Pengana WHEB Sustainable Impact Fund

Sustainability & Positive Screening: The Fund invests in a diversified global portfolio of companies with activities identified by WHEB as providing solutions to the challenges of sustainability via nine sustainable investment themes – five of these are environmental (cleaner energy, environmental services, resource efficiency, sustainable transport and water management) and four are social (education, health, safety and well-being).

Impact Investing: WHEB produces an Annual Impact Report which measures, calculates and reports on the extent of positive social and environmental impact from investing in the strategy.

ESG Integration: WHEB’s approach to ESG issues in their investment process is to consider these issues at all stages of analysis and as an integral part of an assessment of the quality of the business overall.

Thresholds: To qualify for WHEB’s universe, companies need to have a market capitalisation of at least US$200m, and at least one third of profits or revenues directly exposed to WHEB’s themes. The decision to pick one third of revenues as a minimum threshold was reached after careful consideration; on the one hand the managers wanted to be able to include larger companies in transition who are in the process of adapting their business to a more sustainability-oriented economy.  On the other, they did not want to include companies who were making a token gesture towards becoming a sustainable solution provider without making significant commitment in terms of sales and R&D.  A third of a company’s sales is deemed an appropriate level to indicate genuine commitment, while still enabling the managers to capture revaluation from a company during a transitional phase. In practise the majority of holdings in the fund are 100% exposed to the themes, and the weighted average across the fund is over 80% exposure.