Schroders’ Alpha Plus team masters long-term performance
The two funds in the range with a 10-year track record have produced top-quartile returns over this period.
Data from
FE Analytics shows the Schroder Alpha Plus funds have by and large outperformed over longer time periods, with only the two newer additions to the stable lagging their benchmark since launch.
The six funds are concentrated high-conviction products and are run by some of the strongest names at Schroders. Two of these –
Leon Howard-Spink and Nathan Gibbs – are FE Alpha Managers, while Richard Buxton held the accolade up until last year.
The two funds with a 10-year track record – Gibbs’ Schroder Japan Alpha Plus and Buxton’s Schroder UK Alpha Plus – are top quartile in their respective sectors over this period, as well as over five years.
The other fund in the range with a five-year track record is
Schroder Asian Alpha Plus, run by Matthew Dobbs, which has produced first-quartile performance over three years and since its launch in November 2007.
The Schroder Global Alpha Plus and US Alpha Plus portfolios are the most recent additions, launched in April 2010 and December 2011 respectively.
They have both marginally underperformed their benchmark, though this is unlikely to concern their long-term focused management teams.
Performance of funds over 10-yrs
Source: FE Analytics
Schroder Japan Alpha Plus was the first of the series to be launched and has been run by FE Alpha Manager Nathan Gibbs for its entire history.
Over 10 years it has produced returns more than treble that of the average fund in the sector, gaining 45.8 per cent in the stagnant Japanese market.
The fund is underweight industrial heavyweights Toyota, Mitsubishi and Canon, while its largest holding is in freight company Kintetsu World Express.
Schroder UK Alpha Plus was launched in 2002 with Richard Buxton at the helm; since then it has returned 155.31 per cent, more than double that of the average fund in the IMA UK All Companies Sector.
In that time the FTSE All Share benchmark has gained 87.39 per cent.
Buxton recently told FE Trustnet that a highly concentrated, contrarian approach suits the current turbulent market, but added that he hasn’t ruled out becoming more benchmark-driven when conditions improve.
The least concentrated fund in the series is
Schroder Asian Alpha Plus, which has 62 separate holdings, while the most concentrated is the recently launched US fund, which has just 29.
In March,
FE Trustnet reported that the Asian fund had one of the best risk/reward ratios in the Asia Pacific ex Japan sector.
It has returned 67.4 per cent over the past three years, after falling with the markets in 2007 and 2008.
The portfolio is overweight the consumer discretionary and IT sectors and underweight telecoms and utilities.
Five FE-crowned
Schroder European Alpha Plus has delivered 4.48 per cent over five-years, compared with losses of 13.89 per cent from the average portfolio in the IMA Europe ex UK sector.
Manager Howard-Spink is underweight European favourites Nestle, Total and Siemens, and overweight lesser-known companies such as certification business Bureau Veritas and chemical distribution firm Brenntag.