Janus Henderson Horizon Euro Corporate Bond benefits from an experienced management team, depth, and quality of credit research analysts, and a well-defined collegiate approach, which has resulted in solid long-term performance. The Morningstar Analyst Rating for the G2 EUR share class is maintained at Bronze. This is the largest share class, with around 50% of the fund’s assets, but more-expensive ones, including the clean retail share class H2 EUR receive a Neutral rating.The strategy is managed by experienced credit managers Tom Ross and Tim Winstone. Ross became named manager in August 2015, and former manager Chris Bullock departed at the end of that year, but he had worked closely with comanagers Bullock and Stephen Thariyan for almost a decade on various mandates, including this strategy since its 2009 inception. Winstone, joined Henderson in November 2015 and is responsible for euro investment-grade and high-yield credit. He was named a co-portfolio manager here in February 2017. Thariyan, who was more involved in the top-down decisions, left the firm in March 2018 after the Janus-Henderson merger. The continued involvement of Ross and Thariyan provided continuity during the transition process after Bullock’s departure and when new resources were added in the form of Winstone.The approach is bottom-up, with a focus on fundamental credit analysis. Idea generation and trade recommendations are provided by the experienced 18-member Janus Henderson credit analyst team, which contains sector specialists.The managers are pragmatic in moving the top-down positioning in response to the changing macro environment. Somewhat different from many peers, they also use credit derivatives as an alpha source to meet the aim of beating the iBoxx EUR Corporates Index. Absolute and risk-adjusted performance since inception through November 2020 has been ahead of its peers and Morningstar Category index. The high-conviction approach could lead to spans of underperformance, such as in 2015 when the overweighting in BBB rated and US-dollar-denominated bonds weighed on returns. Despite that, we believe the investment process is well-structured and consistent and should ensure that the strategy meets its performance objective over the long run. A positive development on the cost side is that from July 2019 the previous performance fee has been removed.
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