LIONTRUST UK GROWTH I

Investment Process

The managers operate the Economic Advantage investment process, which seeks out quality companies whose competitive strengths deliver sustained earnings growth ahead of market forecasts. This in turn will typically lead to long-term share price outperformance. The process places a big emphasis on intangible assets that create barriers to competition and help boost financial returns. Cross and Fosh believe the hardest characteristics for competitors to replicate are intellectual property such as trade secrets, significant recurrent business, and strong physical and electronic distribution networks. Other intangibles which tick the boxes include customer databases and relationships, culture, and brand quality. Once a stock has shown it possesses an Economic Advantage the managers examine financial factors such as cash flow return on capital - they stress that for a company to be successful it must make a higher return than the cost of capital invested in it. They also look at margins, cash generation and pricing power. The managers seek to avoid ‘jam-tomorrow’ unprofitable companies and certain sectors such as banking, mining, and overseas stocks. Valuation is the last cog in the investment process, with five metrics such as price to earnings ratio being evaluated to avoid overpaying. Each holding is given a risk score based upon eight criteria such as financial risk, product dependency and regulatory change. The lower the risk, the higher its weighting in the portfolio which tends to have between 40 and 50 stocks.