Cohen & Steers' Childers: Ripe Opportunities Among Resource Equities

Talking to Investment Week, the manager said he was particularly interested in the "energy side of resource equities".

He explained in various sectors, especially energy, firms had been "really trying to grow production as much as possible, with very little focus on how much of that production was actually economic".

"So, you had a lot of companies that really did not earn their cost of capital, but kept growing production anyway," he said, adding that we have since seen a "steady, ugly decline in the values of a lot of these producers".

Now, Childers stated, companies have begun to think "more critically about supply discipline and capital discipline", instead focusing on the production of free cash flow.

"The net result is you have a lot of the resource equity universe right now, kicking off tremendous amounts of free cash flow. On the energy side, you have free cash flow yields, in many cases, in the mid to upper teens.

"If that were to be sustained, you are talking about companies that in theory, could pay back in distributions or buybacks a third of their entire market capitalisation in just a few years.

"That kind of free cash flow potential is a really interesting theme that can be found in energy, of course, but also in a lot of the metals and in the mining universe."

Listed infrastructure manager sells out of Hong Kong

Childers' fund focuses on four core areas of global real estate, global natural resources, global listed infrastructure and commodities.

While the composition of the themes of global real estate, global natural resources, global listed infrastructure and commodities vary within the portfolio, Childers stated they are "never going to zero in any of them and we are never going to 50%" as that diversification was key to the fund.

Until more recently, Childers said the fund had favoured commodity futures, but it has now "moved to be more tactically neutral across all our commodity exposure, given how fast the spot commodities have moved".

Childers argued that the real assets sector gave "exposures to the kind of structures and raw materials that at the bottom really facilitate economic growth," leading to strong inflation protection. He added that "inflation sensitivity is really what draws people to the asset class".

Meanwhile, when asked about the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in November 2021, Childers noted that "not all of infrastructure will necessarily benefit directly from bills like this", giving the example of how roads built are more likely to benefit the construction sector.

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