Robeco Investment Grade Corporate Bonds IHHI EUR

The final month of the year was a fairly boring one: spreads were basically stable in December. After a very volatile year, the year ended at more or less the same spread level as we saw at the start of the year. As expected, the ECB announced a further expansion of its bond buying program, both in terms of the amount that can be invested and in the duration of the program. The Fed was fairly dovish in its December meeting too, signaling that it will take years before interest rates are raised again. While the picture for monetary support remained rosy, the short-term outlook for economies actually deteriorated, as more and more countries are applying strict lockdowns again. Investors are not too concerned, as vaccination programs have started. This means that the economic outlook for the second part of the year looks better now. This was also visible in a continued rise in oil prices; in this case, it was helpful that the OPEC alliance still seems to be determined to restrain production growth. The tail risk of a hard Brexit has been removed now that Europe and the UK have finally come to an agreement on trade relations.

The fund invests in Euro denominated securities only.

Robeco Investment Grade Corporate Bonds make use of derivatives for hedging purposes. These derivatives are very liquid.

The IHI EUR shares don't distribute a dividend.

Our analysis of issuers goes beyond the traditional financial factors and includes the issuers’ performance on ESG factors. We deem it essential for a well-informed investment decision to take into account those ESG factors that have the potential to materially impact the financial performance of the issuer. This perfectly matches the basic need to avoid the losers in credit management, as many credit events in the past can be attributed to issues such as poorly designed governance frameworks, environmental issues, or weak health & safety standards. The aim of ESG integration is to improve the risk/return profile of the investments and does not have an impact goal. ESG analysis is fully integrated in the bottom-up security analysis. We have defined key ESG factors per industry, and for every company we analyze how the firm is positioned versus these key ESG factors, and how this impacts the fundamental credit quality.

Robeco Investment Grade Corporate Bonds provides diversified exposure across circa 80 corporate issuers to the Euro investment grade credit market (corporates only). The fund is excluding exposure to financial companies. The fund contains mainly bonds, and can make use of derivatives very limitedly. The fund aims to outperform its index Barclays Euro-Aggregate: Corporates ex financials 2% Issuer Cap. The index applies an issuer cap to avoid concentration risk. The investment philosophy is based on managing a solid diversified portfolio with a long term view. Top-down beta positioning is based on the outcome of our credit quarterly outlook meeting, in which the team is discussing the fundamental market outlook, valuation of bond markets and market technicals. Bottom-up issuer research is executed by our credit analysts, who execute the fundamental analysis. The analysts' research reports are being discussed in approx. 500 credit committees per year. A proprietary quant model is used to assist in issuer selection. The portfolio managers are responsible for the portfolio construction. A proprietary developed risk management approach avoids high risk concentration in the portfolio. As the investment process is well-structured and proven over time, it contributes to repeatable performance delivery.

Risk management is fully embedded in the investment process to ensure that the fund's positions remain within set limits at all times.