HEAD-TO-HEAD: Blackrock vs Jupiter

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Investment approach 

Both the Blackrock and Jupiter funds invest mainly in UK equities and are exposed across the market cap scale, according to Brunt. Both funds also tend to have higher weightings to mid-cap companies relative to their peers.

Source: Morningstar

Both managers are allowed to invest up to 20% of assets in non-UK equities, and they have made good use of that allowance, Brunt said.

The key difference is the respective investment styles. The Blackrock fund has a strong growth bias, while the Jupiter fund focuses on value, according to Brunt.

Blackrock fund’s manager, Nicholas Little, tries to identify companies that will benefit from structural changes in the market, according to Brunt. These companies tend to be high growth companies and have higher multiples in terms of valuations, he added.

“What he is trying to do is look for companies that he believes will disrupt the status quo. A lot of that is forward-looking – Little is trying to take a view of what will happen in the future and forecast it.”

On the flipside, the Jupiter fund’s manager, Ben Whitmore, doesn’t like forecasting.

“He doesn’t see much value in forecasting. What he is looking for is unloved companies with a share price that has fallen beyond what he deems should be their fair value. So he is looking at historical data,” Brunt said.

Brunt explained that Whitmore’s approach is trying to identify companies that are trading below their 10-year multiples, including cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio.

Brunt noted that the Jupiter fund manager also prefers high-quality companies, or those that have resilient balance sheets.

Brunt added that although both funds are benchmark-unconstrained, Blackrock’s Little is “a little bit more” benchmark-aware. Both funds use the FTSE All Share Index as their benchmark.

“Little holds some energy names for risk mitigation purposes, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily thinks these companies will benefit from structural changes,” he said.

Sector allocation (%)

Source: Morningstar

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