, who was appointed as head of equities, Asia Pacific, in July 2022, and where she will manage all fixed-income portfolio managers in Asia and not have any portfolio management responsibilities. Meanwhile, Ellis continues to serve as the interim head of Asian fixed income. Zhu joins from Credit Suisse Asset Management where she spent a decade and was most recently its head of fixed income Asia. She has managed several strategies across Asian hard-currency corporate credits and local currency bonds since 2012. She previously worked at DBS for seven years.

Elsewhere, Bich Nguyen recently joined as director of research, Asian fixed income, succeeding Nitesh Kathuria, who remains as a senior credit research analyst in the team. The Asian credit research team now reports into Nguyen, who in turn reports into Gita Bal, global head of fixed-income research. Ngyuyen succeeds Kathuria’s previous responsibilities, including the management of the research team and research process. She has over 30 years of fixed-income research and portfolio management experience with focus on emerging-markets debt and Asian fixed income. She was previously CIO for fixed income and a portfolio manager at Taiping Asset Management.

While it will take time to observe the integration of Zhu and Nguyen into the broader Asian fixed-income team and whether there will be any future changes, we do not expect these appointments to have any material impact on the day-to-day management of this strategy.
 
The strategy faces challenges because of persistent analyst turnover, while the investment process has yet to distinguish itself.

Morningstar has enhanced the way we assess alpha opportunity for funds, which is a key component in our Morningstar Medalist Rating calculation. More of this strategy's Medalist Ratings than usual may therefore change with this update even in the absence of changes to pillar ratings or fund costs.

Fidelity Asian High Yield has been led by Tae Ho Ryu and Terrence Pang since July 2020. Although Ryu and Pang boast 18 and 12 years of investment experience, respectively, they have no previous experience as lead portfolio managers, making them relative newcomers compared with some category rivals. Additionally, Pang's workload is a concern, as he also assumed lead manager responsibilities at the Fidelity China RMB Bond in June 2024, following leadership changes there. While the managers are backed by a reasonably deep group of credit analysts, this team has suffered from persistently high analyst turnover between 2020 and early 2025, bringing its total size down from 12 to nine individuals over the period.

This hard-currency Asia high-yield-focused strategy seeks to outperform its benchmark, the J.P. Morgan Asia Credit Index Non-Investment Grade Index, primarily through bottom-up credit selection. Following past missteps related to concentrated sector and issuer bets, notably within the Chinese property sector, the team has bolstered its risk-management processes. In particular, the managers have trimmed many of the portfolio’s riskiest exposures and diversified their credit bets. These moves appear prudent, but their effects on the fund’s ability to deliver outperformance over the long term remain to be seen.

Under the duo’s leadership from July 2020 through March 2025, the strategy has delivered lackluster performance and experienced greater volatility than peers during the turbulent market period from 2021 to 2023. Its overweight exposure to the hard-hit Chinese property sector, along with missteps in credit selection, have weighed on returns during this time.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™This strategy is yet to prove its edge.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleBelow Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessAverage
 
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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