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HSBC Aggressive Hybrid Fund Direct Plan Growth Option INF917K01LE4

NAV / 1-Day Return
57.10 / -0.65%
Total Assets
50.2 Bil
Inception Date
Jan 01, 2013
Expense Ratio
0.860%
Fee Level
Load
Deferred
Category
India Fund Aggressive Allocation
Investment Style
Large Growth
Fixed Income Surveyed Style Box
High/Moderate
Status
Open
TTM Yield
0.00%
Turnover
85.76%

Morningstar’s Analysis

Weakness in HSBC Aggressive Hybrid Dir Gr's People and Process Pillar ratings limits this strategy to a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Neutral.
Author Photo
Morningstar Manager Research
Morningstar

Summary

The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the second-lowest fee quintile among peers.

The team's lower-than-average manager retention rate raises concerns about stability and continuity and, along with other weaknesses, drives the strategy's Below Average People Pillar. The strategy earns a Below Average Process Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Average Parent Pillar rating, and this rating is inherited from vehicles belonging to the same branding entity and is indirectly assigned by an analyst.

Morningstar's style-agnostic evaluation of this fund's process seeks to understand whether the strategy has a performance objective and sensible, clearly defined, repeatable execution.

Process

Below Average

HSBC Aggressive Hybrid Fund earns a Below Average Process Pillar rating.

The process is bolstered by the depth of its portfolio management team. With five portfolio managers at the helm, the fund is well-staffed. However, the rating is limited by the fund's mediocre long-term risk-adjusted performance. This can be seen in its five-year alpha calculated relative to the category index, which suggests that the process has struggled over that period. The parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 43% also holds the rating back. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that have beat their respective category's median return for the period. The parent's subpar success ratio suggests that the firm could do better across its fund lineup.

This strategy maintains a fixed-income to equity allocation very similar to Aggressive Allocation peers, with a 23.1% to 72.4% fixed-income to equity weighting. Its equity sleeve is consistently tilted toward both smaller market-cap and growth-oriented companies versus the category average. The strategy has three region or sector biases compared to category peers. The most noteworthy is a bias away from the energy sector, where the portfolio has been consistently underweight. It also maintains an overweight bias toward the consumer cyclical sector. Finally, the strategy has consistently been underweight in the communication services sector.

The portfolio is overweight in industrials and consumer cyclical relative to the category average by 12.9 and 11.7 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared with category peers are basic materials and financial services, underweight the average by 7.2 and 6.9 percentage points of assets, respectively.

The fund’s fixed-income allocation maintains lower credit risk as the fund’s average credit rating is AAA compared with the category average’s BB.

HSBC Aggressive Hybrid Fund earns a Below Average People Pillar rating.

People

Below Average

The team benefits from the scale of its portfolio management team. With five portfolio managers at the helm, the fund is well-staffed. However, the rating is limited by its parent firm's subpar risk-adjusted performance, as shown by the firm's average 10-year Morningstar Rating of 2.9 stars. A lower star rating suggests that the firm has struggled to outperform on a risk-adjusted basis. The parent firm's five-year retention rate of 74% also limits the team.

The team is backed by Shriram Ramanathan, the longest-tenured manager on the strategy, who brings 15 years of listed portfolio management experience. Management has provided stability, leading to a potential smooth transition of power, with similar manager retention to peers. The most recent documented departure was within the past two years.

After a period of significant leadership churn from 2019 to 2021, HSBC Global Asset Management’s senior management roster has largely stabilized.
Author Photo
Mara Dobrescu
Senior Principal

Parent

Average

CEO Nicolas Moreau(who took over in 2019 after previous stints at AXA IM and DWS) and CIO Xavier Baraton(promoted into the role in 2021) have embarked on an ambitious plan to foster investment excellence.

They first revamped investment teams’ compensation structures, which were previously largely discretionary and non-formulaic, but are now more tightly linked to the performance of the funds managed, over one and three years. This has strengthened the alignment of portfolio managers’ interests with those of investors, although including longer time periods, such as five years, would bring the formula closer to industry standards.

The duo has also striven to increase active risk across the fund range, incentivizing portfolio managers to take higher-conviction, more-concentrated exposures, and revamping some strategies that were too benchmark-aware.

Finally, while HSBC GAM had until now kept a very diversified fund lineup spanning virtually all asset classes, geographies, and investment styles, it is gradually refocusing on a shorter list of key areas. One of these areas is thematic investing, led by Pierin Menzli, who joined in 2022 from Contrast Capital. The firm has so far launched a Metaverse strategy and a Global Circular Economy fund, and has plans to continue developing thematic strategies based on a sophisticated and granular taxonomy. This pivot warrants some caution, as thematic strategies can be difficult for investors to use over the long term. In parallel, the firm has continued to launch a flurry of ESG strategies, which offsets the number of product rationalizations elsewhere. HSBC GAM also retains a well-managed ETF and index fund business which, while growing incrementally, has so far failed to reach the scale of its large European competitors.

Overall, most of the initiatives taken over the past three years are encouraging, but they have yet to translate into significantly higher success ratios across the fund range. The firm retains its Average Parent Pillar rating for now.

This share class, with returns reported in Indian Rupee, has endured varying fortunes.
Author Photo
Morningstar Manager Research
Morningstar

Performance

It has been successful over the short term but disappointing over the long term. Over the past five years, the fund outpaced the category index, the CRISIL Hybrid 35+65 − Aggressive Index, by 53 basis points, and mirrored its average peer. More importantly, on a 10-year basis, this share class trailed the index by an annualized 48 basis points.

The share class trailed the index with a lower Sharpe ratio, a measure of risk-adjusted returns, over the trailing 10-year period. The strategy also took on elevated risk, contributing to the bad outcome for investors. Specifically, the fund had a higher standard deviation, 13.2%, compared with the benchmark, 11.0%.

Low-cost investments routinely outperform high-cost investments.

Price

Thus, assessing cost is a critical step in any investment evaluation. This share class levies a fee that places it in its Morningstar Category's second-cheapest quintile. Despite this fee, the fund’s People, Process, and Parent Pillars suggest this share class is probably best avoided, as it does not offer investors a good chance at producing positive alpha versus its peer benchmark, resulting in a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Neutral.


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