High conviction stock-picking utilizing the full opportunity set
Diversification, ESG impact, and growth from Asia with tightly controlled style exposure
A diverse & experienced team – Bottom-up stock picking based on holistic, long-term understanding of industries across Asia, not just a single country.
Repeatable process - consistent culture and common philosophy that emphasizes teamwork, ESG integration and risk management.
- Businesses that are best in class or show strong improvement trajectory as evidenced by its return on capital levels against history and peers
- Companies that have strong balance sheets and consistent cash flow generation that can outpace market expectations over the long run
Investment style
- Long-term perspective based on industry focus across the region
- Short-term market shocks can create opportunities to buy at significant discount to what we assess is the fair value of the underlying business
Investment process
- High conviction stock selection based on fundamental research
- Disciplined and unconstrained view of the benchmark to build differentiated returns over time
Integrated ESG
- We see direct engagement and in-house research as core to what we do as long-term focused, fundamental, active investment managers
- We select companies that promote environmental and social characteristics and lead governance best practices within Asian peers
- We build conviction as a team – each member contributes to our collective understanding of ESG risks with different views and industry focus
- Our ESG assessments are primarily driven by our proprietary due diligence checklist which allows us to be holistic, thorough, and consistent
Company meeting notes
- All investment ideas will have meetings notes, an investment checklist and research note shared in the team library
Investment check list
- Ideas are regularly reviewed and discussed at the team level from various perspectives
Research note
- Investment ideas are regularly presented to the team and team members are encouraged to speak up and ask questions about ideas in other sectors
Our approach to incorporating ESG factors isn’t just one step in our investment process – it’s embedded throughout. To do this, we access and analyze information from a broad array of sources, including external data providers and, more importantly, on-the-ground channel checks. The data gathered from these sources can be both quantitative and qualitative. We believe that incorporating ESG factors will allow for more robust risk assessments on a stock and portfolio level.
ESG is key to our fundamental, active investment management
Quantitative
- Proprietary quant process/tools
- Accounting quality screens
- In-house audit/quant specialists
- 3rd party research (GMT, MSCI ESG, HOLT Risk, Sustainalytics)
- Aggressive accounting
- Sustainability of cash flows
Qualitative
- In-house research notes and robust checklist with explicit commentary on ESG
- 3rd party data specializing in ESG (e.g. past several years of company’s litigations or media coverage)
- Holistic, thorough, consistent process
- Long-term view
Beyond
- Company meetings/calls
- On-the-ground channel checks
- Sector specialist team structure/discussions
- Interviews (e.g. industry experts, regulators, competitors, local investors)
- Industry/company specific ESG perspective
Entire investment process. Each and every investment team member
Source RBC GAM
Portfolio construction
