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Leader in active quantitative equities across Australian equities, global equities, emerging markets and global small companies.
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At Stewart Investors, we believe in putting people first. Our investment world-view is of a series of partnerships – with each other, with our clients, with the companies we invest in, the people who buy their goods and services, and with the wider society in which we all live and work.
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Our portfolio managers are supported by equity analysts with a proven track record of fundamental bottom-up stock research in smaller Australian companies.
Explore Australian companies poised for global growth in a fast-growing market segment with Dawn Kanelleas, Head of Small and Mid Cap Companies. Her small companies strategy has outperformed the market over the medium and long term in the 12 years the team have managed portfolios together*.
The major issues facing Australian equities investors discussed by Dawn Kanelleas , Head of Australian Small and Mid-Cap Companies at First Sentier Investors.
Small and mid-cap companies give investors access to some of the higher-growth technology, healthcare and renewable energy opportunities available in Australia.
A substantial number of businesses impacted by the knock on effects of the pandemic have turned to capital raisings to see them through the COVID-19 crisis. We talk to Senior Portfolio Manager Small & Mid Caps, Dawn Kanelleas, about the ASX-listed companies she has decided to back through the isolation period.
Some small companies may one day grow to be large and successful, but many others could fall victim to unfavourable markets, poor management decisions, or a combination of both.
From growing companies to up-and-coming names, our range of active, research-driven approaches to the Australian share market aim to deliver above market returns over the long term.
A former academic with a science background, Dawn Kanelleas, Head of Australian Small and Mid-Cap Companies at First Sentier Investors, reveals how she found and has maintained her edge investing in small-capitalised companies. Dawn discusses her Greek heritage, personal influences, and her professional journey into financial markets and asset management after completing a PhD thesis in rare earths in this wide-ranging interview. Her success managing small company portfolios since 2008 is built on her analytical background, as well her ability to be open to new ideas and different ways of thinking about risk and reward.
Find out more about how our team achieves capital growth by investing in stocks, small cap stocks and companies with an aim to minimise downside risk.
As small companies flourish, revenue and earnings growth are typically expanding at their fastest point in the company’s lifecycle – growth that larger, more mature companies would find difficult to replicate.
The mid caps space is characterised by successful companies with strong growth profiles, which can offer attractive diversification benefits to Australian equity portfolios. Yet they comprise only a small proportion of a typical broad-based portfolio. In this article we highlight some of the attractive characteristics of this often-overlooked segment of the market.
First Sentier Investors’ David Wilson, Deputy Head of Australian Equities Growth, and Christian Guerra, Head of Research, Australian Equities Growth, recently appeared on First Sentier Investors’ Curious Podcast to discuss the 2025 interim reporting season, delving into the rich opportunity set of Australian companies they believe are well-positioned to deliver earnings growth through global exposure.
The well-established First Sentier Investors Australian Small and Mid-Caps team has extended its small companies long short strategy to retail investors for the first time
Despite straddling two of the most disrupted years in living memory, the FY20-21 reporting season was overall very positive. In our analysis, around one-third of companies [that we cover] surprised us on the upside, around one-third delivered in line with expectation, and one-third were below expectation. Our investment approach focuses on selecting companies with strong return on equity and return on invested capital, and these companies delivered superior returns overall. We actually saw EPS grow by 26% over the previous corresponding period, and expect a further 20% growth in the financial year ahead. Put simply, investors in quality stocks were rewarded by strong performance through the reporting season. We were also pleased to see that overall, Australian companies have strong cashflow and balance sheets.
In volatile times, diversification is more important than ever – across – but also within asset classes. Deputy Head of Australian Equities Growth, David Wilson, looks at how to diversify an Australian share exposure.
Read regular news updates, research papers, investment strategy updates and thought pieces from our leading investment experts.
If you had invested $10,000 into the First Sentier Wholesale Australian Small Companies fund back in 1994 your investment would now be worth more than $250,000.
There was a large jump in capital raisings – in April alone 26 companies in the S&P/ASX300 issued new stock. By the end of 2020, 104 of these companies had undertaken raisings - the most number of companies that had ever raised equity in single year - totalling almost $40 billion.
Incorporated in 1885, BHP began as a silver, lead and zinc mine in Broken Hill, Australia. Over the next century the company grew into one of the largest diversified resource companies in the world with operations including oil and gas, steel production and mining of a variety of commodities including copper, potash, coal and diamonds. It listed on the Australian stock exchange in July 1961, making it the oldest company currently trading, and throughout much of this time it has been the largest company on the ASX by market capitalisation (currently it is ranked third). In 2001 BHP announced it would merge with fellow resource powerhouse Billiton. Billiton also had a long history dating back to a single tin mine in 1851 before growing into a major producer of aluminium, alumina, chrome, manganese, steaming coal, nickel and titanium. The company was Dutch controlled from inception before being acquired by South African firm Gencor in 1994. As the world’s largest metals and mining corporation, BHP Billiton began trading in July 2002 and operates as a dual listed company (DLC) – a corporate structure in which two companies have merged into a single operating business but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings (in this case Australia and the United Kingdom ).
First Sentier Investors today announced unit holders have voted in favour of a change in responsible entity (RE) for a number of funds from Colonial First State to The Trust Company.
People are are at the heart of our success as a leading global asset manager
First Sentier Investors has today announced it will apply to list its first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) on the ASX, the First Sentier Geared Australian Share Fund Complex ETF (The Fund, ASX:LEVR), which is expected to commence trading mid-May 2025.
The concept of gearing an investment is not foreign to Australian investors. Of course, one of the nation’s favourite past times is to debate the pros and cons of negative gearing.
This article was produced in partnership with First Sentier Investors. We firmly believe that active management is crucial when constructing a geared portfolio. A geared investment strategy can be considered a more complex strategy that borrows to invest, ultimately magnifying an investor’s exposure to rising or falling markets.
Global investment manager, First Sentier Investors, today announced changes to its investment capabilities within Australia.
Access one of Australia's largest and longest-running geared share managers. Selecting quality stocks based on their fit for leverage, we favour essential characteristics like strong balance sheets, ability to grow cash flows through market environments and liquidity.
The Australian Equities Growth team provides a suite of products, including broad based, small cap, imputation, concentrated and geared funds. We believe growing companies, which generate consistent returns and can reinvest above their cost of capital, provide the greatest shareholder value
First Sentier Investors is the world-leading provider of specialist investment capabilities. Discover how we provide research-led active investment management.
The Australian share market is fortunate to host a number of high quality, home-grown companies that have been able to transport their success in Australia to offshore locations and become global leaders.
Livewire interviews Dawn Kanelleas and Michael Joukhador from our small companies team about their views on Australia's technology sector, the 'WAAAX stocks', and their high conviction investment positions.
Today, Realindex Investments, an active quantitative equities manager within the First Sentier Investors Group, will be known as RQI Investors. Coinciding with the investment manager’s 15-year anniversary, this name change is the first undertaken since RQI Investors was founded in 2008 and will be accompanied by a new logo and visual identity.
We have closely followed earnings across our India Subcontinent portfolio companies to assess how successfully they have emerged from the initial impact of the pandemic.
We consider ESG risks to be factors that may place business value at risk. Companies at risk are identified using both external providers and our own internally driven research, which is based on a systematic and extensive company meeting program.
The energy crisis in Europe has boosted global demand for LNG. Global listed infrastructure companies pioneered the US LNG industry, investing US$50 billion since 2010. The energy crisis is providing an opportunity for LNG to secure its role as a transition fuel. With reliability and security of supply increasingly front of mind, US LNG exporters stand to gain market share, underpinning a further US$50 billion of investment over the next decade. An increased need for natural gas infrastructure will also benefit the broader North American midstream sector.
Mr Aditya Puri, who had only recently retired as the CEO of HDFC Bank, had joined the board of a small, unlisted pharmaceutical company, Stelis Biopharma. Given Mr Puri’s remarkable leadership at HDFC Bank, we dug deeper into his new role. In addition to his board role at Stelis, he had accepted the position of an advisor to the broader Strides Group.
The ASX100 is a ripe hunting ground for investors looking to gain access to Australia’s largest and most influential companies across a diverse range of sectors.
Leveraging our recent paper, ‘Reducing carbon intensity in portfolios: Better news than you think’, which analysed the investment impact of reducing carbon exposure versus the benchmark; we turn our attention to how we can reduce carbon risk in our Value strategies.
In a recent episode of First Sentier Investors' Curious Podcast, David Wilson, Deputy Head of Australian Equities Growth, discusses the significant volatility observed during the February 2025 interim reporting season.
Australia currently has a unique opportunity to set up a framework that can support investment aligned with the nation’s sustainability goals, by means of the Australian Sustainable Finance Strategy (“the Strategy”).
We are entering a new era. The year 2024 will be unpredictable and clouded by many uncertainties. It will be marked by geopolitical risks, the ongoing taming of the inflation beast, and how the US Presidential election will impact markets.
Armed conflict has enormous humanitarian consequences, as well as long lasting economic, social and environmental repercussions. Whilst the Russia-Ukraine conflict is unfortunately far from the only armed conflict globally (the Geneva Academy is currently monitoring over 110 armed conflicts) and there have been a number of conflicts taking place in Ukraine since 2014, the escalation of this conflict in 2022 led to sanctions that were unprecedented in scope and severity at state level as well as for corporates.
We consider ESG risks to be factors that may place business value at risk. Companies at risk are identified using both external providers and our own internally driven research, which is based on a systematic and extensive company meeting program.
The world is on the cusp of a revolution in low-carbon technologies, and they are set to reshape many of our supply chains. The not-so-humble battery sits at the heart of this shift: the growth of electric vehicles (EVs), and renewable power generation/storage, will increase demand for a range of raw materials.
This year’s August 2024 reporting season has concluded with most ASX-listed companies disclosing their profit results and guidance for the 2025 financial year ahead.
Last quarter I visited infrastructure companies in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. The trip included visits to ten corporate head offices and three site tours. This paper seeks to share some of the key findings from my meetings with Japanese passenger rail and utility companies.
Concentration in equity markets has reached unprecedented levels, particularly in the United States. A select few mega-cap stocks, colloquially referred to as the "Magnificent 7," now dominate market indices, reflecting a convergence of technological innovation, speculative enthusiasm, and the allure of generative AI.
After decades of flat electricity demand for US utilities, the industry is now seeing unprecedented demand as growth in data centers / AI, electrification, onshoring and electric vehicles outweighs energy efficiency gains. One utility executive stated: “Seeing all these customers wanting 24/7 load and willing to pay for it – it is every utility’s dream”.
What are zombie firms? How can they affect Australian investors?
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