Sunday, July 10, 2016

Passively active: Spiltan Aktiefond Investmentbolag

Forsberg celebrates an assist by Matt Boulton (Flickr)


I just established a new position: a mutual fund called Spiltan Aktiefond Investmentbolag and in this post I’ll tell you why.

I heard about this product from a campaign held by (one of) my broker(s) Nordnet. They are having a campaign where every 100 euros used for purchases of Spiltan funds is considered a lottery ticket in a draw for a 1000 euros worth of similar product. But this certainly was not my reason for the purchase. ..In fact, that would have been one of the worst reasons for purchasing anything else than an actual lottery ticket (=entertainment, not a investment). But it's always nice to get something extra.

Earlier I had noticed that in the Swedish market there is a number of publicly listed investment companies like Investor, Industrivärden, Kinnevik, etc. To some extent, I guess these companies can be thought of as actively managed mutual funds that are just publicly listed. But they generally emphasize their active ownership, development of the companies and long time horizons; all traits not generally attached to many mutual funds.

I had been interested in these Swedish investment companies but got stuck in the difficulty of picking my horse in the race and kind of forgot about it. This is where the discovery of Aktiefond Investmentbolag came in. It’s a passively managed mutual fund that holds stock of about ten of these investment companies, the biggest two being over 50% of the fund: Industrivärden and Investor both at 27%. The fund charges a reasonable fee of 0.2% and pays no distribution.  

Spiltan Aktiefond Investmentbolag, 10 biggest holdings


Through Industrivärden one gets exposure to Handelsbanken, SCA, Volvo, Sandvik, Ericsson, ICA and Skanska. 
Industrivärden, holdings


Through Investor, one gets exposure to Atlas Copco, ABB, SEB, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Wärtsilä, Sobi, Nasdaq, Electrolux, Saab and Husqvarna. 

Investor, holdings


That seems like a lot of the Stockholmsbörs.. So why not buy a Stockholm index instead? Since inception (2011-11-30) the fund is up +134% whereas the Stockholm index that accounts for dividends is up +86%. That’s an outperformance in the neighborhood of 10% p.a. Yeah, yeah, I know! Past performance and so on.. But the underlying companies seem to emphasize their long term view and commitment to their companies of ownership which may be their secret sauce? Still, paying overhead for putting over 50% of the money in just two companies is a downside here, and that's why I don't plan on making future purchases. Let's see how this will fare, this fund is less than 1% of my portfolio.

Spiltan Aktiefond Investmentbolag, performance