Carmignac Portfolio Climate Transition: Letter from the Fund Manager

During the second quarter of 2023, the return of Carmignac Portfolio Climate Transition (A share class) was +2.04%, against its reference indicator, which rose 5.73%. The Fund has posted a performance of +7.13% year to date, versus its reference indicator +11.45%.

The macroeconomic backdrop was dominated by a large number of divergences, both geographic and sectoral, accompanied by a global disinflationary trend.
The United States came through the quarter in fine fettle, with growth slowing but resilient, and inflation receding. While the US manufacturing sector clearly showed signs of weakness and even fragility, the service sector held up admirably. The very good financial health of households, characterized by a very substantial savings reserve accumulated during the pandemic period, was one of the main driving forces behind the good health of the US service sector. Backed by a robust US job market (with a historically high ratio of job vacancies to job seekers) and sharply rising wages, household consumption of services surprised on the upside. This economic resilience was accompanied by a reduction in inflationary pressures, contributing to an improvement in the real purchasing power of economic agents. This resilience led to a rise in US nominal and real interest rates. This was accompanied by a very good performance by US equities, particularly technology stocks, as evidenced by the performance of some of our holdings like Ansys and Autodesk. The quarter was also marked by the emergence of a new theme: artificial intelligence. While we are still in the early stages of its application in the real economy, artificial intelligence will undoubtedly shake up many sectors. The energy transition is set to benefit fully. Better management of power grids, greater efficiency in green energy generation, lower costs and greater predictability of supply and demand are just some of the benefits expected from artificial intelligence. At the heart of this new technological revolution is the semiconductor sector (graphics cards, memory, etc.), which has benefited from widespread initial interest, as witnessed by the rise in some of our stocks over the quarter (Taiwan Semiconductors Manufacturing, Samsung).

While the United States showed surprising economic health, the same cannot be said of the Chinese and European economies. The long-awaited reopening of the Chinese economy, following years of restrictions due to the pandemic, failed to live up to expectations. Household consumption of both goods and services has not really rebounded, except in very timid proportions. China's manufacturing sector also remained lackluster, benefiting neither from a rebound in external demand nor from reinvigorated domestic demand. Moreover, the real estate sector remains in dire straits (overcapacity, insufficient demand, sectoral over indebtedness) and continues to weigh on the wider economy, no longer contributing to its growth - quite the contrary. This disappointing reopening, to put it mildly, weighed on several commodities during the quarter, as evidenced by the decline in oil, as well as a good number of base metals such as copper and iron ore.

The European economy, for its part, also showed a lackluster level of activity. While the fall in commodity prices, particularly energy, was welcome (European gas prices fell over the quarter), the European manufacturing sector was likely in contraction during the quarter, given the weakness of business survey indicators (German PMI close to 40 and new orders below the 40 mark). While domestic demand failed to materialize, Chinese weakness exacerbated the deterioration in our European industries. In view of these sluggish economic indicators, we reduced some of our holdings, such as Schneider Electric, which had appreciated sharply since the start of the year. European stocks in the renewable energy sector suffered from further setbacks at Siemens Energy's wind power subsidiary. These weighed on the performance of some of our holdings, such as Vestas and Orsted, which we decided to increase in view of the idiosyncratic nature of the problems mentioned by Siemens Energy.

The fund maintains a strong exposure to renewable energy generators both on the other side of the Atlantic and on the old continent, as evidenced by our large holdings in Nextera Energy, RWE and SSE. These stocks should continue to benefit gradually from accelerated capital deployment against the backdrop of the Inflation Reduction Act. In addition, our broad exposure to the power semiconductor value chain remains fully relevant, given the increasingly intensive use of power semiconductors in the broader energy transition. Finally, we retain a significant industrial allocation, notably in recycling (Waste Management) and water treatment (Ecolab, Danaher).

While a number of uncertainties remain, notably in terms of inflation and global growth, powerful green public policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act in the US attracted a great deal of capital spending at the start of the year and should support the investment cycle across the Atlantic and beyond. In this respect, we have seen numerous announcements in the field of batteries for electric vehicles from players such as LG Chem, as well as large-scale renewable energy projects which should continue to benefit our green infrastructure stocks such as Mastec.