PIMCO GIS US Hi Yld Bd E Acc

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|16/04/2025

by Jeana Marie Doubell
Longtime Pimco High Yield manager Andrew Jessop will retire at the end of June 2023, the firm recently announced. As a result, Morningstar has placed all of Jessop’s rated strategies Under Review, which includes Pimco High Yield, Pimco High Yield Spectrum, Pimco GIS U.S. High Yield, and Pimco GIS Global High Yield.

Jessop’s retirement comes after more than 30 years in the industry. Prior to joining Pimco in 2009 and beginning to manage its high-yield portfolios, he was managing director and head of high yield at Goldman Sachs, where he spent 12 years.

Jessop’s Pimco responsibilities will be taken over by comanagers Sonali Pier and David Forgash, among others. While Pimco’s resources are vast, this pending departure is the latest among a series of personnel changes at the firm, which in turn puts more responsibility on those who remain.

 
Pimco GIS US High Yield boasts a solid investment process, but its management team is still settling in as a unit after recent leadership changes.

This team of experienced managers has worked together for roughly two years now. David Forgash took over this strategy, and the leadership of Pimco’s high-yield bond team, from predecessor Andrew Jessop in April 2023. Forgash is an experienced investor but lacks a public track record running US high-yield bond mandates, having focused on Pimco’s leveraged loan business in recent years. Nonetheless, this management team boasts significant firepower. Seasoned global credit specialist Sonali Pier, who oversees sibling fund Pimco High Yield Spectrum and best-in-class multisector credit strategy Pimco Diversified Income, has been a comanager here since 2019. European high-yield expert Charles Watford joined the roster in January 2023, followed by leveraged-loan specialist Jason Duko in May 2023. The foursome is settling into its new configuration, but more time is needed to gain conviction in their ability and skill as a team.

The new manager cohort has largely retained Jessop’s disciplined and conservative approach to high-yield bond investing but has also made some tweaks. They formalized a system for flagging and discussing deteriorating credits while also increasing the size of individual credit bets to more strongly emphasize their favorite bottom-up ideas (the portfolio can now have up to 75 basis points of active exposure in their highest-conviction ideas, up from roughly 50 basis points in the past). The strategy's key focus is on fundamental bond-picking, supported by a roughly 80-strong analyst team that surfaces high-conviction ideas to populate the portfolio. The new managers have indicated they might increase the portfolio’s exposure to bank loans and non-US high-yield bonds at the margins going forward, which should not be a concern given the team's effectiveness at using those sectors in other sibling strategies.

The time-tested approach has produced solid results over the long term, landing in the top quartile of the high-yield bond Morningstar Category over the trailing 10 and 15 years through March 2025. Under Forgash’s two-year tenure as lead manager through March 2025, the institutional share class beat 70% of peers with average volatility. Still, it is too soon to draw definitive conclusions, and more time is needed to build deeper conviction in the new team.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™New leadership is building out its track record.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAverage
ParentAbove Average
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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