T. Rowe Price Asian Opportunities Equity
Manager Jihong Min invests across Asia ex-Japan in a concentrated portfolio of high-quality companies. These companies tend to be established, with leading market positions and good management teams who prioritise shareholder returns. Portfolio turnover is low, and the focus is on holding businesses for the long term.
Our Opinion
Fund Manager
Fund Manager
Jihong Min is a co-portfolio manager for the Asia Opportunities Equity Strategy at T. Rowe Price, where he has been since 2012. With investment experience dating back to 2003, Jihong previously worked as an analyst at Fortress Investment Group and Geosphere Capital, focusing on Asian financials, and started his career in J.P. Morgan’s Investment Banking Division in New York. He holds a B.Sc. in Business Management from the State University of New York, Binghamton.
Fund Performance
Risk
Quote from the Fund Manager
Buy high-quality businesses, run by high-quality people, and hold them for the long term.
Jihong Min
Lead Manager
Investment process
Jihong, with the help of the analyst team, seeks out high-quality businesses that will reliably compound earnings and sustain strong cash flow over time. These companies tend to be established companies, with leading market positions and good management teams who prioritise shareholder returns. He looks for returns-focused capital allocation and prudent balance sheet management.
An initial quantitative screen focuses on quality and valuation. Then detailed company analysis is undertaken. The team travels extensively throughout the region, meeting company management, industry experts and government policymakers, to aid in the search for companies which provide the greatest risk-adjusted return.
Once these high-quality compounders have been identified, valuation is assessed. Various valuation criteria are applied to each company, depending on which sector it operates. Valuation is assessed relative to local or global sector peers, as appropriate.
Whilst individual stock assessment is crucial, macroeconomic factors are also considered. The team looks at political stability, government policies, national accounts, central bank policy and currency stability, to name but a few things. Jihong then constructs a portfolio of 40-70 stocks.
Risk
Risk management is embedded within the investment process and close attention is paid to ensuring diversification of exposures. Position sizes are determined by the potential upside of an individual stock; those with stable risk/return expectations tend to be bigger positions in the portfolio, while stocks with volatile risk/return expectations will be smaller ones.
ESG
ESG - Integrated
This fund uses environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration as part of its investment process. For T. Rowe this involves incorporating ESG factors to enhance investment decisions, meaning that they are not the sole driver of an investment decision, nor are they considered separately from more traditional analysis.
The process of ESG integration takes place on two levels: first, T. Rowe’s research analysts incorporate environmental, social, and governance factors into their company valuations and ratings; and, second, the portfolio manager balances these ESG factor exposures at the portfolio level. Both the analysts and portfolio manager are able to leverage dedicated, in-house resources to assist them in analysing ESG criteria. Material ESG factors play an integral part in the risk/reward assessment of each company. Once all the factors have been assessed, the conclusions can influence whether to include or exclude the company or at what weight to add the company to the portfolio. Usually, ESG factors are considered as a component of the final investment decision.