Fundsmith Annual Investor Letter

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Terry Smith has published his thirteenth annual letter for investors in the Fundsmith Equity Fund (which I hold). As usual it’s a good mixture of sound analysis of market events and witticisms. I’ll cover a few significant points:

The fund underperformed the MSCI World Index with a total return of minus 13.8%, which was better than my own portfolio. As he points out, the only way to beat the market last year was to hold energy stocks and nothing else. But both I and Fundsmith have a focus on growth companies so we have been under-weight in the dinosaurs of the investment world.

As Terry says: “Whilst a period of underperformance against the index is never welcome it is nonetheless inevitable. We have consistently warned that no investment strategy will outperform in every reporting period and every type of market condition. So, as much as we may not like it, we can expect some periods of underperformance” which is a fair comment.

Terry points out that we have gone through a period of “easy money” when central banks ignored the consequences of their actions. He says “One of the problems of easy money is that it leads to bad capital allocation or investment decisions which are exposed as the tide goes out”.

He is particularly critical about the management of PayPal and Facebook (Meta) plus makes negative comments on Alphabet and Amazon and their expenditure on non-core businesses. He is scathing about the failure of some companies, in which the fund has holdings, to engage or even to provide information about the return they are getting on investments. He says: “What I am complaining about is the bipolar response some companies have to long-standing shareholders versus newly arrived activists”.

Lastly he attacks the exclusion of share-based compensation from financial reporting which can completely distort comparisons with other company’s figures.

In summary, another thoughtful report from Terry Smith and I am happy with the fund’s continued focus on investing in companies with a high return on capital and high margins with good cash conversion.

The Fundsmith Equity Fund letter can be read in full here: https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/media/bm0lyc22/annual-letter-to-shareholders-2022.pdf

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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