Aristotle Capital Management has launched the Aristotle International Equity Fund, which will invest at least 80 per cent of its net assets in publicly traded equity securities or depository receipts of companies organised, headquartered or doing a substantial amount of business outside the US.
The institutional, no-load share class will trade under the symbol ARSFX.
Geoffrey S Stewart and Sean M Thorpe are the portfolio managers and are responsible for the day to day management of the fund. All investment decisions are made by the portfolio managers as a team.
Stewart and Thorpe currently direct the international equity strategy at Aristotle, where they both serve as principals, portfolio managers and members of Aristotle’s research team.
In selecting investments for the fund, Aristotle employs a fundamental, bottom-up approach, focusing first on identifying companies that it believes have high-quality businesses that are undervalued by the market relative to what Aristotle believes to be their fair value.
Aristotle then assesses the attractiveness of the valuations of those high-quality companies by analysing a variety of valuation metrics, such as cash flow return on enterprise value (i.e., the rate of return on the total value of the business), price-to-earnings ratios, sales and free cash flow ratios, and break-up values, among others. Aristotle then looks for potential catalysts for each company’s business that could help unlock what Aristotle believes is its true value.
“Our strategy follows the basic tenets of all of Aristotle’s investment strategies by focusing on what we believe to be high-quality companies, which we always analyse from a global perspective,” says Stewart. “We invest with a long-term view and construct focused portfolios. We are pleased to offer the Fund to the open-ended mutual fund marketplace. The strategy previously was only available on a separate account basis for high net worth individuals and institutions.”
“Another unique aspect of our strategy at Aristotle is the distinct but complementary perspectives that Geoff and I bring to the portfolio. With my significant operational experience outside of the US combined with Geoff’s strong financial acumen, we believe we are able to identify great international companies with structural competitive advantages and clear paths to value creation for shareholders,” Thorpe says.
Prior to Aristotle, Stewart and Thorpe they both were analysts and portfolio managers with Reed, Conner & Birdwell, with responsibility for co-managing the international equity strategy. The firm combined its business with Aristotle Capital Management in January 2012.
