It has taken eight years for Hyperion Asset Management to reclaim its crown as Fund Manager of the Year.
The fund manager was given the highest award at Money Management’s 2021 Fund Manager of the Year awards after winning two category awards and receiving a ‘highly commended’ for another.
This year, Hyperion won the Australian Large Cap Equities and the Australian Small/Mid Cap Equities categories while it received a ‘highly commended’ for the Global Equities category.
Speaking to Money Management, the fund’s chief investment officer and managing director, Mark Arnold, said the team was very excited and that it was a great honour.
“We are a small investment team of 13 and our values are that we are investment driven, not market driven. Our decision making is evidence based, we think long-term, and are alpha focused,” Arnold said.
Its lead portfolio manager and deputy chief investment officer, Jason Orthman, said it was nice to be recognised after working hard day-to-day.
He said moving to remote working during COVID-19 had been quite easy and that productivity increased as they had a group of driven individuals.
Orthman said their largest alpha capture points or outperformance tended to be during a crisis so while the pandemic caused a “real flux point in markets”, all three nominated funds performed very strongly.
The portfolios, he said, were a collection of modern businesses that had a relevant product or service to the next generation.
“Many of the market leaders have become really stale, are old world, and dominate the benchmarks they haven’t really innovated or invested in their businesses heavily as a general assumption,” Orthman said.
“There’s a whole range of businesses that started with a blank piece of paper, often that are founder-led and tend to be more modern and relevant in this digital smartphone internet-enabled world. The next generation, whether it’s the millennials or Generation Z, are clearly digital natives and behave completely differently to baby boomers.
“Many of these large firms have struggled to transition their business model and their products to be relevant to the next group of users. We really look for firms that are made for the times with products that are really disruptive.”
Arnold said the funds were more active last year as there were more opportunities to buy high-quality business at lower prices.
“We’ve added quite a few names to the global fund and added names to the Australian large cap and small cap funds as well,” he said.
“We are long-term business owners so when we buy a stock we’re hopeful the economics will hold for decades and we don’t like selling stocks necessarily.
“We’ll hold it as long as the economics are there and growing at double digit rates and the compounding effects is what we think is key to superior wealth accumulation.”
Both Arnold and Orthman said they were positive on the outlook for the next 12 months as their businesses would be able to sustain high levels of growth over a long period of time.
“We have modern businesses with strong value propositions and we believe our businesses will grow at high rates,” Orthman said.
