Invesco Global Emerging Markets: December 2025 fund update

• Invesco has built a strong Asia & Emerging Markets investment team

• The team uses a contrarian investment approach, looking for companies that are out of favour with other investors

• Performance has been strong over the current fund managers’ tenure

• This fund was recently added to our Wealth Shortlist of funds chosen by our analysts for their long-term performance potential

How it fits in a portfolio

The Invesco Global Emerging Markets fund aims to grow your investment over the long term by investing in companies across a range of emerging countries such as China, South Korea, and Brazil. The fund managers are contrarians, looking for companies that are out of favour with other investors and whose shares are priced for less than they should be. This is an approach known as value investing. Emerging markets can offer plenty of opportunities for investors but are higher risk than more developed markets.

Given the fund’s focus on value, it could work well alongside more growth-focused emerging markets funds. It could also be blended with funds invested in developed markets as part of a globally diversified investment portfolio.

Manager

Charlie Bond joined Invesco in 2012 and became lead manager of this fund in January 2020. He has final say over which companies are in the fund but receives input from other members of the team, including Matt Pigott, the fund’s deputy manager.

Pigott joined Invesco in 2022 and has worked as an emerging markets analyst since 2017. He was appointed deputy manager in 2024.

Bond also has the support of William Lam and Ian Hargreaves, who are co-Heads of Asia & Emerging Markets at Invesco. Both are seasoned investors in companies across Asia, with Hargreaves joining Invesco in 1994 and Lam in 2006. Given Asian countries make up a large proportion of the emerging markets universe, we feel their experience is relevant.

The managers also manage or contribute to a number of other Asia and emerging markets funds at Invesco. These funds all use the same investment process and, given the amount of overlap, we’re comfortable they can handle these responsibilities.

Process

The managers aim for the fund to perform better than the broader emerging markets stock market by investing in companies they think are undervalued by other investors.

The team believes that biases of other investors mean companies are often available at a share price lower than their true value. It might be that a company has missed a target, or that the sector in which the company operates is out of favour. In any case, the team aims to buy shares for less than they believe they’re worth.

Both fund managers and analysts search for companies where they think the share price is less than their actual value and try to understand the reasons behind this. The team then build a detailed understanding of the company, including meeting the management team, competitors, and suppliers, and assessing the company’s financial strength. Each idea is debated by the whole team, ensuring different viewpoints are considered.

This leads to a final portfolio of 50-60 companies. Geographically, the fund currently invests the most in China, South Korea, and Taiwan, although the amount invested in China and Taiwan is less than the broader market (the benchmark). The managers also invest more in Brazil than the benchmark but less in India, as strong growth in recent years means the managers view many companies as overpriced.

On a sector level, almost a quarter of the fund invests in financials. There’s a similar amount in technology companies, although less than the benchmark.

The managers mainly invest in large, established businesses. They also have the ability to invest in higher-risk smaller companies, though they don’t invest much in this part of the market.

When making any investment, the managers do so with the long term in mind. As a result, changes to the fund don’t happen often. However, they’ve still found some new opportunities over the past year.

Investments were made in Brazilian retailer Lojas Renner and communications company PT Telkom in Indonesia. The managers also invested in mining company Grupo Mexico, a dominant player in the copper industry. To make room in the fund for these, investments were sold in Korean companies Naver and Hyundai Motors, as well as Chilean consumer business Embotelladora Andina.

Culture

The Asia & Emerging Markets team at Invesco has developed a strong reputation. The team all follow the same investment process and work collaboratively to find new ideas for their funds. The team has attracted talent from competitors as well as from other investment teams at Invesco. The fund managers are incentivised based on performance of the funds, which we think aligns their interests with those of investors.

In 2025, the team took on responsibility for additional funds previously run by Invesco’s US-based team. Following a period of transitioning these funds to more closely mirror their own, we’re comfortable that the team can handle the additional workload and level of assets under their management.

ESG integration

Each Invesco investment team identifies and evaluates the materiality of relevant sustainability risks using Invesco’s proprietary research tools and systematic processes. While all teams follow a consistent, documented approach within their strategies, methods may vary across funds, depending on where each fund invests, and the asset classes they invest in.

Fund managers leverage insights from a wide range of third-party research and service providers and have access to Invesco’s proprietary ratings tool, ESGintel, which provides data and insights on a large number of companies across the globe.

The firm’s ESG approach, engagement case studies and headline voting records are all available in the annual UK Stewardship Code Report. Invesco also offers a voting dashboard which allows a user to view how each fund voted on each resolution. However, no voting rationale is provided.

Invesco has a firm-wide exclusions policy on investments in controversial weapons. Additionally, the managers won’t invest in companies that derive more than 5% of their revenue from tobacco, cannabis, or the extraction of thermal coal or oil sands.

While the managers of this fund give some consideration to ESG issues when analysing companies, it’s not run to a sustainable mandate.

Cost

This fund has an ongoing annual charge of 0.75%. The HL platform fee of 0.45% per year also applies, except in the HL Junior ISA, where no platform fee applies.

Performance

Since Bond became lead manager in 2020, the fund’s returned 95.54%*. This is ahead of the MSCI Emerging Markets benchmark and the average peer in the IA Global Emerging Markets sector, which returned 51.02% and 40.01% respectively. Past performance isn’t a guide to the future.

Our analysis shows that the managers have consistently added value through their stock selection. This is the ability to invest in companies that go on to perform well regardless of which country or sector they’re in, rather than making bigger economic calls and investing in the right areas of the market at the right time. This ability allows the managers to maintain a diversified fund that’s invested across many countries and industries.

More recently, the fund has performed well in strong conditions for emerging markets. Returns of 28.43% over the 12 months to November 2025 were ahead of the benchmark’s 24.99% growth and the 21.68% return of the average peer.

The managers’ stock selection has driven positive returns, with companies in the consumer staples and communications services sectors performing well, including Chinese business Tencent Music Entertainment. An investment in Samsung Electronics has also contributed, as the company has benefited from increased spending on AI infrastructure.

On the other hand, Indian bank HDFC detracted from performance. Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com also performed poorly. The managers still believe the business is well positioned to succeed in a competitive industry and have continued to invest in the company.

Over the long term, we expect the fund to do better when value investing is in favour. The reverse is also true and the fund might not perform as well when the growth style is favoured. The managers prefer to invest in higher-quality companies, so we expect the fund to hold up better than its peers when markets are falling. As always, there are no guarantees.