Sustainable, Responsible &/or ESG Policy:

The Strategy places ESG analysis and criteria at the heart of its investment decisions, embedding it within all steps of our investment process. We view ESG criteria as a component of both risk and opportunity, and we seek to avoid those businesses with significant negative ESG exposure and allocate capital to those with positive ESG exposure. We screen for ESG elements in our universe screen, we rank for sustainability indicators in our idea generation phase, and our fundamental analysis approach dives deep on all ESG and sustainability considerations, using our proprietary Capitals Framework to assess externalities and sustainable opportunities, and capturing these insights directly into our internally built and maintained company models. Our portfolio construction process aims to create a balance between the identified ESG opportunities, and our engagement and reporting processes place transparency, ESG-relevancy, and sustainability at the centre.
 The Capitals Framework enables the analysis of companies' externalities across various dimensions of sustainability: natural
capital, social capital and human capital:

• Our Natural Capital analysis covers carbon, biodiversity, and water.
• Our Social Capital analysis considers stakeholder interactions and diversity and inclusion.
• Our Human Capital analysis draws heavily on our distinctive methodology for evaluating corporate culture and considers ownership mindset, recognition, trust, and support.

We use this framework to analyse those points of interaction between companies and the society and environments they operate in, and evaluate their magnitude, materiality, and importance (how they may influence a company’s return potential). Our Capitals Framework ultimately allows us to identify Sustainability Leaders.

Features of the framework:

• Aligned with our investment philosophy: the analysis centres on the drivers of growth and returns.
• Embedded within our fundamental analysis: externalities analysis directly influences the investment case.
• Focused on value creation: the ultimate aim of the analysis is to understand how an investment creates or destroys value for all stakeholders.
• Proprietary and systematic: incorporating both qualitative and quantitative assessments, the framework is proprietary and enables the systematic analysis of complex areas. We do not rely on third-party ESG data providers.

The strategy employs a bespoke bottom-up investment process designed specifically for the relevant diverse universe of global equities that are best positioned to capture the long-term secular growth opportunities arising from the shift towards sustainability. We look to identify companies providing solutions to sustainability challenges where the corporate sector plays a key role, and which have significant potential for long-term, structural growth. We have developed methodologies to identify companies that we believe are genuinely providing sustainable solutions to unmet needs across six structural growth areas: 

1. Decarbonisation: we see significant structural growth potential for companies that provide products and services that contribute to reducing carbon emissions;
2. Climate adaptation, water & pollution management: we see significant structural growth potential for companies that provide products and services that help manage the impact of climate change, creating a diverse global climate adaptation investment universe. This methodology expands into water and pollution management where we see significant need for products and services given resource constraints and ageing infrastructure and a large amount of public funding is going towards tackling water scarcity, creating attractive long-term growth opportunities for companies with leading solutions;
3. Healthcare impact: we see significant structural growth potential for healthcare impact companies that address unmet needs through innovation in healthcare products and services, and by extending healthcare access to underserved regions and communities. 
4. Financial inclusion: we see significant structural growth potential for companies that drive financial inclusion by providing underserved cohorts with accessible financial products and services;
5. Digital inclusion: investing to close the digital divide is more urgent than ever. Small and medium-sized enterprises are significant contributors to commerce and innovation globally, and supporting their inclusion in a digital economy continues to grow in importance in all countries; and
6. Access to education: we see significant structural growth potential for companies that extend quality education and training to underserved cohort and address global skills gaps. 

The investment process incorporates proprietary models, such as our sustainable revenues screen, our detailed company-level fundamental financial and risk modelling and corporate culture assessment, but ultimately relies on our qualitative decisions.

This structured and disciplined investment process is designed to efficiently focus analysts’ time on the deep fundamental research of a shortlist of companies that make it through our universe filter and idea generation, to identify businesses with sustainable drivers of structural growth, competitive advantages, and sustainable returns. The portfolio is then constructed from the bottom-up, based on the level of conviction in each position. Ongoing management and monitoring of holdings are intrinsically linked with our engagement work and active stewardship.

Process:

The five defined stages to the investment process are described in further detail below:

1. Universe Screen

The investment team constructs a sustainable investment universe by screening for companies with more than 50% of revenues across one or more of the Bloomberg Industry Classification Standards (BICS) categories we believe align to sustainability challenges. These companies have the potential to capture the long-term secular growth opportunities arising from the shift towards a more sustainable future. It is important to think not just about the direct beneficiaries of this sustainable transition, but the entire related supply chains that need to be built up. The universe comprises ~5,000 companies across sectors, regions, and market capitalisations.

The investment team also filters based on our defined set of externalities and research- driven exclusions; these are not ethically or morally derived exclusions. These can be found on our website here. 

1. Idea Generation 

The main source of idea generation is a ranking of the resultant universe based on key financial, sustainability and competitive advantage metrics that reflect the structural growth, competitive advantage, and sustainable return characteristics that we seek in businesses. The ranking stimulates team debate, whilst analyst experience and knowledge enable a qualitative overlay to broaden the idea pool as appropriate. The metrics chosen derives from decades of investment team and firm-wide experience as well as rigorous back-testing and relevant cross-sector analysis. This screen directs analyst research, which can then lead to further qualitative idea generation.

We have also integrated an internal sustainability indicator into this part of the process. This indicator assesses companies across various sustainability and ESG factors that we've identified as being likely to have a financial impact on a company, with each company appraised relative to its sector. Once a company screens to be included in stage three (Fundamental Analysis), we perform our own sustainability analysis of the company. This is an integral part of the investment process as we believe that companies with strong sustainability characteristics, focused on minimising their negative externalities, can outperform over time.

1. Fundamental analysis

Once a company comes through our idea generation screen, we move it to the next stage of the investment process where the team conducts the fundamental analysis to identify whether sustainability factors and competitive advantages are underpriced by the market. 

The first stage of our fundamental analysis process is focused on the company’s business model and whether it fits with our requirement for structural growth, sustainable returns and competitive advantage. At this stage we also carry out our own sustainability  analysis by assessing the externalities generated by the company. When we are comfortable that the company fulfils our requirement and there are no material sustainability risks, we take it forward to a second, more detailed stage of fundamental analysis.

We also conduct detailed fundamental analysis of sub-sectors and technologies exposed to the sustainable structural growth areas that we invest in. This helps us to inform and stress test our company models. See our paper “A sustainable investment edge” for more details on the structural growth we expect to see from these areas.

a) Company analysis and understanding on structural growth opportunity 

The investment team works through a rigorous checklist for each investment idea. We want to find the best companies in our universe which are intrinsically undervalued. 

The team conducts fundamental analysis by constructing detailed models. We build sustainability insights directly into our financial models, enabling us to construct portfolios of companies where the sustainable investment case is underappreciated by the market and where we therefore expect sustainability to be a driver of long-term alpha.

Using our proprietary Capitals Framework, we assess companies qualitatively and quantitatively through a lens that incorporates relevant stakeholders, to evaluate how a company’s impacts on its stakeholders are likely to influence its growth and return potential. 

b) Competitive advantage

Market participants systematically underestimate the quantum and persistence of returns in cases where businesses have sustainable long-term competitive advantages. This results in exploitable inefficiencies. Our competitive advantage analysis can be simplified by answering the key questions/topics shown below:

1. Company factors: culture, technology, brand, cost competitiveness, R&D spend, and market share; and 
2. Market factors: market growth, pricing power, barriers to entry, substitutes, and consumer acceptance.

We use these competitive advantage factors to determine the long-term sustainability of the business in question. In addition, we believe a strong balance sheet and outstanding management are also a competitive advantage and ensure we cover these factors during our fundamental analysis. We pay particular attention to having an informed perspective of the competitive advantage period and how that translates into the sustainable margin, cash flow generation and/or economic value added. 

Culture is an aspect of a company’s competitive advantage that we believe is often poorly understood by investors as it is challenging to evaluate, and consequently may be mispriced – suggesting an opportunity for active investors. We only buy a stock when we have made a culture assessment of a company, using our bespoke corporate-culture framework. This framework draws on insights from company meetings, academic collaborations, expert-network access and employee resources. The framework was developed from a collaborative research project between Ninety One’s Investment Institute and Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School. For more information on our corporate culture work, refer to our paper “Culture as a driver of sustainable alpha”. The goal of this step is to identify areas of competitive advantage often overlook and mispriced.

We believe all of this analysis helps us to identify companies that can create value by generating a return on investment. 

c) Return profile and growth

It is important to note that profitable growth and efficient use of capital is embedded within each of the above calculations. Structural growth and sustainable returns are two key drivers of our stock selection and analysis. We believe growth and compounding characteristics are key factors in determining a reasonable fair value for any company. In compounders, we are looking for enduring competitive advantages and companies with a durable and resilient outlook. We therefore do not claim to be only growth or only value investors, instead we invest in the leading companies within our universe where we believe there is underappreciated value. 

d) Valuation

The team conducts full financial and valuation analysis by constructing individual company models to determine the growth, earning, cash generation, and intrinsic value of the companies under review. Our proprietary equity models are maintained within the team and contain our own forecasts which embed our sustainability insights both on the impact opportunity side as well as from a risk and negative externality perspective. Research from earlier parts of the process is used and built on here. In undertaking full income statement, cashflow statement and balance sheet analysis we can focus on specific financial metrics which we believe to be the drivers of long-term returns. The output of the equity analysis is a target price for the company across different scenarios.

The target price is based on three main components with returns and cash flow being prioritised: 

• Intrinsic value (DCF)
• Returns analysis (CFROI)
• Multiples analysis (FCF Yield)

e) Management, sustainability, and engagement assessment

Capital allocation decisions and operational performance are important considerations for us when evaluating management. Much of these considerations feed into our competitive advantage and valuation work. We also place huge significance on sustainability factors as highlighted in our initial screens. Sustainability reports and net zero emissions targets are important throughout our fundamental analysis as well as topics featuring in team debates.

This fundamental bottom-up research stage of the investment process also includes company meetings and onsite visits where we will focus on all the key factors mentioned above. We will only buy a stock for the portfolio after we have met with company management.

When all factors described above score positively for an investment idea, we will add it to our list of best ideas and compare to the existing holdings. 

1. Portfolio Construction

The portfolio is constructed from the bottom-up in a benchmark-agnostic fashion, using the best ideas1 from previous stages of the investment process. We take an absolute contribution to risk-based approach to portfolio construction such that our highest-conviction stocks represent the highest contribution to risk. We consider elements such as the strength of sustainability credentials, competitive advantages, carbon footprint and trajectory and the contribution to the portfolio's overall risk. The portfolio is then reviewed at a sub-sector level with regards to overall risk budget, sub-sector risks, stress tests and style analytics metrics. Weightings may then be adjusted accordingly. We use MSCI Barra One for quantitative portfolio risk analysis and optimisation.

1. Engagement and Reporting

We believe that individual and collective engagements are powerful tools to effect positive change. We meet management and set engagement goals for all portfolio companies, with an explicit focus on the disclosure of KPIs that allow us to measure the impact of their products and services, growth of these KPIs, adoption of net-zero commitments and science-based targets, as well as to engage on any material sustainability or financial matters. Engagement is bespoke and generates information that feeds back into our portfolio monitoring, including valuable insights into company progress and any culture changes. Key principles of our engagement approach are set out below.

1. We set engagement goals for all portfolio companies, engage regularly, reporting progress to clients in our annual sustainability report 
2. Many of the engagement topics are long-term in nature and we acknowledge progress incrementally
3. We also vote on proxies to hold board and management teams accountable to the highest standards

In our annual sustainability report, we provide transparency on positions and company engagement, as well as an explanation of why we believe the companies may see structural growth and have a competitive advantage.

Measuring impact and sustainability

While our preference is to quantify the impact of the sustainable solutions delivered by the companies we own where possible, not all positive impacts can be perfectly quantified today. We do not believe this should prevent investors from providing the capital required support a more sustainable future. In reporting on impact, we are transparent about our choice of KPI used to determine impact, and will explain any changes in these KPIs over time as data and company reporting evolves.

Resources, Affiliations & Corporate Strategies:

Ninety One operates a fully integrated approach to ESG, sustainability and stewardship. Therefore sustainability knowledge and expertise is held across a number of areas of the business. The Sustainability Committee oversees the sustainability ecosystem in the business. Ninety One’s firm-wide sustainability strategy and initiatives are overseen by the Chief Sustainability Officer, Nazmeera Moola, supported by the central Sustainability team. This includes investment integration, advocacy, corporate transition to net zero and developing and implementing efforts to mobilise dedicated funding for an inclusive and sustainable transition.

Ultimately, the investment teams have responsibility for managing sustainability risks and opportunities within their investment process through their integration frameworks. We place a big emphasis on ensuring that the investment teams have the appropriate knowledge, insights, data and tools so that the expertise is a truly integrated part of the investment process. The investment teams are supported by dedicated ESG specialists across our Sustainability team and Investment Risk team. We also have further expertise that we can draw upon from the portfolio managers managing our dedicated sustainability strategies, and other sustainability specialists that are dedicated to individual investment teams.

The below provides an overview of the teams, committees and forums with oversight and responsibility for various aspects of sustainability:

Sustainable, Social & Ethics Committee (SS&E)
Oversees compliance with sustainability, social and ethical commitments, targets, and performance.
Reviews sustainability initiatives and implementation across the three pillars of the framework.

Sustainability Committee (SC)
Responsible for the internal oversight of Sustainability and Stewardship, including:
Determining sustainability strategy and monitoring progress on ESG integration, stewardship, advocacy, climate risk, regulation, and other related matters.
Ensuring alignment of focus and integrity throughout the business.

Sustainable Investment Advisory Committee (SIAF)
Responsible for the internal coordination and challenge of investment-related sustainability issues:
Ensuring alignment and compliance of products with sustainability and impact objectives.
Serving as a forum for consultation and discussion on sustainability initiatives, guidelines, and policies.

Sustainability Team
Central custodian of the firm-wide Sustainability strategy, responsible for:
Development of strategy and sustainability and stewardship policies and frameworks.
Promoting best practice ESG integration and stewardship across investment teams.
Coordinating and leading advocacy and firmwide sustainability initiatives.
Providing sustainability expertise and monitoring implementation of sustainability strategy.

Investment Risk Team
Oversight and challenge of firm-wide ESG risk assessment, management, and integration quality.
Management of ESG and climate risk data.

Investment Operations: Proxy Voting
Coordination and execution of the voting process.
Work with the sustainability team to align voting with strategic initiatives.

Investment Teams
Responsible for developing ESG integration frameworks and engagement priorities.
Undertaking ESG analysis, engagement, and voting.
Supporting firmwide initiatives.

Product Development
Manages sustainable product strategy and product development process.

Compliance
Coordinates input on, advises on, and ensures implementation of sustainability-related regulation.

We seek to contribute meaningfully to the conversation on sustainability and to encourage a deeper focus on sustainability-related issues in all of the jurisdictions where we invest, always to the benefit of our clients and their long-term investment outcomes. We may collaborate with other investors as part of an engagement strategy if it can contribute to achieving our engagement objectives and can help address the relevant risks. . Our membership of regional and global organisations facilitates this.

The table below details our firmwide collaborative partnerships and our role:

Dialshifter

This fund is helping to ‘shift the dial from brown to green’ by…

… investing in companies with sustainable drivers that are helping to build a better world. Our investment philosophy is focused on pricing positive and negative externalities better than the market, meaning the fund invests in businesses that can deliver sustainable structural growth by providing solutions to sustainability challenges, and can effectively manage sustainability risks. Central to this is carbon reduction in line with the Paris Agreement; all companies we own must have verified science-based targets by 2030 and a large proportion of the portfolio is invested in companies providing decarbonization solutions across renewable energy, electrification and resource efficiency pathways.

SDR Labelling:

Sustainability Impact label

SDR Literature:

• SDR Consumer Facing Disclosure
• Global Sustainable Equity - Sustainability criteria
• Global Sustainable Equity - Adoption of SDR Sustainability Impact label
• Global Sustainable Equity – Sustainability Report