Thematic: ESG

Candice and Felicity are joined today by Mary Manning - who's a Portfolio Manager at Alphinity Investment Management.

Shopaholics, this one's for you! If you love adding to your shopping basket, chances are you're already a better investor than you think.

What’s in a name? In today's episode Bryce & Alec focus in on 'Greenwashing'. This is an issue because in the ethical and sustainability space - names of funds are pretty loose! The skill we’re going to talk about today is not about greenwashing, but we want to take a step back and discuss how you can uncover for yourself, what’s in a name.

Last week, a surprising police raid took place in Germany. 50 police officers raided DWS Group, a subsidiary of mega investment bank Deutsche Bank. What was the alleged crime? Greenwashing. If you haven't heard of Greenwashing before, it's a term used to describe when a company markets their product as ‘sustainable’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ when it really just isn’t. It's classic marketing spin. In the investing world, greenwashing has become more and more of an issue over the past few years as more and more money flows into investment funds that are advertised as ‘sustainable’ or ‘ESG-focused’.

Nathan Hughes is a Portfolio Manager of Perpetual’s Ethical SRI fund and Income Share funds. He has over 17 years experience in the industry, 11 of those at Perpetual. Perpetual’s Ethical SRI fund is an actively managed fund, targeting long-term capital growth and income through investment in quality shares of Australian ethical and socially responsible companies. The fund has just celebrated its 20 year anniversary as an unlisted fund and in November last year floated on the ASX with the ticker GIVE.

In this episode, Bryce and Alec chat with author and journalist Nicole Haddow. Nicole has recently published a book, The Ethical Investor, where she shares her experience of how to avoid 'toxic' companies and talks about how to build your wealth through the stock market. We know With so many of our community talking about ethical investing and wanting to learn more - this episode is the perfect place to begin.

We think Calix has the best tagline of all companies, ‘Because Mars is for quitters.’ Calix provides industrial solutions to address global sustainability challenges, and has developed a kiln that captures CO2. Despite the stock being up around 500% in the last 12 months, the Calix journey might just be getting started. Bryce and Alec are joined by Phil Hodgson, the Managing Director and CEO of Calix (ASX: CXL) for a fascinating conversation.

Happy New Year Equity Mates! In this episode, Bryce and Alec dissect Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND), a company aiming to facilitate the shift from traditional meat to plant-based meat. Based in California, Beyond Meat has partnerships with McDonalds, KFC & PizzaHut to sell their products in over 80 countries worldwide. Their plant-based meals emulate chicken, beef, pork, meatball and sausage. Beyond Meat has attracted several heavyweight investors, including Bill Gates and the former CEO of McDonalds, Don Thompson.

The Summer break has arrived, but we’re not leaving you in the dark. We’re back for another Summer Series, taking a deep dive into 12 companies across Australia and the US which have been popular with our community. In this episode we are taking a deep dive into BWX Limited (ASX:BWX) and are joined by their CEO Dave Fenlon. BWX Ltd is in the beauty and personal care industry, providing skin, hair and body products in Australia and internationally. Dave talks with Bryce and Alec about their recent acquisition of Go-To and their plan for the business moving forward.

In last week's episode we chatted about ESG investing and also touched on the importance of addressing climate change as one of the major UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). So this week, we welcome two experts, Jeremy Liddle and Zarmeen Pavri, working in the Venture Capital space who run a fund where all the underlying investments address the many issues of climate change. In this conversation Jeremy and Zarmeen talk about their fund: SDGx Ventures - Climate Tech Fund, talk about the difference between deep tech and ordinary technology, the role they envisage climate playing in any investor’s portfolio, and the crucial difference between Impact, and ESG.

In this Need to Know episode, Felicity and Candice lay down the foundations and answer all your burning ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing questions. They also outline the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and outline a few ways you can make your investing dollars make an impact towards Climate Change Action.

We all understand the importance of better resource use. As investors, why is this a good thematic to be exposed to? Velislava Dimitrova is the lead portfolio manager of Fidelity Sustainable Water & Waste fund. In this episode Bryce and Alec discuss Sustainable Water and Waste - What does this mean? And what are some of the companies or themes the fund invests in? They talk about the concept of a circular economy. What is it? What are some of the important trends or emerging technologies we should be aware of in the waste management industry?Are there any companies that are driving the industry forward?