Polen China Growth

Capturing Quality Growth in the Heart of Emerging Markets

The Polen Capital Emerging Markets Growth team manages the China Growth Strategy with a singular focus: to uncover durable, high-quality businesses poised for long-term success in one of the world’s most dynamic economies. Employing a fundamental, bottom-up investment approach, the team seeks companies with sustainable competitive advantages, strong balance sheets, and clear growth runways. With deep local insights and global perspective, the strategy offers investors differentiated access to China’s structural growth story—through the lens of long-term partnership and disciplined active management.

Polen Capital

Manager

August 2021

Inception of Strategy

USD

Base Currency

Investment Philosopy

The Polen Capital China Growth strategy aims to achieve long-term growth by building a concentrated portfolio of competitively advantaged businesses in China, with potential for sustainable, above-average earnings growth.

At Polen Capital, long-term thinking is at the heart of everything they do. Combined with an independent mindset, the Emerging Markets team build concentrated high-quality portfolios for the long term through implementing a disciplined, bottom-up investment approach. Polen's philosophy is grounded in the belief that high-quality companies, those with strong financials, resilient earnings profiles, and forward-looking leadership, are best positioned to deliver sustainable, attractive earnings growth over time. This repeatable, high-conviction process is designed not only to compound wealth but to preserve capital and navigate market volatility with confidence and clarity.

Polen's China team within the Emerging Markets team, focus on exceptionally competitive companies with durable business models, robust balance sheets, proven management teams, and clear alignment of interest between majority and minority shareholders. As a consequence, these companies also tend to have defensive earnings streams, and visionary management teams. Through rigorous, in-depth analysis and a true ownership mindset, Polen aim to invest in businesses that they believe can thrive across market cycles.

A Statement from Polen Capital

We believe China offers a unique blend of innovation, scale, and long-term growth potential. Our strategy focuses on owning the few exceptional businesses that can thrive through cycles and create enduring value for shareholders.

June Lui, CFA

Portfolio Manager & Analyst

Why should a client choose Polen Capital?

Founded in 1979, Polen Capital is a global investment manager that provides actively managed growth equity and high-yield credit strategies. Polen delivers distinctive growth and income solutions, building high-conviction, concentrated, competitively advantaged portfolios with the potential to compound and outperform over the long-term. The firm has a distinctive culture and is committed to attracting, developing, and retaining exceptional professionals who are aligned with the firm’s mission of preserving and growing clients’ assets to protect their present and enable their future.

Why active management?

Stephen Atkins CFA, Portfolio Manager, Strategist & Analyst at Polen Capital, explains why his firm believes in active management based on historical evidence over the past 20-30 years.

Polen Capital’s Investment Philosophy for China Equities

Jean Maunoury, Deputy CEO and CIO of Research and Investment at iM Global Partner, speaks with June Lui, Portfolio Manager & Analyst for Emerging Markets Growth at Polen Capital, about investment strategies in Chinese equities. June explains Polen Capital’s long-term, fundamentals-driven approach to investing in China, focusing on structural growth opportunities and high-quality companies rather than short-term market trends. She highlights the importance of being selective, emphasizing management quality, business models, and valuations. The discussion also covers the limitations of traditional Chinese equity benchmarks, often dominated by state-owned enterprises, and why Polen Capital avoids them in favor of independent research.

How Polen Capital’s Emerging Market teams collaborate effectively

In this conversation, Jean Maunoury, Deputy CEO and CIO of Research and Investment at iM Global Partner, speaks with June Lui, Portfolio Manager & Analyst for Emerging Markets Growth at Polen Capital, to explore how Polen Capital’s Emerging Market teams collaborate effectively.

Polen Global Growth Fund Overview

In this video, Damon Ficklin, Head of Team and Portfolio Manager at Polen Capital and Lead Portfolio Manager for the Global Growth Strategy, outlines the firm’s disciplined investment philosophy centered on three key advantages: portfolio concentration, long-term holding periods, and rigorous risk management. He explains how Polen Capital focuses on selecting 20 to 30 of the world’s highest-quality growth companies, leveraging a long-term investment horizon to let fundamentals drive returns rather than market timing. The investment process uses five guardrails, high return on equity, strong earnings and free cash flow growth, solid balance sheets, improving margins, and organic revenue growth, to filter a broad universe down to about 100–150 best-in-class businesses, while excluding cyclical and competitively weak firms. ESG factors are fully integrated into their analysis, ensuring companies manage risks and capture opportunities. This methodical approach has delivered consistent performance over decades and remains central to Polen Capital’s mission of protecting and growing client capital.