BGF World Technology A2 |
by Stephen Welch
Caroline Tall's tenure on BlackRock Technology Opportunities was short-lived. She joined as a comanager on Sept. 22, 2022, and departed almost a year later. Tall spent more than 13 years working at Fidelity Investments as an analyst and portfolio manager specializing in technology before joining BlackRock. Lead manager Tony Kim and comanager Reid Menge remain. They are adequately resourced with four analysts and an associate. This departure does not alter the strategy's Morningstar Medalist Ratings. |
Veteran leadership plies a distinctive approach mapping out the growing tech-oriented universe on BlackRock Technology Opportunities and Luxembourg-domiciled BGF World Technology, making it an attractive option at the right price. While Tony Kim’s 11-year tenure managing this strategy lands him in the top quartile of technology Morningstar Category peers, his technological expertise goes well beyond that and is tough to match. He’s spent more than 30 years analyzing tech firms and has developed his own system to organize and monitor the universe. This framework helps Kim standardize firms across industries for easy comparisons. He has assembled a team of seven, including one comanager and a data scientist; each team member is responsible for understanding the entire tech sector. Kim takes a holistic, distinctive approach within the technology-oriented universe. He targets cutting-edge tech, intriguing business models, and emerging industries. Over his career, he has mapped a proprietary 1,200-plus stock universe that helps the team find compelling growth prospects including traditional global technology companies as well as ones that fall outside the typical classification. With the help of the team’s data scientist, Kim has built out a proprietary software platform that allows the team to easily compare company data across their industries and focus analysts’ time on projections. This system allows the team to dive into specific industries and easily identify top opportunities ranked on various metrics. Kim continues to enhance this framework and is in the process of building out a generative artificial intelligence tool to help the team parse incoming news. While performance has stumbled recently, the strategy’s long-term record remains solid. Since Kim took over in June 2013 through May 2024, the institutional shares’ 21% annualized return landed in the top third of the category and outpaced the MSCI ACWI/Information Technology benchmark’s 19.2%. In the first five months of 2024, the strategy handily outpaced the index, thanks in part to semiconductor picks such as top holding Nvidia. Few investors have the skill, experience, and framework that Kim does to keep up with the shifts in the rapidly changing tech sector, making this a solid long-term option. |
Morningstar Pillars | |
People | Above Average |
Parent | Above Average |
Process | Above Average |
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