Julian Beaumont, Bennelong; Quan Nguyen, Zenith. Photo: Matt Fatches
Category: Australian equities – large cap
Winner: Bennelong Australian Equity Partners
Analyst: Quan Nguyen
Sector overview:
The Australian Equities – Large Cap universe continues to be one of Zenith’s largest categories. As such, the sector is highly competitive, comprising an array of different strategies. With the “Blue Chip” segment of the market underperforming over the last 12 months, bucking a long-term trend, active funds which have managed this transition towards companies lower down in the market cap spectrum have performed well.
Zenith says …
Bennelong Australian Equity Partners (BAEP), via the Bennelong Australian Equities Fund, has continued to produce strong results. Mark East remains BAEP’s key investor, and in Zenith’s opinion, he has been instrumental in the success of BAEP. Through a logical and robust investment process which aims to identify quality companies that exhibit mispriced earnings growth, BAEP has consistently produced strong benchmark outperformance over multiple periods of assessment.
Interview
Julian Beaumont
Investment director
Bennelong Australian Equity Partners
A number of our large positions have really worked out well for us, and we are stock-pickers at heart. Those stock picks that have done well include Dominos Pizza, Ramsay Healthcare and Aristocrat Leisure. It’s always tough to find opportunities and we work hard to scratch around the market to find them. We’ve got a pretty robust process. The approach has been proven to work, and we seem to continue to find them, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It always seems it’s trickiest at the moment, but that’s been the case for the eight years we’ve been running this fund. Our view is that cash is a pretty unattractive asset class. We tend to remain fairly fully invested. We think we’re able to find opportunities that are going to beat cash over the long term, and that’s where we’re looking for returns. Over the past year we’ve owned a number of good-quality, growing companies that have really beaten expectations, and it’s our focus on how those businesses are performing, as against the expectations of the market – or to say it a different way, what’s priced in to the share prices – and it’s those divergent views that put us in good stead to outperform. Our focus really is day-to-day at a granular level to focus on what the market is missing. That occupies our entire investment approach when it all boils down to it.