The Fund provides exposure to a concentrated portfolio of emerging market equities by investing in securities principally listed in emerging markets. 

The Fund aims to achieve a long-term total return (before fees and expenses) that exceeds the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, in $A unhedged with net dividends reinvested

Significant benefits

• Provides access to potential growth of emerging markets.
• Potential for long-term compound returns.
• Potential to benefit from a comprehensive stock selection
process that delivers exposure to emerging markets at a level
of volatility similar to that of developed markets.
• Access to the knowledge and investment expertise of Walter
Scott and their brand of conservative growth investing.  

Significant features

• Provides exposure to a concentrated portfolio of global
emerging market securities.
• Provides exposure to an actively managed strategy using a
benchmark unaware, fundamental, bottom-up and research
driven approach to build, in Walter Scott’s opinion, a portfolio
of strong growth companies capable of generating wealth
over long periods of time.

The Fund is actively managed using a benchmark unaware, fundamental, bottom-up and research-driven approach to build, in Walter Scott’s opinion, a portfolio of strong growth companies capable of generating wealth over long periods of time. The investment approach combines detailed financial analysis with business and management analysis. The portfolio is constructed with a primary focus on stock-based analysis and a bias towards strong growth companies which Walter Scott believes are capable of generating high earnings growth.

Walter Scott believes that companies capable of generating strong and sustained earnings growth over long periods typically exhibit key strengths such as:
• strong earnings growth
• high return on equity, and
• high free cash flow.

Walter Scott’s fundamental bottom-up investment approach combines detailed financial analysis with qualitative research in screening the global share universe for companies that are likely to meet its investment criteria. Once identified, Walter Scott then conducts intensive financial analysis to review the company’s financial history. Revenue patterns are identified and profit growth and cash generation are considered over a business cycle.

The structure and strength of the balance sheet is also considered in depth. If the preliminary financial analysis suggests the company is capable of meeting or exceeding Walter Scott’s wealth-generating hurdle rates, detailed qualitative analysis is then undertaken.

Each investment portfolio is constructed with a primary focus on stock-based analysis. Country and sector exposures are a consequence of the search for what are in Walter Scott’s view ‘the best companies operating in the best sectors’. As a result of this investment approach, the structure of each portfolio is likely to differ substantially from the composition of the relevant Benchmark.
Walter Scott expects that on average, and based on long-term experience, 15 to 25 per cent or less of the stocks in a portfolio will be turned over each year, which reflects their long-term ‘buy and hold’ approach.

It is this long-term, classical and fundamental approach which defines Walter Scott’s conservative style of growth investing.

Asset Allocation:

International shares: 90% – 100%
Cash: 0% – 10%