A high-conviction, research-backed approach to high yield
Polen Capital
Manager
Inception of Strategy
USD
Base Currency
Investment Philosophy
Polen Capital views the high yield asset class as an area where discipline, deep research, and thoughtful risk-taking offer the potential for lasting rewards. Its strategy starts with a clear conviction. The best results come from focusing on quality: identifying fundamentally strong businesses that can weather storms and prosper over time.
The firm is relentless in its pursuit of idiosyncratic credit opportunities. By digging deep through bottom-up, fundamental research, their investment teams seek out underappreciated companies with resilient business models, robust cash flows, and sound governance. They believe these are the hidden gems that can deliver both attractive yields and long-term value; companies overlooked by the crowd but identified by rigorous analysis.
Polen Capital does not chase yield for yield’s sake. Instead, they carefully balance opportunities for income with robust downside protection. By managing concentrated portfolios, the firm’s highest conviction ideas can more meaningfully impact performance, and they can develop a deeper understanding of our holdings through a closer engagement with the companies in which we invest.
A top-down, macro-overlay informs portfolio construction, which guides its thinking on rating, sector, and duration exposure, while fundamental security selection remains its main engine of return. Crucially, capital preservation underpins everything Polen does. The firm scrutinizes legal and bond covenant frameworks as part of a truly holistic research process, protecting against downside as much as identifying upside. This blended perspective allows the firm to target attractive opportunities for clients, while never losing sight of the risks.
Stan Moss
CEO, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Team
Polen Capital’s European High Yield team offers deep expertise in the asset class. They view credit risk through a different lens than credit ratings agencies, believing that structural inefficiencies in the leveraged credit market create attractive opportunities for active managers.
