Industry Voice: Embracing uncertainty and identifying good opportunities in China

T. Rowe Price's Wenli Zheng discusses how their China Evolution Equity Strategy arguably has a a unique design among China equity strategies

clock • 4 min read
Industry Voice: Embracing uncertainty and identifying good opportunities in China

The China Evolution Equity Strategy that I manage has what we believe is a unique design among China equity strategies. We invest in the whole of the China equity universe, excluding the top 100 largest listed companies.1 The Chinese stock market has around 6,000 public companies, with fewer than 100 having a market cap above USD 30 billion. However, among mainstream China strategies, many invest around 60% of their portfolio in these mega-cap stocks. So around 60% of assets appear to be invested in less than 2% of the investment universe.2 We regard this as a major disconnect in terms of diversification and breadth of opportunity.

The first objective of the China Evolution Equity Strategy is to offer a unique exposure to the approximate 98% of the opportunities that are under-explored. As a key design feature, we do not aim to invest in the top 100 Chinese mega-cap stocks. A second element of portfolio design is that we take a holistic, style-agnostic investment approach. We are not constrained by growth or value. Rather, we look for stocks that have a combination of fundamental strength and mispricing opportunities. We do this through the process of discovery, deep research, and pattern recognition.

A third feature of portfolio design is a strong focus on alpha generation. We believe that the approximate 98% of the universe that we operate in has more mispricing opportunities and aim to identify these with a flexible investment approach.

Q1: Chinese equities appear to have stabilized since May. Has investor sentiment toward China turned the corner?

Looking back over recent quarters it is clear with hindsight that Chinese equities encountered a "perfect storm." Beijing started to tighten liquidity as far back as the second half of 2020, much earlier than the rest of the world. On top of that tighter macro policy stance, you had all the regulatory actions that took investors by surprise and that lasted throughout 2021.

At the beginning of this year, the new omicron variant of COVID-19 posed a major threat to China's strict zero-COVID policy, plus a new round of geopolitical concerns triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Over the past one to two months, we have started to see improvement in many aspects. The policy priority has shifted from tightening to supporting growth. We would expect a more favourable liquidity and regulatory environment for the coming quarters. 

The COVID situation has improved, and the supply chain is largely back to normal. We still see small-scale outbreaks in a few cities, which inevitably impact local service businesses. However, we think another major supply chain disruption can hopefully be avoided. 

Last, rising raw material prices, which hurt the margins for many Chinese industrial companies, have started to come down. This should help the earnings growth for mid-/downstream companies in China.

1By market cap.

This post was funded by T. Rowe Price

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