AXA IM today announces the launch of the AXA World Funds Framlington Robotech Fund (“the Fund”). Managed by Tom Riley and Jeremy Gleeson at AXA IM Framlington Equities, the Fund is a Luxembourg domiciled SICAV following an active, unconstrained, multi-cap, robotics strategy. The manager aims to invest in global growth companies spanning robotics and automation applications across various areas including the industrial, technology, manufacturing, healthcare and transportation sectors.
Tom Riley, Lead Fund Manager of the AXA World Funds Framlington Robotech Fund said: “We are at the early stages of the robotics revolution, the robotics market is expected to grow by 10% a year until 2025. While this is anemerging multi-decade theme, it is already an investible area from which we aim to select 40 to 60 fast growth companies to build a global portfolio diversified across market cap and sectors. Robotics will continue to have a significant impact on society for years to come and an increasing number of new listed small and mid-cap companies will become investment opportunities over time.”
The launch of the Fund, follows the success of a dedicated global robotics mandate for the Japanese retail market that AXA IM launched in December 2015 that has seen its assets grow to approximately $1 billion to date. The strategy has outperformed the broader market since launch.The new Fund will be managed by the same team following the same investment approach.
Mark Beveridge, Global Head of Framlington Equities at AXA IM added: “AXA IM have a long history and track record in thematic equity investing (e.g. technology, healthcare, biotech, listed property etc.). We have been early adopters of the robotics trend and have been investing in areas such as industrial automation, autonomous vehicles and robot assisted surgery for a number of years in other strategies. We fundamentally believe you need an active manager to access new growth areas such as robotics – there is no broadly used standard robotics benchmark that you can try to replicate. We have great momentum in an uncrowded space; demand for our robotics strategy has been incredible from clients in Japan and we are excited that we can now offer this strategy more widely.”
Tom Riley will be working alongside Jeremy Gleeson, the Lead Fund Manager of the circa $430m AXA Framlington Global Technology Fund. Jeremy has 19 years’ experience investing in technology and technology disruptions. They will also work closely with Framlington Equities regional and sector specialists (i.e. healthcare). The AXA World Funds Framlington Robotech fund is a Luxembourg-domiciled SICAV. The Fund has both retail and institutional share classes and is registered for distribution in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK. Registration is expected for Switzerland in coming months