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Specialist in Asia Pacific, Japan, China, India and South East Asia and Global Emerging Market equities.

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Specialists in equity portfolios in Asia Pacific, emerging markets, global and sustainable investment strategies

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This is a financial promotion for The First Sentier Global Listed Infrastructure Strategy. This information is for investors in the UK and elsewhere where lawful. Investing involves certain risks including:

  • The value of investments and any income from them may go down as well as up and are not guaranteed. Investors may get back significantly less than the original amount invested.
  • Currency risk: the Fund invests in assets which are denominated in other currencies; changes in exchange rates will affect the value of the Fund and could create losses. Currency control decisions made by governments could affect the value of the Fund's investments and could cause the Fund to defer or suspend redemptions of its shares. 
  • Single sector risk: investing in a single economic sector may be riskier than investing in a number of different sectors. Investing in a larger number of sectors helps to spread risk. 
  • Charges to capital risk: The fees and expenses may be charged against the capital property. Deducting expenses from capital reduces the potential for capital growth.
  • Listed infrastructure risk: the infrastructure sector and the value of the Fund is particularly affected by factors such as natural disasters, operational disruption and national and local environmental laws. 

Emerging market risk: Emerging markets tend to be more sensitive to economic and political conditions than developed markets. Other factors include greater liquidity risk, restrictions on investment or transfer of assets, failed/delayed settlement and difficulties valuing securities. For details of the firms issuing this information and any funds referred to, please see Terms and Conditions and Important Information.  

For a full description of the terms of investment and the risks please see the Prospectus and Key Investor Information Document for each Fund. 

If you are in any doubt as to the suitability of our funds for your investment needs, please seek investment advice.

Global Listed Infrastructure

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Strategy Overview

Key Facts

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Infrastructure to shape our future

We invest in the companies our societies are built on. These are companies solving for the world’s long-term challenges such as urban congestion, digital mobility, and the energy transition. We are unapologetically active investors. We invest for future generations in mind, because a more sustainable world means better outcomes for our investors.

Why invest in the First Sentier Global Listed Infrastructure strategy?

  • Listed infrastructure provides essential services to society, making it less sensitive to the economic cycle. 

  • Growth is being driven by long-term structural themes such as the build-out of renewable energy, the need to ease urban congestion, and increasing reliance on mobile data. 

  • Focus on environmental stewardship and social license to operate supports long-term, sustainable returns to shareholders.

  • Effecting change through ongoing engagement and dialogue with companies. 

How we invest in global listed infrastructure

Addressing net zero and the energy transition

Whilst longer term targets such as net zero 2050 are important, our immediate priority is to set medium-term expectations and assess company performance against those measures.

We challenge management on where they expect to get to by 2025 and 2030. We need to be forward looking and also identify the laggards who could be the leaders.

Getting active on the ESG front

Investing in infrastructure is a huge responsibility.

Watch First Sentier Investors' Listed Infrastructure team, led by Peter Meany, explain how we may influence companies for better long-term outcomes and investment returns.

Global Listed Infrastructure strategies

Global Listed Infrastructure strategy

Listed infrastructure provides essential services to society, making it less sensitive to the economic cycle. 

Growth is being driven by long term structural themes such as the build-out of renewable energy; the need to ease urban congestion; and increasing reliance on mobile data. 

Focus on environmental stewardship and social license to operate ensures long term, sustainable returns to shareholders.

Effecting change through ongoing engagement and dialogue with companies. 

Questions you might have about investing in listed infrastructure

What is an infrastructure investment?

The main infrastructure asset types include transportation systems like rail, airports and toll roads; communication systems like mobile/cellphone towers; and water, gas and electricity utilities. These assets are essential to the day-to-day functioning of our society. They typically offer more stable returns than many other investment options.

What are the risks of investing in infrastructure?

The key risks for infrastructure investors are political and regulatory intervention. These risks can be mitigated by diversification across countries, sectors and regulators, and by using an active manager who is able to understand and navigate those risks. Infrastructure investment funds may also be vulnerable to factors that particularly affect the infrastructure sector, for example natural disasters or operational disruption.

Is listed infrastructure an asset class?

In short, yes! While investors have embraced infrastructure as an asset class since the 1990s, the idea of investing in infrastructure via listed securities was developed by a few Australian asset managers between 2005-2007. 

Global Listed Infrastructure (GLIS) is now widely acknowledged as a standalone asset class by asset consultants, investors and the funds management industry. Today we estimate funds under management in GLIS to stand at around US$100 billion.

It’s also worth remembering that infrastructure assets also have their own set of associated risks and return profile and structural drivers distinct from those of stocks. Notably infrastructure stocks tend to provide essential goods and services to society, which can be highly regulated and prices locked in. This means that listed infrastructure has a set of characteristics which tend to be less affected by economic growth, or lack thereof.  

How should I be using infrastructure in my portfolio?

Use of GLIS within investor portfolios has varied over time. Initially we saw it used as a defensive, low volatility equity. This expanded to see it used as a source of income, as declining bond yields increased the relative appeal of its growing divided streams.

More recently, we have seen listed infrastructure form part of the real assets segment of investors’ portfolios, due to the nature of its long-life, hard assets and ability to offer insulation from the effects of inflation as well as offer structural earnings growth. 

We have also seen investors utilise GLIS as a diversified, liquid and lower fee alternative to unlisted infrastructure allocations. 

When should I invest in infrastructure?

You should always seek professional advice if you are unsure about your investment options. Historically, infrastructure investments have generated stable, predictable cash flows and delivered long-term growth. As part of a balanced portfolio these types of investments have tended to be less volatile than other equity classes. Due to these factors, infrastructure can be used through the economic cycle at all times as a lower volatility complement to global equities.

I already get exposure to infrastructure through my global equity fund, why would I need to invest in an infrastructure fund?

You will gain a little bit of exposure - but not very much. We estimate that most global equity managers may hold between 2% and 4% (or less) of their portfolio in infrastructure assets, and this exposure could be concentrated amongst a small number of large, well-known utility names. However, much of the alpha generated in our diversified portfolio has come from mid-cap stocks, which are under-researched by global equity managers, such as toll roads, oil storage, mobile towers and water utilities. Hence, if you decide global listed infrastructure suits your investment needs, then you need to make an explicit allocation in your investment portfolio in order to gain a meaningful exposure to the asset class.

Isn’t infrastructure just a low growth, bond proxy investment?

No. Infrastructure assets offer defensive, non-cyclical growth opportunities from a variety of areas. These include:

• investment-driven earnings from the build-out of new transmission and distribution assets by electric, gas and water utilities

• clean renewable energy replacing carbon emitting, coal-fired electricity generation

• increasing equipment on mobile phone towers, to cope with growing data usage on smartphones

• rising traffic volumes on toll roads, as a result of urban congestion

• structural growth in global travel driving more passengers through airports and

• new energy pipelines and storage infrastructure being built to facilitate the world’s changing patterns of energy supply and demand.

To be clear, global listed infrastructure is an interest rate sensitive asset class (and I don’t profess to know the future direction of rates) but it also has defensive growth attributes.

Sustainability Report 2022

Our Sustainability Report 2022 provides transparency on how we assessed the environmental, social and governance performance of the companies we invest in, how we engaged with leadership, and insights from our research throughout the year.

Meet the investment team

Peter Meany

Head of Global Listed Infrastructure

Andrew Greenup

Deputy Head of Global Listed Infrastructure

Edmund Leung

Senior Portfolio Manager

Rebecca Sherlock

Portfolio Manager