Fund overview
The Royal London UK Equity Fund seeks to achieve capital growth by investing primarily in a broad portfolio of quoted UK stocks and shares. The fund draws on the manager’s top down investment process and focuses on earnings momentum as a key driver of future share price performance.
Manager
Jane Coffey began her investment career in 1987, managing Continental European assets at Provident Mutual, before becoming a Continental European equity fund manager at RLAM. In 1996 she joined Morley Fund Management to head up the European Equity team; a role she also moved on to hold at SLC Asset Management. Jane rejoined RLAM in 2002. As Head of Equities she oversees a team of highly experienced and successful fund managers with varied investment styles. Jane holds a degree in Economics with German from the University of Sussex, has a Diploma in Company Direction from the Institute of Directors and is an Associate of the CFA.
Investment approach
Jane combines both top down and bottom up analysis to forecast the prospects for a company’s short and long term profit growth in order to find the most attractive investment opportunities.
The majority of stocks in the portfolio will comprise companies that have strong market franchises and will enjoy above average profit growth over the medium term. This is because the value of an individual company will grow as its cashflows and profits grow over time, and a company that has a sustainable growth rate above the market should see its share price appreciate more than the average for the market. However the key to generating a return from this analysis is to look at the dynamics of how expectations for profits will change. There are three main elements to the fund manager’s process of identifying those candidates that she expects to surprise; understanding the macro economic backdrop, spotting changes in earnings momentum, and identifying changes in company strategy or market positions.