About Global - Urban Population Megatrend
The Martin Currie Global – Urban Population Megatrend strategy seeks to provide an attractive total return by capturing income from the upside of urban population growth via investment in a diversified portfolio of listed global real asset securities from developed and emerging countries.
Real Assets (such as REITs, infrastructure and utilities) are the ‘every day-use’ building blocks of the economy and demand for Real Assets is pegged to region specific population growth and drives income growth.
Through a growing demand for everyday use services, Real Assets can capture a dependable income-focused return, independent of the business or economic cycle.
Not all Real Assets are equal for investors seeking an income-focused total return stream.
- We don’t invest in esoteric investments as such as listed commodities, gold or resource securities, timberlands, agriculture investments, unlisted investments in property, utilities, infrastructure, listed property developers, inflation linked bonds.
The urban population growth mega trend is global, but selective.
- Not all countries and cities are growing, and some are in fact going backwards.
- Real Assets operating in areas without urban population growth are less favourable.
- We have identified opportunities based in cities with attractive population growth rates such as Atlanta, London, Calgary, Toronto, Melbourne and Auckland,
- We specifically avoid Real Assets exposed to low growth cities such as Tokyo and Detroit.
By focusing on select target countries, regions and cities with the most attractive demographic growth for population and urbanisation, this investment universe serves as a foundation to create a unique and diversified set of every day-use building blocks of the economy where population growth, not the business cycle, drives returns.
Our approach is premised on the philosophy that the performance of Real Assets are driven by their leverage to the key demographic themes of population, urbanisation and middle-class growth. As a result, quality listed Real Asset securities can sustain dividends, grow distributions to match a rising cost of living and are likely to be less volatile than the wider equity market.
We believe that maximising income and minimising risks such as impaired income, concentration risk and inflation, is a much more important risk measure than benchmark relative alpha and tracking-error measures. As such, we believe that the traditional approach to think about benchmark relative risk may not be appropriate in income focussed portfolios.
By placing client needs at the heart of the benchmark unaware product design, the Martin Currie Global – Urban Population Megatrend strategy can deliver
- Attractive uncorrelated total return
- Above average dividend yield
- Lower-than-market total risk outcome
- Higher quality portfolio than the broader market
Research outputs from Martin Currie Australia’s multi-lensed approach are combined with our investment thesis to determine conviction and individual security target weightings.
The diversified portfolio of listed Real Assets is constructed on a bottom-up, benchmark unaware basis, taking into consideration stock limits as well as geographic and sectorial diversification.
| Portfolio characteristics | Global - Urban Population Megatrend |
|---|---|
| Long-term objective | Earn a pre-tax yield income yield above the MSCI AC World Index yield |
| Investable Universe | Global listed Real Asset securities |
| Benchmark | Benchmark unaware |
| Market capitalisation | All cap |
| Country limit | Max country weight 40% |
| Sector limit | Unconstrained |
| Security limit | Absolute 8% and Max 40% in securities >5% |
| Number of stocks | Typically 40 |
| Portfolio turnover | Typically 25% p.a. |
| Forecast tracking error | We do not target tracking error, but total risk outcome is typically <80% of the market. |
| Inception | July 2020 |
Not all Real Assets are created equal for income investors
The Martin Currie Australia Real Asset team focus on identifying high-quality established ‘brownfield’ assets, avoiding riskier development in ‘greenfield’ projects.
Daniel Fitzgerald
Portfolio Manager
Andrew Chambers
- Job title
- Portfolio Manager, Real Assets
- Experience
- 27 years
Daniel Fitzgerald
- Job title
- Portfolio Manager, Real Assets
- Experience
- 22 years
Ashton Reid
- Job title
- Portfolio Manager, Real Assets
- Experience
- 30 years
Strategy guide
The Martin Currie Global – Urban Population Megatrend strategy seeks to provide an attractive total return by capturing income from the upside of urban population growth via investment in a diversified portfolio of listed global real asset securities from developed and emerging countries.
We have put the income needs of clients at the heart of the product design for the Global - Urban Population Megatrend strategy.
How to invest
Please contact us to discuss the most appropriate investment to meet your requirements.
How to invest
Martin Currie is a Specialist Investment Manager of Franklin Resources Inc, operating as Franklin Templeton.
Franklin Templeton is responsible for the sales and client service of our funds for financial advisers and individual investors.
If you would like to find out more about these funds, please visit the Franklin Templeton website.
How to invest
Martin Currie is a ‘Specialist Investment Manager’ within the Franklin Templeton group.
Franklin Templeton is responsible for the sales and client service of our funds for financial advisers and individual investors.
If you would like to find out more about these funds, please visit the Franklin Templeton website.
How to invest
Martin Currie is a ‘Specialist Investment Manager’ within the Franklin Templeton group.
Franklin Templeton is responsible for the sales and client service of our funds for financial advisers and individual investors.
If you would like to find out more about these funds, please visit the Franklin Templeton website.
Funds available
Through our parent company, Franklin Templeton, investors are offered access to the below funds.
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