For almost three decades, the Ninety One Opportunity Fund has built its reputation on investing in high-quality businesses with a strict emphasis on capital preservation and downside resilience.
That approach has served investors well over the long term, but it has also meant generally avoiding cyclical market sectors, including gold miners and precious metals.
So investors may wonder why Ninety One's recently launched Multi-Asset Flexible Fund counts Gold Fields, AngloGold and Nvidia among its largest holdings.
The answer lies in the two mandates. While both are multi-asset solutions with significant equity exposure, they are designed to identify and capture market opportunities in different ways.
Same active manager, different mandates
The Opportunity Fund is built around identifying high-quality businesses that can deliver sustainable cash flows and attractive long-term returns while managing downside risk. Its portfolio is driven primarily by bottom-up security selection.
The Multi-Asset Flexible Fund has a broader opportunity set. Its investment process evaluates opportunities across asset classes, sectors and markets through three lenses: fundamentals, valuation and investor behaviour. This framework gives the portfolio greater flexibility to express high-conviction views wherever the team sees the most compelling risk-adjusted opportunity.
Gold provides a clear example of this. Gold miners have historically been difficult to reconcile with the Opportunity Fund's quality-focused philosophy. In contrast, the Multi-Asset Flexible Fund (MAF) has the flexibility to invest in the sector when its 'compelling forces' model points to an attractive opportunity. The same principle applies across the portfolio: MAF is not constrained to owning a particular type of business or adhering to a single investment style.
Mandate rules reinforce these operational differences. The Opportunity Fund is Regulation 28 compliant, whereas the Multi-Asset Flexible Fund is not, giving MAF greater latitude to allocate dynamically across asset classes and express higher-conviction equity positions.
| Opportunity | Multi-Asset Flexible | |
|---|---|---|
| ASISA sector | Multi-Asset High Equity | Multi Asset – Flexible |
| Portfolio manager | Clyde Rossouw | Rehana Khan |
| Benchmark | CPI + 6% (Target return over rolling 3 to 5 years) | 45% CAPI, 35% MSCI ACWI, 5% WGBI, 15% ALBI |
| Investment approach |
|
|
| Offshore limits | Up to 45% in foreign assets | Up to 45% in foreign assets |
| Asset allocation | Driven by bottom-up security selection | Investment opportunities assessed against three 'Compelling Forces':
|
| Regulation 28 compliant | Yes | No |
Looking at the numbers
The Opportunity Fund has a strong long-term track record. Since inception in May 1997, it has returned 12.7% per annum, generating a real return of 7.2% per annum and outperforming the ASISA Multi-Asset High Equity sector by 1.6% per annum.1
Annualised performance (%)
| Fund | CPI | Sector | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 3.6 | 5.0 | 10.9 |
| 3 years | 9.3 | 4.4 | 12.6 |
| 5 years | 8.9 | 5.2 | 10.8 |
| 10 years | 8.0 | 4.7 | 8.4 |
| 20 years | 9.8 | 5.5 | 9.3 |
| Since inception | 12.7 | 5.5 | 11.1 |
Fund statistics (%)
| Date* | ||
|---|---|---|
| Highest annualised return | 43.8 | 31.07.05 |
| Lowest annualised return | -15.7 | 28.02.09 |
| Annualised volatility (%) | 9.7 | |
| Maximum drawdown (%) | -19.8 |
*12 month rolling performance figures
Cumulative performance
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Source: © Morningstar, dates to 31.07.26, performance figures are calculated NAV-NAV, net of fees, in ZAR.
More recently, quality investing has faced headwinds. With gold, platinum and resource shares driving a significant portion of South African equity returns, the fund has lagged its peer group over shorter periods. This short-term drag reflects the structural outcome of a strict quality process, rather than a departure from philosophy.
While the Multi-Asset Flexible Fund is newly launched and its performance cannot be shown for periods of less than 12 months since inception, its underlying investment philosophy has been tested using back tested2 data spanning 12 years, offering an indication of how the approach has behaved across different market environments.
Over that period, based on the back-tested results, the fund would have delivered an annualised hypothetical return of 10.1%2, compared with 8.2% for the ASISA South African Multi-Asset Flexible sector and 11.1% for the ALSI. Importantly, it would have achieved those returns with meaningfully lower risk (10.0% vs. 14.0% for the ALSI), a beta of 0.63 and a downside capture ratio of 0.51 relative to the sector's 0.66.
Back tested numbers: As at April 2026
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Source: Ninety One, MorningStar, Bloomberg – 12 years as at 30 April 2026.
All fund returns are NET of retail fees, ALSI returns are gross of any fees.
* (ASISA) SA MA Flexible Sector.
| Multi-Asset Flexible | Sector* | ALSI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Return p.a. | 10.1% | 8.2% | 11.1% |
| Return relative to sector p.a. | 1.9% | - | 2.9% |
| Volatility p.a. | 10.0% | 8.1% | 14.0% |
| Beta (ALSI) | 0.63 | 0.53 | 1 |
| 12m periods outperforming sector (%) | 72% | - | 73% |
| % 12m periods under sector by > 2% p.a. | 5% | - | 20% |
| % 12m periods under sector by > 5% p.a. | 0% | - | 7% |
| 3yr periods outperforming sector (%) | 75% | - | 93% |
| % 3yr periods under sector by > 2% p.a. | 0% | - | 0% |
| % 3yr periods under sector by > 5% p.a. | 0% | - | 0% |
| Number of negative 12m periods | 12 | 12 | 18 |
| Number of negative 3yr periods | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Upside capture (ALSI, rolling 12m) | 0.74 | 0.64 | 1.00 |
| Downside capture (ALSI, rolling 12m) | 0.51 | 0.66 | 1.00 |
Source: Ninety One, MorningStar, Bloomberg – 12 years as at 30 April 2026.
All fund returns are NET of retail fees, ALSI returns are gross of any fees.
* (ASISA) SA MA Flexible Sector.
Why might a client hold both?
Holding both funds isn't about duplicating exposure under two names, it is about blending two distinct investment playbooks.
The Opportunity Fund focuses on enduring business quality and downside resilience. The Multi-Asset Flexible Fund has greater freedom to pursue changing market opportunities and express higher-conviction views where its investment process identifies the strongest potential.
For the right client, that can provide broader sources of return across a portfolio, rather than unnecessary overlap.
1. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance.
2. For more information on back tested data, see the Important Information section.
