T. Rowe Price Global Value Equity: July 2025 fund update

• Sebastien Mallet has over 20 years’ investment experience and managed this fund since launch in 2012

• He uses a clear, disciplined investment approach, which has served the fund well since launch

• Over the long term the fund’s performed well, particularly when the value style of investing has been in favour

• 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 T. Rowe Price Global Value Equity fund aims to deliver long-term growth by investing in companies across the globe. It uses a value investing approach, which means investing in companies where the manager believes the share price doesn’t reflect a company’s long-term potential, perhaps because of some short-term uncertainty.

In addition to ‘deep value’ companies, which can be lower quality and more volatile, the managers invest in higher-quality businesses that are temporarily undervalued. This broader and flexible approach creates a more balanced fund.

This style of investing can reward patient investors and could work well alongside a more growth-focussed fund or add diversification to a global investment portfolio. Overall, we believe this fund offers something different from other global funds.

The fund has recently been added to our Wealth Shortlist of funds chosen by our analysts for their long-term performance potential.

Manager

Sebastien Mallet is Vice President at T. Rowe Price Group and has over 20 years of experience investing in global companies using a value investment style. He began his career in 1997 as a financial analyst at France Telecom, before moving to Credit Suisse First Boston as a telecom banker.

Mallet joined T. Rowe Price in 2005 as an analyst on the firm’s international mid-cap strategy. He began managing the Global Value Equity fund in 2012. There are few global fund managers with such a long and consistent track record in value investing.

Marta Yago is Associate Portfolio Manager on the fund. She joined T. Rowe Price in 2007 within the European Equity team and became Associate Portfolio Manager in October 2023. Prior to that, she worked at Citigroup in Investment Banking. While Yago has valuable experience, our conviction in the fund is mainly due to Mallet’s involvement given his length of experience in global value investing.

Mallet and Yago have the support of T. Rowe Price’s extensive global research team, which includes other value-focused managers and 171 research professionals based across 11 offices worldwide.

Process

Mallet’s used a consistent investment process for many years. He believes stock markets often overreact to uncertainty, which can cause share prices to move away from a company’s true value. If his assessment is correct and the company improves over time, its share price could rise as the market re-evaluates it.

The research team plays a key role in narrowing down the investment universe of around 4,000 companies and determining if a company’s share price is mispriced and undervalued.

Using the team’s research and ideas, Mallet builds a fund of 80–100 companies. He works closely with the analysts to understand the risks and rewards of each investment and assesses whether a company is higher quality and defensive, or a deeper value and potentially riskier one. By blending both types, Mallet believes the fund is better positioned to perform across a range of market conditions and will be less volatile.

Mallet usually invests in the higher-quality companies for up to three years for their true value to be reflected in the share price. Deeper-value companies are typically held for less time. Once a company reaches what Mallet believes is its true value, he’ll either sell or reassess if there’s further potential.

56.14% of the fund’s currently invested in the US, although this is less than the amount in its global benchmark. Other developed markets like Japan and the UK feature in the fund, and Mallet can invest up to 10% of the fund in higher-risk emerging markets.

In terms of sectors, the fund invests 24.65% in financials and 15.94% in technology companies. It also has the flexibility to invest in smaller companies, which can increase return potential but add risk.

Recent additions to the fund include US financial giant Berkshire Hathaway, British insurer Admiral, Brazilian bank Banco do Brasil, and Chinese technology company Tencent. US healthcare companies Elevance Health and Thermo Fisher, as well as Japanese video game company Nintendo, were recently sold.

Culture

T. Rowe Price is a well-established asset management firm with offices all over the world. The company’s history dates to 1937 when it primarily focused on investing in the US. Now it also covers other parts of the market including fixed income, multi-asset and alternatives.

We view Mallet as the key manager behind this fund, and currently most of our conviction lies with him. But we take comfort in the fact he has a good team around him as well as a robust investment process.

ESG Integration

T. Rowe Price believes that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues have the potential to impact investment risk and return. That’s why analysts integrate material ESG factors into their investment analysis, alongside other factors like valuation, financials, industry trends and macroeconomics. Fund managers use this analysis to help them balance risk within their funds.

Managers and analysts are supported by specialist ESG teams which produce ESG research and build proprietary ESG tools, including the Responsible Investing Indicator Model (RIIM). The RIIM provides a uniform ESG due-diligence process which is applied across the firm, allowing analysts to discuss how an investment is performing against ESG metrics and comparisons to other businesses.

Companies supporting countries that have repeatedly supported governments carrying out genocide or other crimes against humanity are excluded across all T. Rowe Price funds, including this one.

The firm produces an annual ESG report, which explains its approach and provides voting and engagement case studies. Votes are exercised in alignment with a robust set of voting guidelines, and full proxy voting histories publicly available on the company’s website, complete with rationales for votes against management.

This fund isn’t focused on sustainability, but the managers integrate ESG analysis into their process and work closely with the responsible investing team to understand long-term risks to companies.

Cost

This fund is available at an annual ongoing fund charge of 0.64%. The HL platform fee of up to 0.45% per year also applies, apart from in the Junior ISA where there is no platform fee.

Performance

The fund’s grown 284.81%* since launch in November 2012. It’s performed better than the 246.94% from the average fund in the IA Global sector. As always, past performance isn’t a guide to future returns.

Like many global value funds, this one hasn’t performed as well as its benchmark, the MSCI World Index, over this time. The value investment style has been out of favour for most of this time. Funds with a growth focus, which have invested more in US and technology companies, have done better. Value funds have tended to invest less in these areas as their share prices haven’t offered enough value.

That said, our analysis shows this fund has performed better than many other global value funds as well as the MSCI World Value Index.

The fund also offers important diversification. While US and technology companies have done well in recent years, different sectors, themes and countries will come in and out favour and perform well at different times. For example, the fund performed much better than the market in 2022 when value companies outperformed.

Over the longer term, we expect the fund to do better when value investing is in favour, and the reverse is also true. Given Mallet invests in some higher-quality companies we also expect the fund to hold up better than some others when markets fall but may not rise as quickly when they go up. For example, the fund held up well during the market volatility in March and April this year. Although this is a short period to judge performance.

Over the past year, Canadian materials company Wheaton Precious Metals helped the fund’s performance as metals prices, including gold, grew strongly. Canadian financial company Galaxy Digital and US financial company Coinbase also helped.

On the other hand, US healthcare companies Elevance Health and UnitedHealth Group were weaker over the last 12 months to 30 June 2025. The fund also didn’t own several growth companies that did well, such as US semiconductor company Nvidia.

Overall, we think Mallet has the experience, skill, and support to deliver good long-term returns to patient investors