The fund seeks capital appreciation in the long term by investing in companies across any size outside the United States.
The sub-adviser’s investment process starts with a list of companies in the benchmark index and the research team utilizes quantitative techniques and fundamental analysis to identify investment opportunities.
Next, the research team focuses on non-U.S. issuers that offer attractive valuations.
According to the investment team, an issuer is said to be located in a country if it is organized under the laws of and its equity securities are principally traded in that country.
The team also considers an issuer that is domiciled or has its principal place of business located in and its equity securities are principally traded in that country.
Lastly, the team determines that the issuer has more than 50% of its assets in, or derives more than 50% of its revenues from, that country.
The team employs a proprietary quantitative investment analysis to identify companies generating high returns historically.
Then the team evaluates companies on the basis of valuation metrics such as dividends, cash-flow, earnings, sales and asset-based measures.
Additionally, the team narrows the investable universe to a list of high quality companies utilizing factors such as profitability, stability, financial strength, and management quality.
The research team integrates environmental, social and governance factors as part of its process.
Then the manager constructs a portfolio of stocks from a list of companies favored by the research team and allocates capital based on its conviction level.
The fund invests in a variety of countries throughout the world including emerging market countries and may, from time to time, invest more than 25% of its net assets in any one country or group of countries.
In addition, the fund does not generally invest in major thermal coal companies or with a high level of thermal coal reserves.