Benefits of investing in the Pengana Emerging Companies Fund

• Active approach. Many inefficiencies exist in the small caps market, enabling our team to identify mispriced opportunities.

• Focus on minimising risks. Our stringent research enables lower risk exposure to quality small cap companies.

• Limited fund size. Limiting the size of the Fund helps to maintain a nimble investment approach.

• Conservative investment approach. The Fund does not own resources companies and looks to avoid loss-making companies.
• Strong track record. The Fund has a strong track record in up and down markets since inception.

Investor suitability

The Fund may be suited to you if you want to diversify your portfolio with principally Australian and some New Zealand small and mid caps equity exposure managed by a specialist boutique manager, are looking to invest for at least 3 years and seeking primarily capital growth with some income.

About the Fund

Launched in 2004, the Pengana Emerging Companies Fund invests in a portfolio of small cap industrial companies. The Fund is closed to new investors, however existing investors can make additional applications.

The Fund's investment strategy is based on an underlying belief that smaller companies' share prices are often incorrectly priced.

The investment process focuses on a very active company visitation program to assess management quality and over time the investment team will visit most of the 800 companies in its universe.

In addition to meeting with management, the team's qualitative-based approach also focuses on product/service quality, competitive advantage, growth prospects and financial position.

As the Fund will only invest in companies that can be valued with relative confidence, it will not own resource companies, listed property trusts or loss making companies.

The Fund has won numerous awards since its inception including most recently the Money Magazine Best of the Best Small Companies Fund award in 2016.

How we invest your money

The Fund invests principally in small and mid cap listed (or soon to be listed) Australian equities. The Fund may also invest up to 15% of its assets in small and mid cap listed (or soon to be listed) New Zealand equities.

The Fund's Investment Team utilises a robust investment process that combines in-depth fundamental research with disciplined portfolio construction and risk controls. Pengana has a stated capacity target of approximately 0.5% of the Index capitalisation for the Fund and will manage the size of the Fund with a view to achieving this target over the medium term. This may include closing the Fund to new investors or returning capital.

Investment process

The Investment Team seeks to identify market inefficiencies in the pricing of small / mid cap securities by focusing on the following factors:

• active company visitation program and the maintenance of strong relationships with company management;

• industry based feedback to complement our analysis of the company via visiting other unlisted companies;

• close monitoring of the ownership structure of each company to help assess market sentiment of each stock;

• the maintenance of strong relationships with broker analysts; and

• discounted cash flow basis for valuation of all stocks using integrated earnings / cashflow / balance sheet models. Other valuation methodologies will also be deployed.

The portfolio construction process aims to develop portfolios that incorporate the best investment ideas from the Investment Team's research with appropriate levels of diversification with the objective of realising the Fund's return and risk targets.

Indicative strategic asset allocation

Pengana aims to manage the Fund within the following guidelines:

• 75%-100% Australian listed securities

• 0%-15% New Zealand listed securities

• 0%-10% cash and cash equivalents

The Fund can invest in securities that are not part of the Index including companies included in the S&P / ASX MidCap 50 Index provided that the companies do not form part of the S&P/ASX 50 Leaders Index. There may also be limited investment in small and mid cap listed (or soon to be listed) New Zealand equities and in listed (or soon to be listed) trusts. Generally, the maximum / minimum value of any individual security in the Fund relative to the Index, will be the percentage weight of that security in the Index +/- 7%. Pengana will endeavour to work within the above guidelines - however these should be viewed as objectives only and not absolute limits.