Investment advisor: UBS Asset Management (Americas)
Launch date: 10/24/2018
Expense ratio: 0.25% – 0.85%, depending on share class
Fundamental investment strategy:
To achieve its investment objective, the Fund invests in or seeks exposure to companies based on various financial factors, material sustainability factors such as environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) performance and on the current and potential ability of such companies to have a positive impact on human well-being and environmental quality, therefore promoting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), such as clean water and sanitation, clean energy, treatment of disease, food security and people empowerment.
Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests a substantial portion of its net assets (plus borrowings for investment purposes, if any) in equity securities. Investments in equity securities may include, but are not limited to, dividend-paying securities, common stock and preferred stock of issuers located throughout the world; Global, European and American Depositary Receipts; equity securities of real estate investment trusts (“REITs”); as well as investment companies, including exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”). The Fund may invest in issuers from both developed markets (including the United States) and emerging markets. The Fund’s investments may include investments in China A-shares (shares of companies based in mainland China that trade on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange).
The Advisor, on behalf of the Fund, intends to diversify broadly among countries, but reserves the right to invest a substantial portion of the Fund’s assets in one or more countries if economic and business conditions warrant such investments. The Fund may invest in stocks of companies of any size.
The Fund may, but is not required to, use exchange traded or over-the-counter (“OTC”) derivative instruments for risk management purposes or as part of the Fund’s investment strategies. Generally, derivatives are financial contracts whose value depends upon, or is derived from, the value of an underlying asset, reference rate, index or other market factor and may relate to stocks, bonds, interest rates, credit, currencies or currency exchange rates, commodities and related indexes. The derivatives in which the Fund may invest include futures, forward currency agreements and equity participation notes. All of these derivatives may be used for risk management purposes to manage or adjust the risk profile of the Fund. Futures on currencies and forward currency agreements may also be used to hedge against a specific currency. In addition, all of the derivative instruments listed above may be used for investment (non-hedging) purposes to earn income; to enhance returns; to replace more traditional direct investments (except for forward currency agreements); or to obtain exposure to certain markets (except for forward currency agreements). The Fund also may use futures contracts on equity securities and indices to gain market exposure on its uninvested cash.
Under certain market conditions, the Fund may invest in companies at the time of their initial public offering (“IPO”).
Sustainable investing approach:
The Advisor seeks to invest in companies that the Advisor believes are attractively valued, that integrate sustainability factors into the business model to build a competitive advantage, whose products and services can create a positive impact on society and the environment (e.g., products and services with a primary or intended focus on consequential impact); and which have a clearly identified potential for additional positive impact that the Advisor intends to drive through engagement with the companies. In selecting individual securities for investment, the Advisor considers, among other factors:
- Its assessment of fundamental valuation (price/intrinsic value) to seek attractively valued companies with strong financial performance;
- Quantitative and qualitative ESG factors;
- Quantitative and qualitative assessment of a company’s current and potential impact on society and the environment; and
- Advisor’s ability to drive positive change in a company’s impact profile through engagement.
The Advisor aims to identify the best investment ideas with additional impact potential across the market capitalization spectrum, sectors and geographies within the eligible investment universe (“the impact universe”). Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets in equity investments from this impact universe.
The impact universe is comprised of individual companies that have been identified as having revenue alignment with specific impact categories, such as, but not limited to, climate, health, water, food and empowerment that are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The Advisor also may include companies whose impact potential, indicated by metrics such as research and development (R&D) spend are aligned with the impact categories described above. The portfolio management team uses quantitative and qualitative factors to identify companies that offer or manufacture products or services that meet the UN SDGs, such as clean water and sanitation products, clean energy, energy saving, treatment of disease, sustainable food system and food security, access to finance or education services.
Within the impact universe, the Advisor will employ a positive screening process to identify for investment securities of companies that provide solutions to significant global challenges through the impact of their products and services, that are attractive based on their fundamental valuation profile in addition to evaluating specific sustainability (ESG) factors as well as the ability of the Advisor to engage with the company’s management on impact and ESG-related issues.
Engagement with portfolio companies on ESG and/or impact related topics is a key aspect of the Fund’s strategy. Companies have the potential to create additional impact through improving or optimizing the use of their products and services throughout society as well as indirectly through changes to their operations and supply chain. The Advisor’s portfolio management team, supported by the Sustainable Investing Research staff, will seek to deliver additional positive impact through engagement with management of companies held in the Fund’s portfolio. The Advisor uses the UN SDGs to guide and frame engagement activities with companies held by the Fund. The Advisor will establish specific engagement goals, and measure and evaluate progress regularly in order to assess the impact of its engage-
ment efforts. The purpose of engagement with companies is to:
- Improve the Advisor’s ability to independently measure impact;
- Engage the company to help it inform its strategy with regard to societal or environmental goals;
- Engage the company to help increase its product and service impact by identifying target markets, customers and business partners that create additional impact over time; and
- Engage the company to identify business model risks and opportunities linked to the ESG component of operations, supply chains and other aspects of the company that can help increase positive impact over time.
The Advisor uses a combination of ESG tools to aid stock selection. The Advisor uses an ESG Material Issues Framework to identify 3 to 5 of the most financially relevant factors, per sector, that can impact the investment thesis across different industry sectors. The universe of sustainability issues includes environmental factors such as global greenhouse gas emissions and wastewater management; social factors such as customer privacy and product safety; and governance factors such as critical and systemic risk management.
The Advisor also uses a proprietary risk tool to combine scores and data points from a number of reputable external research providers together with the UBS internal ESG model to flag companies with elevated sustainability risks. In addition, absolute ESG risks such as poor corporate governance and high ESG controversy levels are included in the Advisor’s risk tool. Collectively, these inputs lead to an ESG Risk Signal which flags companies with high ESG risks. Once outliers are identified, the Advisor conducts more in-depth analysis to assess the material impact of the ESG risks.
The Advisor’s assessment of the ability of public companies to generate impact is based upon impact measurement methodologies the Advisor has developed in partnership with academics from the fields of earth sciences and public health science to measure changes in human well-being and changes in environmental quality (e.g. reduction in air pollution, hospitalizations and biodiversity loss). The impact of the companies held in the Fund’s portfolio is reviewed periodically, but impact measurement methodology may not necessarily cover all holdings in the Fund’s portfolio at all times.
In addition, the Advisor excludes from the Fund’s portfolio companies that manufacture products or engage in business activities viewed as having a negative social or environmental impact. Such products or business activities include certain controversial weapons, natural resource extraction activities, thermal coal power generation, and certain controversial behavior and business activities as well as the failure of a portfolio company to meet certain engagement objectives identified by the Advisor. The Advisor may modify this list of negative screens at any time, without shareholder approval or notice.
Notes of Explanation: For mutual funds, expense ratio may vary by share class and launch date applies to listing of earliest share class. Sources: Fund prospectus or other offering document, as disclosed.
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