The Emperor and the Raging Bull

Congratulations to our friends at Emperor Asset Management, one of the businesses in the Purple Group stable, who have won a major award for the Emperor IP Global Momentum Equity Fund. The 2021 Raging Bull award was presented to the company as one of the top performing funds in the unit trust sector.

According to Profile Data, the fund achieved an average annual return of 43% over three years to the end of 2020. To put this into perspective, the MSCI World Index achieved 14.97% a year in rand terms over the same period.

Speaking to Martin Hesse of Personal Finance (who co-sponsored the award), fund head Shaun Krom said Emperor was well placed during the pandemic as it was heavily invested in companies that are leaders in the digital economy, or provide products that are in high demand, such as home improvement suppliers Home Depot and Wayfair.

“We invested before the pandemic, as well as during the pandemic, in the infrastructure layer of digital TV (for example, Roku) and digital advertising that is not Facebook or Google,” Shaun continues. “We did not and do not have much FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) exposure.

“However, we have benefited by investing in world-leading companies such as Twilio, which develops and publishes internet and communications infrastructure; Shopify, which is arming the rebels to compete with the Amazon empire; MercadoLibre, which provides fintech and e-commerce solutions in South America; JD.com, which is like the Amazon of China; and Nike, a great brand capturing wallet share with an increasing margin as it goes direct to its users.”

Purple Group is one of CN&CO’s founding partners and our chief señor, Carel Nolte, also serves as the company’s chief marketing officer. The other brands in the Purple Group are EasyEquities, GT247.com, EasyProperties and RISE.