This global fund is widely-diversified, and has just been reopened to new investors.
Artisan Global Value fund (ARTGX)
from The No-Load Fund Investor
Artisan Partners reopened the Artisan Global Value fund (ARTGX) on October 1. This fund has a record of excellent risk-adjusted returns over the long run, so it is a welcome addition to the list of no-load global equity funds available to new investors.
Equally important, however, is the signal sent by the reopening of this fund. Its managers, Dan O’Keefe and David Samra, make it very difficult for a stock to make it into this and/or their other offering, Artisan International Value (ARTKX), which remains closed to new investors.
A stock must offer four characteristics: undervaluation (usually on the order of at least 25%), superior business quality (including strong cash flows, competitive strength, and barriers to entry), financial strength (including manageable debt levels and good profitability), and shareholder-oriented management. Therefore, if they are seeing enough attractive securities (current or prospective holdings) to warrant reopening the fund, it’s a strong sign that recent volatility in the market has caused some quality companies to become attractively valued again. In other words, it’s a reason to be bullish.
Several of the fund’s holdings, which totaled 47 equities at the end of June, have experienced declines in their stock prices so far this year. The top holding, database provider Oracle, is down 17%. The second through fourth largest holdings, all financial stocks (Bank of New York Mellon, Royal Bank of Scotland and Citigroup) are down an average of nearly 10%. Some of the fund’s technology stocks, including Samsung, Qualcomm and Applied Materials, are down at least 15%. In fact, the financial services and technology sectors are easily the fund’s most prominent sectors, as they accounted for 40.3% and 25.5% of assets, respectively, as of June 30.
Global Value has traditionally devoted about 60%of assets to U.S. stocks. Stocks from developed Europe currently account for 33 percentage points of the balance, followed by South Korea (mainly Samsung) and a smattering of other emerging. Through September 30, the fund has produced a loss this year of 6.7%, which places it in the bottom 40% of the Global Equity category of our Performance Comparison tables. However, the relative performance of the fund improves as you lengthen the time period. Its annualized gain of 10.0% over the past three years places it in the second 20%, while its 11.0% annualized gain over the past five places it among the top five funds in its category.
Mark Salzinger, The No-Load Fund Investor, www.noloadfundinvestor.com, 800-706-6364, October 2015