Pzena Em Mkts Focused Value A EUR Acc

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|12/04/2024

by Chris Tate
Pzena Emerging Markets Value’s fastidious team and sensible yet volatile approach is an attractive option for deep-value investing.

This team consists of seasoned investors who buy into the firm’s unique approach. The four-person portfolio management team—Caroline Cai, Allison Fisch, Rakesh Bordia, and Akhil Subramanian—adopt a collaborative approach with shared decision-making. The first three have been with Pzena between 17 and 22 years; Subramanian could be considered a newcomer by Pzena standards as he joined in 2017. They have the backing of the firm’s 29 portfolio managers and research analysts who support all the firm’s strategies regardless of geography. Research assignments are divided via industry and rotate every three to five years to promote a broader global perspective. Familiarity with the firm’s distinctive investment style is a critical element to the team’s success, as it can take patience for a thesis to materialize, and a company can often stumble further before its eventual turnaround.

Pzena’s approach is structured and repeatable, while also appropriately considering the risks associated with deep-value investing. A quantitative ranking of the largest emerging-markets companies based on price/normalized earnings serves as a starting point. The goal is to find firms in the cheapest quintile capable of a turnaround to restore their earnings to historical norms. The portfolio is relatively concentrated, and with its price multiple unsurprisingly at a big discount to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. With a contrarian mindset, the team is not afraid to take big country or sector positions relative to the benchmark. While bold positioning and actively investing in companies facing short-term could be a risky combination, appropriate checks and balances exist, including country-specific discount rates that account for macro and geopolitical factors, attention to leverage, and soliciting external bear cases. The approach has weathered its share of tricky markets over the years and learned from these periods to be refined for the better.

Still, investors shouldn’t expect smooth sailing. The portfolio typically displays volatility up to 2 percentage points more than the Morningstar Category benchmark, leading to an uneven return profile. Yet the strategy has compensated for this extra volatility and posted good risk-adjusted returns over the long term, particularly the past few years.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Inviting despite the volatility.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAbove Average
ProcessAbove Average
 
Morningstar Medalist RatingMorningstar assigns the Medalist Rating to funds that are qualitatively and quantitatively assessed through manager research and algorithmic processes. The assessment turns on three key “pillars” – People, Process, and Parent – that yield an estimate of how well a fund will perform before fees but after adjusting for risk.
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