Longtime Manager of Fidelity Low-Priced Stock to Retire

A lengthy leadership transition is now officially underway at Fidelity Low-Priced Stock FLPSX that will conclude with Joel Tillinghast's retirement as its portfolio manager. By year-end 2023, Morgen Peck and Sam Chamovitz, who have collaboratively picked stocks for a small portion of the strategy's assets since 2017, will have full control of the bulk of assets, while its other three comanagers will continue to run their own slivers. The strategy, which carried a High People rating and a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Silver, has been placed under review.

Effective Nov. 16, 2021, Peck and Chamovitz are now co-lead portfolio managers alongside Tillinghast for more than 95% of the strategy's assets. Each brings many years of management experience that precedes their appointments here as comanagers in 2016 and 2017, respectively. The risk-adjusted results for Fidelity Stock Selector Small Cap FDSCX, a U.S.-focused small-blend fund, have been good since Peck's start as comanager in 2011 and great since she became its lead in 2018. Chamovitz, who recently returned to Fidelity's Boston headquarters after working years from its Tokyo office as an international-focused manager, has skillfully steered Fidelity International Small Cap FISMX since 2014. Both will hand off those duties to focus on Fidelity Low-Priced Stock.

Tillinghast will leave behind a legacy as one of the industry's most talented value investors. His cool-headedness has been key to the success of this strategy, whose risk-adjusted results since his start in 1989 have consistently thrived. Since then through October 2021, its 13.5% annualized return topped all surviving peers in the small- or mid-value Morningstar Categories and outpaced all relevant indexes by at least 2 percentage points. Morningstar recognized Tillinghast in 2021 as Outstanding Portfolio Manager and in 2002 as Domestic-Stock Fund Manager of the Year.

Tillinghast's retirement won't mean full separation from Fidelity. He plans to take on an advisory role like other legendary managers at the firm, such as Peter Lynch.