Heptagon Yacktman US Equity AE EUR Acc

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|23/02/2024

by Adam Sabban
Heptagon Yacktman US Equity’s unique investment approach and skilled investment team make it a strong choice.

Managers Stephen Yacktman, Jason Subotky, and Adam Sues apply an absolute-return framework to a wide opportunity set, making this a fund that colors outside the lines. Investors can expect a mix of traditionally defined growth and value stocks, as well as non-US holdings. The managers’ favorite opportunities are companies with a good foundation but a suboptimal structure that obscures the value of certain assets or impairs profitability. Corporate divestitures, balance-sheet optimization, and business rationalization are just a few of the traits the managers may lean on in their upside estimates. For instance, the portfolio’s largest holding as of December 2023 was Bollore SE, a French conglomerate the team feels is undervalued relative to the sum of its parts after a transformation of its business. This fund is very similar to the AMG Yacktman US mutual fund but has a 20% limit on non-US investments.

But not all holdings have exotic backstories. High-quality companies such as Microsoft MSFT, Alphabet GOOG, and PepsiCo PEP also carry prominent weightings. The managers value these companies because of their profitability and defensive properties and will sometimes use them as funding to pick up beaten-down cyclical stocks during market selloffs. Indeed, this defense-to-offense playbook is one of the key reasons for the fund’s stellar risk-adjusted performance. Cash stakes also helped mute volatility, though the managers cut the cash weighting to under 10% of assets as inflation rose and valuations became more attractive heading into 2022.

The Yacktman team has continued to grow in recent years, periodically picking up an analyst here and there. It most recently hired a data analyst to assist with client requests and bespoke research tasks to help free up time for the small team, which totals five investment personnel. While there are better-resourced rivals, the insights and discipline of this compact group have more than offset that.

Performance bounced back in 2023 as stock selection drove strong results. Even though international stocks trailed US stocks in 2023, a handful of foreign-domiciled companies were the team’s best performers, including Canadian Natural Resources CNQ and Samsung Electronics.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Differentiated.
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Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentAverage
ProcessHigh
 
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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