MFS Meridian Global Total Ret A1 EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|28/07/2023

by Ben Sater
From 1 March 2023, Pilar Gomez-Bravo and Alexander Mackey will join current CIO of fixed income Bill Adams as global co-CIOs of fixed income. The shift is intended to support strong communication and collaboration across a growing worldwide team and provide continuity over the longer term. That being said, Adams has not shared any retirement plans to date. In terms of workload and division of responsibilities for the trio, these details will be shared by MFS in the coming months.

Gomez-Bravo joined MFS as an experienced portfolio manager in 2013 and was named director of fixed income for Europe in 2017. Mackey began his career with MFS in 1998, joined the fixed-income team in 2001, and has held both research and portfolio management roles during his time with the firm. Gomez-Bravo is a named portfolio manager on the Morningstar rated MFS Global Total Return with Mackey named on the Morningstar rated MFS U.S. Corporate Bond, MFS Limited Maturity, MFS Total Return, MFS Total Return Bond, and MFS Diversified Income strategies.

At this stage we are making no changes to any People Pillar ratings, and all funds retain their current Morningstar Analyst Ratings.
 
MFS Global Total Return’s roster continues to change, yet its primary appeal still rests with its experienced management and deep analyst team.

Since the beginning of 2018, this strategy has seen five additions and seven subtractions from its lineup of named managers. The most recent change occurred at the beginning of 2023, when fixed-income manager Henry Peabody unexpectedly left MFS (after having joined the firm in 2019), at which point MFS veteran John Mitchell took his place.

That turnover notwithstanding, MFS has otherwise demonstrated a responsible long-term succession planning process. It usually announces retirements years in advance (such as Vipin Narula’s 2022 retirement) and gives managers time to transition before having to fill those holes.

In addition, longtime manager Steven Gorham (named here since 2000) continues to anchor 40% of the strategy using a fundamental equity research approach. So do Pilar Gomez-Bravo and Robert Spector (named in 2013 and 2015, respectively), who manage the strategy’s 40% allocation to global fixed-income securities. Jonathan Sage, named here since 2014, manages the remaining 20% of the portfolio using quantitative inputs to identify attractive equity investments. Each of the teams makes heavy use of MFS’ highly regarded analyst research group.

The strategy’s 60% equity/40% fixed income allocation stays static, not an unreasonable approach given the difficulty of getting tactical allocation decisions consistently right. But the lack of coordination between the managers of the three sleeves is also not ideal and could lead to undiscussed instances of doubling or even tripling down on similar bets.

The portfolio’s overweight position in financials firms remains one of its more pronounced views; at the end of May 2023, these holdings accounted for 22% of the stock sleeve versus the global allocation Morningstar Category average of 13%. The fixed-income portfolio tends to emphasize lower-rated investment-grade bonds: About a fourth of the strategy’s bond holdings are rated AAA compared with half for the typical peer. But even though that sleeve provides less ballast than most, the strategy has held up particularly well in market turbulence: During down markets over rolling three-year periods in the past decade through June 2023, the strategy outpaced both the category average and the 60% MSCI World Index/40% Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index blended benchmark almost two thirds of the time.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™A decent global balanced option.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentHigh
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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