abrdn UK Smaller Companies Class S - Income (GBP)

Harry Nimmo's run the fund since it launched in 1997. In that time he's built a very good track record, and has beaten the IA UK Smaller Companies sector average by a long way. He's had some of his best performance relative to the market when the market's been falling. But he's also done better when the market's been going up too. The fund can fall behind the market when it's rising rapidly though. This isn't an indication of how the fund will do in the future.

The manager seeks long-term growth from small companies that've shown they're already successful. He's less interested in small companies with high future growth potential but are still unproven or aren't yet profitable.

Nimmo looks for companies with advantages over competitors, consistent sales, and long-term growth. He thinks these are good indicators of a company's prospects. He prefers companies either still run by its founders or where management have been in place for at least 10 years. He thinks this makes his fund different to most others.

As the fund is focused on long-term growth, the manager invests in companies that also have plans to keep growing well into the future. He normally doesn't sell an investment if it grows into a large company, preferring to stay invested if he thinks it'll keep growing.

He invests in a fairly small number of companies so each one can potentially make a big difference to performance, but it's a higher-risk approach. At the same time he'll ensure no company makes up more than 5% of the portfolio, so if a few companies have a tough time he hopes they won't drag down performance too much.