Premier Miton Tellworth UK Select
This fund targets a return of 8-10% on an annual basis, with much lower volatility than the stock market. The fund is factor and style neutral, meaning it doesn’t favour any particular investment style (like growth or value) or factor (such as momentum or quality). Instead, it aims to provide broad, balanced exposure to the market — avoiding overexposure to any single approach and helping to deliver more consistent performance across different market conditions. The portfolio typically holds 30–50 positions on both the long side (share prices the managers think will rise) and the short side (stocks they believe will fall). Although the fund can invest in companies of all sizes, it typically has a bias toward mid and large-cap businesses.
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Our Opinion
This is a really impressive absolute return fund, managed by a very experienced manager with a great long- term track record. The fund has delivered consistent returns by adding value on both the long and the short side and has had very small drawdowns thus far. This is exactly what you want from an absolute return fund, but very difficult to find in practice. We also like that the fund is factor and style neutral as this makes it much more resilient to different market environments. With its solid, proven process, we see no reason why this fund shouldn’t continue to deliver in the future.
Fund Managers
John Warren, Co Fund manager
John Warren joined Premier Miton in 2024 when the firm acquired boutique asset manager Tellworth Investments. John founded Tellworth in 2017 and is a highly experienced manager, having previously managed similar strategies at Cazenove and Schroders. John has also previously worked at UBS, Investec Bank, HSBC and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Johnnie Smith, Co Fund manager
Johnnie Smith also joined Premier Miton following the acquisition of Tellworth in 2024. He has worked for Tellworth since June 2020. Previously he worked as an analyst researching UK mid and large-cap companies at CZ Capital. Prior to that he worked in equity sales as a UK specialist at JP Morgan.
Risk
Risk is carefully managed. The fund is market neutral meaning it should have no correlation to the wider stock market. As mentioned before, the portfolio is deliberately built to avoid exposure to any particular investing style. This helps reduce risk when different market styles swing in and out of favour. This approach has worked well in practice, with the fund experiencing relatively low drawdowns in its history. The fund has consistently undershot its 5%-7% volatility target. Recently there has been an active undertaking to increase the fund’s gross exposure and volatility back to target. So expect volatility to increase slightly going forward*. Holding periods are relatively short, typically less than 12 months. The team will quickly alter the portfolio as data and fundamentals change.
*At time of writing, 16 April 2025
Company Description
Premier Miton Investors was formed in November 2019 following the merger of Premier Asset Management Group plc and Miton Group plc. The combined company manages around £11.2 billion of assets on behalf of a wide range of individual investors and institutions. The two principle areas of focus are outcome-based, multi-asset investment, and single-strategy, active equity investment. Premier Miton was awarded the Elite Provider for Equities rating in 2021.
Investment process
The fund has around 30 to 50 holdings on both the long and short side of the portfolio (factor neutral), with the philosophy being that there are inefficiencies in the UK stock market which can be exploited. This, combined with a low net exposure, ensures a low correlation to the market.
The initial fund universe is narrowed down with quantitative tools. They strip out biotech, pre-revenue and companies with less than a £500m market cap. They then apply a number of their proprietary research tools. The most important of these is the UK thermostat, which the team has developed over a number of years. This uses a number of alternative datasets to measure consumer and business behavior.
All tools have been built internally with a number of external data sources which have been bought in. They then undertake detailed fundamental analysis and they also meet a lot of companies as part of their research. Ideas are discussed at a twice-weekly meeting on top of regular daily morning meetings.
The funds ‘sinners’ accountancy screen is used to create a basket of companies to short which makes up part of the short book. The fund can also trade index futures to manage its risk exposure. The portfolio is constructed through a combination of conviction, risk models and factor exposure. Typical holding time for long positions is 6-12 months, while shorts tend to be held for 3-6 months.
All stocks are given a conviction score of between 1 and 5 (where 1 is a high-conviction short and 5 is a high-conviction long).
Risk
Risk is carefully managed. The fund is market neutral meaning it should have no correlation to the wider stock market. As mentioned before, the portfolio is deliberately built to avoid exposure to any particular investing style. This helps reduce risk when different market styles swing in and out of favour. This approach has worked well in practice, with the fund experiencing relatively low drawdowns in its history. The fund has consistently undershot its 5%-7% volatility target. Recently there has been an active undertaking to increase the fund’s gross exposure and volatility back to target. So expect volatility to increase slightly going forward*. Holding periods are relatively short, typically less than 12 months. The team will quickly alter the portfolio as data and fundamentals change.
*At time of writing, 16 April 2025
ESG
The fund is committed to investing responsibly. ESG factors are considered alongside financial factors. The fund will look to engage in stewardship activities in the companies they invest in. This will involve dialogue with management teams on ESG factors.
All Premier Miton funds exclude banned weapons: biological, chemical, non-detectable fragments, blinding laser, anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions.
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