Pie Funds has put its flagship Australasian small cap funds back on the shelves again after ‘hard-closing’ the core strategies several years ago.
The Australasian Growth and Growth 2 funds are now accepting money from both new and existing investors, undoing locks put in place in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
Both funds, along with others in the Pie range, have periodically blocked contributions (including ‘soft-closes’ that limit new flows to existing investors) since inception in a bid to manage capacity issues in the Australasian small caps sector.
In a statement, Pie chief, Mike Taylor, said the most recent reversal follows a relative slump in the asset class over the last couple of years.
Taylor said the ASX small caps index had significantly underperformed both Australasian and global large companies benchmarks since the end of 2021.
Given the “evidence supporting the superior long-term performance of small cap stocks compared to large caps”, he said “the time is right for the funds to re-open and raise money in this asset class”.
Both the Australasian Growth and Growth 2 funds have seen assets under management almost halved since peaking at about $120 million and $480 million, respectively, in September 2021.
As at the end of June this year, the Growth fund – the seminal Pie strategy launched in 2007 – reported $69 million under management. Likewise, the Growth 2 fund, established in 2015 with a broader remit up to mid-cap stocks, fell to $206 million as at the end of June this year.
Michael Goltsman and Mike Ross run the Growth strategy while Michelle Lopez and Kent Williams look after the Growth 2 fund.
As well as reopening the Australasian small cap strategies, Pie has tweaked some of the other nine products in its range including cutting the withdrawal period for the closed Emerging Companies Fund to 15 business days from the previous three-month wait. Fees on the Pie Conservative Fund will also rise from 0.71 per cent to 0.91 per cent by December this year.
Founded as an Australasian small caps specialist, Pie has since diversified into other asset classes including global stocks and, more latterly, fixed income. The manager also launched the Juno KiwiSaver scheme in 2018.
Pie has also flagged plans to launch new products soon.
Overall, Pie has more than $2 billion under management including about $500 million in Juno.