Generating returns from sustainable structural growth
The Sustainable Equity team invests in companies delivering solutions to the world’s environmental and social challenges. We focus on structural growth opportunities linked to sustainability: decarbonisation, climate adaptation, water, healthcare impact, financial and digital inclusion, and access to education.
Our investment approach blends proprietary sustainability insight, deep fundamental research, and high-conviction, benchmark-agnostic portfolio construction. Through active engagement and KPI-driven reporting, we aim to allocate capital to companies whose growth supports a more sustainable future.
Key facts
- Established in 2018
- 2 dedicated strategies – Global Environment, Global Sustainable Equity
- Positive-inclusion investment approaches
- Proprietary sustainability research tools and methodology
- Company engagement to drive positive change
What do we believe?
- Sustainability challenges create growing addressable markets distinct from economic cycles.
- An unconstrained, bottom-up, high-conviction approach provides focused exposure to sustainable structural growth.
- Durable, forward-looking competitive advantages are often mispriced.
- Specialist knowledge and proprietary research are required to identify attractive opportunities.
- Active engagement helps drive long-term value creation.
The Sustainable Equity investment process
A structured and disciplined investment process
- Universe screen
Screens are used to build a proprietary universe. Global Environment’s screen focuses on environmental revenues and quantifiable carbon avoided. Global Sustainable Equity screens for liquidity, sustainable revenues, exclusions and competitive advantages. - Idea generation
A ranking tool for financials, sustainability and competitive advantages guides analysts where to focus their research. - Fundamental analysis
Company analysis draws on insights from proprietary models, management meetings, externalities assessments, channel checks and industry research. - Portfolio construction
Bottom-up portfolio construction is driven by level of conviction, valuation and risk contribution. - Engagement and monitoring
Companies are engaged with on an ongoing basis. Detailed sustainability reports are published annually.
Quantified impact and engagement reporting
- Annual impact reports with company-by-company analysis
- Extensive sustainability key performance indicators
- Evaluation of net-zero alignment
- Full reporting of engagement targets, activity and progress
Global environment impact report Global Sustainable Equity impact report
Meet the Portfolio Managers
Deirdre Cooper heads up the Sustainable Equity team based in London. Her team of experienced portfolio managers and equity analysts have deep expertise in clean technology, environmental solutions, sustainability research and global equity investing. The team works closely with Ninety One’s broader global equity capabilities, enabling investment ideas to be assessed from multiple perspectives. Sustainability research is fully integrated into the investment approach, and supported by Ninety One’s specialist Sustainability team.