The fund invests predominantly in investment grade issuers; however, we are prepared to go down a company’s capital structure to find the best combination of yield, value and capital preservation. One feature of the fund is the substantial holding in financials, at 77.02%. Therefore, for some time we have positioned the fund to benefit from the continual improvement of credit metrics within European financials. Moreover, regulations have forced financials to build up capital and strengthen their balance sheets, all of which are supportive from a credit perspective.  All the regulatory measures taken in the last 14 years have enabled financials to withstand the Covid crisis. From a credit standpoint, financials are in an even stronger situation than prior to Covid, despite taking significant provisions for expected credit losses. Subordinated debt holders of financials should benefit the most from this strength. Moreover, with spreads of these securities currently close to 440 bps, valuations are extremely attractive. To put this into context, this is more than four times the spread of capturing for the Tier 1 securities of HSBC issued before the global financial crisis in 2007. This is despite the fact that, as mentioned above, financials have become much stronger from a credit quality standpoint.
Investment grade issuers:Â The spreads the fund captures are comparatively more than the European high yield corporates, with the additional benefit of the average issuer rating held within the fund being BBB+.
High income: Income is a significant component of returns, with a yield to maturity of 5.28% compared to 3.06% for the benchmark.
Low sensitivity to interest rates:Â With more than 59% of the securities being either fixed-to-floaters or already floaters, the fund is very well positioned for an environment of somewhat higher rates. Fixed-to-floating bonds are bonds where the coupon is fixed until the first call date within five to ten years, then re-fixes on a floating-rate note basis. During this quarter, we have seen that the fund had a positive performance despite the rise in interest rates.
