Bestinvest says
The fund was run by New Star's Toby Thompson for many years but, following Henderson's acquisition of New Star, management was passed to Graham Kitchen (Henderson's Head of UK Equities) and Andrew Jones. Our top rated alternatives in the UK Equity Income sector include Artemis Income and Threadneedle UK Equity Income.
The managers follow a flexible investment process, in that they are not fixated with any one approach to valuing and selecting companies. This enables them to identify companies with good long-term prospects trading at reasonable valuations.
Key considerations in stock selection are a company's market position, competitive threats and management. The team also look at financial factors including sustainability of returns, cashflow and the ability to pay and grow dividends.
The team use a range of both relative valuation techniques (e.g. PE, dividend yield) and absolute valuation techniques (net asset value, cashflow return) in order to set a valuation target. Stocks are sold when they meet the valuation target, when a fundamental change has a negative impact on their outlook, or when the team uncover an error in their original analysis.