The judges were impressed by the quality of the senior investment team and high calibre insights.
“The depth of research is assessed as top tier and is deemed an important ingredient for a high conviction, ‘growth’ biased smaller companies strategy. Importantly, the fund has achieved an enviable long-term track record of outperformance,” they said.
Lead portfolio manager, chief investment officer, and managing director, Mark Arnold, said the quality of the portfolio shone in periods of dislocation and the fund had outperformed during COVID-19.
“We manage on a bottom-up basis and we invest in really high-quality businesses with strong value propositions and their growth is not reliant on the economy growing,” Arnold said.
Lead portfolio manager and deputy chief investment officer, Jason Orthman, said the fund purchased US medical imaging firm Pro Medicus during the depths of COVID-19.
The company’s share price was initially impacted when hospitals shut down through the pandemic but it had rebounded strongly when hospitals opened up due to its digital modern offering.
“People realise it’s a modern way to engage and so it has won a number of large contracts with leading US hospitals and share prices has rebounded through the second half of the year,” he said.
“Modern businesses really have got a more relevant product or service to the next generation so they tend to be disrupting your average large incumbent businesses.”
The OC Micro-Cap fund was given a ‘highly commended’ by the judges who said the fund was well-structured and had bedded down its investment approach.
OC Funds head of investments, Rob Frost, said the fund’s investment philosophy revolved around three pillars: that markets could be emotional, backward-looking, and inefficient; securities could trade below their intrinsic value; and risk was investing in companies OC did not understand.
