The Fund ended the month in negative territory and underperformed its benchmark, the MSCI World Value Total Return Net Index. Year-to-date the Fund is still up but lags its benchmark.

The year 2019 has been a challenging year for the Fund. With increased uncertainty about the economic development it seems that investors are searching for safety and earnings visibility. Investors are finding this visibility in two groups of companies. Firstly, there are the growth companies where investors are expecting continued growth, independent of economic developments. Secondly, there are the ‘defensives’ such as consumer staples, companies where the underlying business is less impacted by the economic cycle. Cyclical companies on the other hand are eschewed. This has resulted in a further increase in the valuation dispersion, which was already high at the start of the year.

Although we can see the rational behind the search for safety, the price you pay (valuation) for this (perceived) safety is extremely high at the moment. In our view the low expected returns do not provide sufficient compensation, even taking into account the lower business risk. The high valuations in these parts of the market provide no margin of safety for disappointment, and hence are riskier than investors might think. This is why we have only limited exposure to these two groups of companies.

On the other hand, within the more cyclical end of the market quality companies are ignored as investors are concerned about the short-term earnings development. We are willing to take a longer-term view, and always assess the earnings power of a company over the cycle rather than just the next two years. Because of this we currently find opportunities in quality companies that trade at a significant discount to their over the cycle earnings potentials. The discount provides us with a large margin of safety, and because of this we are willing to accept a somewhat lower short-term visibility. The higher expected returns compensate for taking this ‘risk’. By spreading the portfolio across multiple of these opportunities with various underlying drivers also avoid concentration risk in the portfolio.

The Kempen Global Value strategy follows a disciplined valuation approach. We assess companies based on long-term earnings power and seek a margin of safety in the price we pay when we select our investments. In summary, the current environment offers the opportunity to buy a well-diversified portfolio with solid earnings power at an attractive valuation. Historically, value has outperformed growth over the long-term, but value has underperformed growth for an unprecedented period by now. As we believe in reversion to the mean, value investing could offer an attractive investment opportunity going forward.

Strong performers this month were Leopalace21, H&M and Enel. Japanese Leopalace21 constructs and leases apartments and has issues with a range of its apartments, which will create additional costs to fix the issues and reduce occupancy rates in the meantime. Its recent profits were in line with expectations, while other good news came from significant cost cutting. H&M continued to do well after it has showed improvements in its quarterly figures already a couple of quarters. Italian utility Enel reported better than expected results and is benefiting from good growth in its renewables business.

Weaker performers in August were Wood Group, L Brands and Sydbank. L Brands was under pressure as the comparable sales growth for Victoria’s Secret declined. Engineering company Wood Group repeated its full year outlook and announced an important disposal (resulting in reaching its deleveraging target), we were surprised to see the shares kept drifting down. In financials, banks continued to perform poorly as the interest rate environment got worse for them (with sometimes even negative long-term rates). Also Sydbank was hit by this.

Trading was limited in August. We sold our position in Aggreko and added Swedish industrial company SKF as a new name. Aggreko had performed well and was not very attractively valued anymore. SKF is a well-managed company that offered a more attractive valuation.

Our focus is on finding companies that can be bought at a discount to our estimate of intrinsic value. We base our estimate on the Earnings Power Value (EPV) framework of the Columbia Business School. EPV allows us to separate the three valuation components: asset value, earnings power and growth value. This framework improves our ability to analyze what we are paying for and gives insight into whether a stock is priced with a margin of safety. In addition, ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) is fully incorporated in our investment process.