A talented lead manager and proven quality-oriented value approach earn JPMorgan U.S. Value a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Silver across most share classes except its cheapest shares, which are rated Gold.
Clare Hart has brought stable leadership to this strategy’s helm since coming on board in March 2004. In 2019, Andrew Brandon and David Silberman joined Hart as comanagers. Brandon had served as Hart’s dedicated analyst since 2012, while Silberman came to the team from his role as JPMorgan’s head of the equity investment director and corporate governance teams globally. The trio sports deep experience; Hart, Brandon, and Silberman have spent 28, 23, and 32 years in the industry, respectively. Hart’s additions to the manager lineup are welcome as she’s managed this approach and JPMorgan Equity Income HLIEX alone since coming aboard. Two dedicated generalist analysts and JPMorgan's core equity team provide further support.
Hart’s approach is time-tested. Similar to JPMorgan Equity Income, her focus is on quality firms. She and her team look for firms with durable franchises, consistent patterns of earnings, high return on invested capital, conservative financials, and strong management teams. However, unlike JPMorgan Equity Income, this strategy doesn’t have a minimum dividend-yield requirement, and the team can invest in some undervalued, lower-quality names whose cash flows, earnings, balance sheets, and operating environments are improving and therefore offer a good risk/reward trade-off. The team’s long-term view has kept portfolio turnover and trading costs low. The approximately 90-stock portfolio’s quality metrics and allocation to stocks with positive Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings are among the highest in the large-value Morningstar Category.
Hart’s record is competitive. Since she came on board through April 2021, the strategy’s absolute and Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Returns topped the bogy and landed in the top quartile of peers.