India’s Net-Zero Progress

Maria Lernerman, CFA, portfolio manager for our Global Paris-Aligned and International Carbon Transition Equity strategies, recently traveled to India to observe the country’s emission reduction initiatives first-hand. In this video, she shares thoughts from her trip and highlights hurdles that the country must overcome to progress toward net-zero status.

India: Four Takeaways from Our Travels

With high GDP growth and a rapidly expanding industrial base, there is a lot of optimism about the Indian economy. And having passed China earlier this year as the world’s most populous nation, there is the potential for a “demographic dividend” to bolster that growth in the coming decades. Recently, three Harding Loevner colleagues traveled to India to talk to companies and see conditions on the ground for themselves. In the video series below, portfolio manager and analyst Jafar Rizvi and analysts Sean Contant and Chris Nealand discuss what they saw on their trip and their perspectives on India with portfolio specialist Apurva Schwartz.

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The Democratic Republic of The Congo Could Be the Next Big Frontier Market, Eventually

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has abundant natural resources, rich farmland, and the powerful Congo River, has the potential to become the renewable-energy hub for the entire world and Africa’s breadbasket. I toured Kenya and the DRC in July on a trip organized by Nairobi-based Equity Bank, which operates a subsidiary in the DRC. As an analyst of frontier-market companies, what I saw intrigued me. The DRC is a nation with vast potential, as well as significant hurdles to overcome.

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How Persistent Are Quality and Growth?

At Harding Loevner, we are quality growth investors, which means we seek to invest in well-managed, financially sound businesses that can sustain profitable growth across economic cycles. But what do we mean when we talk about quality and growth as attributes of a company? While there is no standard definition of quality or growth in the investing world, our quality rankings consider factors such as the stability, level, and trend of a company’s profitability as well as its balance-sheet strength, and our growth rankings consider historical and estimated future changes in sales, earnings, and cash flows.

How companies perform on those measures can change over time. Industry dynamics evolve, which can lead to a shift in competitive positioning. Macroeconomic cycles and deviations in management strategy can also alter the long-term outlook. Even companies that consistently rank highly for quality and growth must be continuously assessed for signs of deterioration in their financial health, competitive advantages, and other factors. The challenge isn’t just determining the businesses that meet our criteria today, but also which businesses will sustain their quality and growth characteristics over the long run.