The Maple-Brown Abbott Global Listed Infrastructure (GLI) team has long held that data center companies do not exhibit the requisite “core” characteristics of infrastructure, namely due to lower barriers to entry, higher competition and typically shorter contract lengths relative to other “core” sectors. We believe data centers offer inadequate inflation protection, higher cash flow volatility, and better align with real estate or "core-plus" infrastructure rather than core infrastructure.

Visiting company management and touring infrastructure provides invaluable insights into management practices, highlights potential opportunities and enriches our ESG engagement efforts.

It is hard to overstate the impact of Nvidia and its cohort on the market and related sentiment, however we believe Australian equities do not have the same driving factors as the US. Nonetheless, in our view the local bourse has a level of valuation excess, with the recent Guzman y Gomez float providing a fascinating insight into valuation extremes.

Global listed infrastructure can offer investors stable, reliable investment returns at relatively attractive valuations. Many infrastructure assets are also currently benefitting from some major global growth themes such as digitisation, decarbonisation and electrification.

The nexus between organisational culture and company financial performance makes sense: when people feel cared for and invested in, it often results in higher employee performance, better decision-making and lower incidences of unethical behaviour. As an investor with a deeply integrated approach to ESG, we pay particular attention to culture – including short term signals to help avoid share price underperformance – when assessing and engaging with companies.

Recent research trips to the US and New Zealand highlighted the global reach of the Australian small cap cohort, and yielded vastly different reports on sentiment and fundamentals. The market contrasts underscore the benefits of actively managing an ‘all weather’ bottom-up portfolio comprised of stocks that rank well based on earnings delivery, business sustainability factors and risk measures.

The exponential growth of data centers, particularly in the US, raises questions about meeting evolving electricity needs while addressing the energy trilemma of decarbonisation, reliability and affordability.

US-based electric utilities are pivotal actors in driving the energy transition and play a key role in emerging sectors including datacentres and EV adoption. Over the course of March our investment team met with management teams from ten US utilities with a combined market capitalisation of over US$300bn. These meetings helped reinforce our positive views on the sector and the opportunities available for these critical enablers.

In his latest quarterly review, Chief Investment Officer Garth Rossler compares current markets and portfolio positioning to the period leading up to the GFC, emphasizing our enduring focus on pockets of relative value.