Fidelity Em Mkts E-Acc-EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|17/07/2024

by Lena Tsymbaluk
Fidelity announced that effective June 30, 2024, co-portfolio manager Amit Goel and assistant portfolio manager Zoltan Palfi will be stepping away from the Fidelity Emerging Markets strategy. Nick Price will remain as the lead portfolio manager, and Chris Tennant will become co-portfolio manager.

Goel will focus on managing the Sustainable Emerging Markets strategy, as well as retaining his lead portfolio manager role for India Focus. Palfi will focus on leading the regional and ex-China strategies (FF Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa; FF Latin America; and FF Sustainable Emerging Markets Ex China). Palfi will continue to work with Price as co-portfolio manager for EMEA and Tennant as co-portfolio manager for Latin America.

We do not expect any changes to the investment approach as a result of this announcement, and the continued presence of the lead manager Price and his investment team, including Rajesh Gannamani, Tennant, and Punam Sharma, continues to support the People and Process ratings at Above Average and High, respectively.

 
The Fidelity Emerging Markets strategy has strong features, including an experienced portfolio manager, substantial resources, and an established approach highlighting the firm's best emerging-markets ideas.

Nick Price has run this strategy since July 2009 and has 18 years of emerging-markets experience. He is supported by three regional managers and Fidelity’s deep emerging-markets resources of 49 analysts.

It’s worth noting that there has been some change within the regional emerging-markets portfolio management team recently. Comanager Amit Goel, who has been a comanager since 2019, stepped down effective June 30, 2024, to focus on his Emerging Markets Focus strategy. Replacing him is Chris Tennant, who has been an assistant manager on this strategy since October 2022.

Moreover, Punam Sharma, the Latin America regional manager, has stepped down to focus on her role as director of research for Latin America and EMEA, moving away from portfolio management. Zoltan Palfi, currently responsible for EMEA, will now oversee Latin America as well. We are comforted by the fact that Price remains in place and that comanager Tennant was a manager on the Latin America fund since April 2021 and will support Palfi. Nonetheless, we would like to monitor stock selection in the Latin America sleeve and would like to see a period of stability within the regional management team.

The approach is meant to provide exposure to Fidelity’s best global emerging-markets equity ideas. Price and the team primarily look for quality firms that exhibit strong and sustainable returns on equity, good balance sheets, shareholder-friendly management teams, and reasonable valuations.

Concurrent with the process, the portfolio’s ROE has trended above the MSCI EM index’s throughout time, while leverage ratios have trended below the index’s. Given the focus on quality here, the strategy should hold up better than the average peer during down markets. Indeed, the strategy’s downside capture ratio has been superior compared with the index and peers.

The three-year performance profile has been negatively affected by significant 2022 underperformance, when the strategy was more than 10 percentage points behind the index and peers. This level of underperformance was largely driven by the overweight exposure to Russia, which stood at 7.6% as of Jan. 31, 2022 (compared with 2.8% of the MSCI EM index), as well as countries in proximity to Russia like Kazakhstan.

It is pleasing to see that the strategy’s performance has picked up more recently. Indeed, in 2024 (through June 30), the fund is ahead of the index and peers. At the sector level, stock selection in technology was strong, especially Taiwanese tech names such as TSMC and MediaTek. Stock selection in financials was also strong, especially the fintech names such as Kaspi.kz and Nu Holdings. In addition, consumer discretionary names also contributed positively, e.g. MakeMyTrip.com, Brilliance China Automotive, Naspers.

Overall, the conservative and balanced approach with a focus on quality should help the strategy to outperform over the cycle.

 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™The strategy provides exposure to Fidelity’s best emerging-markets ideas.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessHigh
 
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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