Global equity markets finished the fourth quarter in positive territory, with developed markets outperforming emerging markets. The Fed’s November CPI announcement reinforced the emerging market narrative that inflation has peaked, with the smallest annual increase in inflation since December 2021 at 7.1%.

The strategy outperformed the MSCI ACWI IMI reference index during the period. There was continued strong fundamental momentum for the majority of names in the portfolio, making the holdings even more attractive going into 2023.

The largest contributors were portfolio holdings in healthcare and industrials, where portfolio holdings have continued to see substantial earnings upgrades, driving a de-rating to valuation levels that the team believes fail to take into account their continued and sustainable growth potential; this is true not just in the long-term, but also expected to persist over the coming year, when the team expect that the average listed-company will see continuing downwards revisions of the market’s earnings expectations.

Novo Nordisk was the largest positive contributor during the quarter, delivering another strong set of results with an upgrade in guidance and confirmation of a relaunch of the supply of Wegovy by the end of the year, a first of its kind once-weekly injectable used as a treatment for chronic obesity. Befesa also performed strongly and announced an ambitious growth plan at its Capital Markets Day in November, which included a focus on opportunities in its home market of Europe, driven by the transition to electric vehicles and light weighting of vehicles which have increased demand for aluminium.

Yduqs was a prominent detractor during the fourth quarter. While the Brazilian presidential election result is expected to be broadly supportive of the education sector, this is yet to be reflected in an uptick of admissions. Following strong performance earlier in the year, Alfen also detracted. While the EV charging business continued to deliver strong growth, management guidance pointed to a normalisation of growth rates in Q4, driven by the destocking of customer inventories built up earlier in the year following covid related supply chain disruptions. Despite this, we remain positive on Alfen’s growth potential, given its position as one of Europe’s leading EV charging equipment suppliers with the capacity to grow ahead of the market.

During the quarter, we took the opportunity to add Stevanato to the portfolio, a global leader in producing glass vials for aseptic manufacturing for pharmaceuticals, with its presterilised containment solutions playing a critical role in patient safety while also enabling greater automation, reducing time to market and cost of ownership.

Looking across the investment universe as the year ended, valuations in the US remain elevated relative to their counterparts in similar industries that are listed outside of the US. While we believe we are likely to see disinflation and, in some economies, a corporate earnings recession ensue throughout 2023, this is unlikely to drive policy rates back down to the pandemic levels that are needed to justify US mega-cap growth valuations, particularly if their growth rates continue to moderate.

Meanwhile, our portfolio has experienced a ‘valuation reset’, as many constituents’ earnings have continued to be revised upwards over the year. With over a third of the portfolio in the SMID-cap healthcare growth category (predominately life sciences businesses that have a structural growth tailwind, which include Sartorius Stedim, Abcam, Lonza, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Qiagen, Agilent, and our most recent addition, Stevanato), we feel confident that their growth trajectory will remain intact, even if macroeconomics conditions toughen as the year rolls on.

We enter the new year optimistic about the continued positive development of the portfolio’s growth, despite the uncertainty within markets and across economies.

We expect portfolio company earnings to be resilient relative to the rest of the market, whether the expected recession does materialise as a mild or more drawn out slow down, as the life sciences and health technology companies listed above are expected to have lower economic sensitivity and are driven by a tailwind that we expect to persist for many years to come.