Can investors combine the benefits of growth with improving our impact on the planet?
Growth and environmental protection are often seen as mutually exclusive, but Impax Environmental Markets is an investment trust that believes the opposite is true by backing the right companies.
In this episode of the Investing Show, Jon Forster, Senior Portfolio Manager at Impax Environmental Markets, joins Simon Lambert to explain how the trust looks for companies that can generate future profits and be beneficial to the world we live in.
Impax Environmental Markets is an investment trust with a history dating back well before the recent rise of ESG (environmental, social and governance) in the investment world.
It supports companies that are “enabling cleaner, more efficient delivery of basic services such as food, water and energy” and that are “helping to address important environmental risks, such as climate change and pollution.”
A powerful tailwind from a surge in interest in environmental investing and the rush to growth stocks saw Impax EM post significant gains in the run-up to the pandemic and the market rally that followed the initial coronavirus crisis. Covid.
But as inflation and interest rates soared and investors turned away from growth, Impax Environmental Markets suffered a drop in sentiment and saw the value of its assets and share price fall.
But Jon says this has now put the trust in an ideal position to be able to benefit from backing companies with much better valuations, even though there are stronger investment cases than before Covid.
He explains his view on the trust’s performance, the current market outlook and discusses some of the interesting stocks held by Impax Environmental Markets.