Apollo Asia Fund

Investment philosophy

Claire Barnes
January 2014

  1. but try not to bother the managers unduly, and resist claims of XXX visits per year.
  2. not helped by the ballooning page count imposed by current accounting standards and micro-managing regulators.
  3. although many of our shares remain quite illiquid. We do however try to sell whenever we lose confidence, rather than seeking new assets to dilute the problem holdings.
  4. Deleted from past versions: "in Asia one can often find stocks with outstanding long-term growth prospects and cash-generating ability at bargain valuations. Usually, there are stocks as cheap as Ben Graham’s famously rewarding buys during the Great Depression; some of them meet our quality criteria, and would please a Buffett or a Fisher. The stocks in our portfolio, overall, have growth prospects at least matching market leaders, at a fraction of the price." We were happy with this statement in 1999-2003, but would not make it now. A smaller percentage of companies meets our quality criteria - not necessarily due to declining corporate standards, but also to increasingly difficult global conditions - and valuations for the solid businesses have risen. Also, our fund size has increased - mostly organically - and although it is still small by industry standards, this rules out most microcaps. We still consider our portfolio more attractive than an index, but now look less for bargain valuations and growth, more for reasonable valuations and resilience.
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