Profitability and longevity
A strong focus on companies which show revenue certainty, profitability and longevity, derived from monopoly-like regulated underlying assets has helped the Lazard Global Listed Infrastructure fund take out the Fund Manager of the Year award in the Infrastructure Securities category.
The fund, which is an actively managed portfolio and invests in equity infrastructure securities and will be celebrating its 15-year anniversary in October, has a strict valuation discipline which prevents it from overpaying for quality assets.
“We think that experience is really crucial in this asset class. We have a long history of working with these infrastructure assets through many different cycles. Our fund is the longest-running listed infrastructure fund in the Australian market and has a long track record of meeting and exceeding its objectives,” Warryn Robertson, portfolio manager at Lazard Asset Management, said.
The fund’s strategy is a long-only, valuation-driven investment strategy that targets long-term, lower risk, inflation-linked returns. “We are stockpickers, managing a concentrated portfolio of preferred infrastructure securities. The number of stocks held will generally range from 25 to 50, and we make active decisions to invest in companies that we believe to be undervalued,” Robertson added.
Apart from a long history of successfully investing in infrastructure assets, the fund’s differentiating factors also include a unique risk/return profile as the strategy is 100% invested in listed, preferred infrastructure companies, characterised by factors such as ownership of real assets, stable demand, pricing power and manageable debt, with assets located predominantly in OECD countries.
On top of this, the fund is underpinned by Lazard’s global network which offers the team access information, opinions and advice from Lazard’s investment professionals. It also had a stable management team with four of the six investment professionals having been involved with the strategy since its inception and no single departures from the team since June 2007.
Commenting on the award, Robertson said: “It is an honour to have our Global Listed Infrastructure fund acknowledged by our industry peers. This recognition of our performance highlights our long–track record of delivering strong risk-adjusted returns for our clients”.
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