“The market went so far, so fast, with very little evidence that the underlying economy was improving at all, in fact there was a lot of evidence that it was decelerating, not accelerating, so we took advantage of the rally and sold out of a lot of our European positions.”
Two European names that are still included in the fund are Belgian postal services firm Bpost and Portuguese peer CTT, two of the fund’s largest holdings at 2.4 per cent and 2.1 per cent, respectively.
Although Mr Robbins acknowledged neither has high prospects for growth, he said the formerly government-owned businesses are benefiting from a near monopoly in their markets and a boom in deliveries from online shopping.
“These businesses are quite dull, people don’t send letters as much anymore so mail volumes are falling, but they are benefiting from online retail, so parcel growth is up and up. Because they operate in small markets, competition is low, it’s not really worth it for someone to come in because the market’s not big enough to bother, so the pricing isn’t bad.”
The Premier Global Alpha Growth fund has returned 24.3 per cent over three years, while the IA Global sector returned 10.8 per cent over the same period, according to FE Analytics.
