Ophir AM launches global small-cap fund
Boutique asset manager Ophir is offering wholesale investors a third small-cap fund, this one focused on global equities.
The firm, which was founded in 2012, currently runs the Ophir Opportunities fund and the Ophir High Conviction fund. These focus on small cap equities and small and mid-caps respectively.
The new global fund, Ophir Global Opportunities, would hold between 20 and 50 stocks to create a portfolio of emerging growth businesses which have sound balance sheets and highly-capable management teams.
“Utilising Ophir’s extensive fundamental, bottom-up research process, the fund focuses on identifying high quality emerging businesses exposed to structural growth opportunities,” said managers Andrew Mitchell and Steven Ng.
“With a bias towards cash-generative businesses with sound balance sheets and highly-capable management teams, the fund seeks to identify these opportunities early in a company’s life cycle, when it is typically under-researched and under-valued by the investment market.
“As the world has become more global, investing is less about where a company is headquartered or what stock exchange it is listed on, and more about where the markets it sells its goods or services into are located.
“On our trips overseas visiting the operations of our portfolio companies and their global competitors, we've noticed that a number of competitors were operating superior businesses and often trading on better valuation metrics than their Australian counterparts. As investors the sheer number of exceptional businesses that meet our strict selection criteria excited us.”
Benchmarked against the MSCI World SMID Index, it targeted returns of 15% per annum over the long-term.
The fund was first launched on 30 September, 2018 and is currently $90 million in size which was seeded from private money but, having built a track record, Ophir was now opening it up to wholesale investors.
Performance of the Ophir Opportunities fund over one year to 30 September, 2019 vs the ACS Equity – Australia Small/MidCap sector.
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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