"There Are Always Opportunities": Ausbil on How Sustainable Investing Can Beat the Market

Why It Matters

ASUS demonstrates that rigorous ESG integration can deliver market‑beating returns, giving investors a viable sustainable alternative as demand for responsible assets accelerates.

Key Takeaways

• Ausbil manages $20bn, nine-year sustainable ETF track record.
• Top‑down, bottom‑up process differentiates fund significantly from competitors.
• ESG team conducts 200 company meetings annually, focusing on modern slavery.
• Excludes 25% of ASX200, yet recovers strongly after short‑term underperformance.
• Shifts to green minerals and gold to offset fossil‑fuel exclusions.

Summary

The interview spotlights Ausbil’s Active Sustainable Equity Fund (ticker ASUS), an actively managed ETF that applies the firm’s three‑decade investment expertise to Australian equities meeting ESG criteria.

Ausbil leverages a disciplined top‑down, bottom‑up framework, first assessing macro conditions before selecting stocks. Its in‑house ESG team of three analysts conducts roughly 200 corporate engagements per year, screening the ASX 200 and excluding about 25 % of companies for controversial activities. Despite periodic drift from the benchmark—exemplified during recent fossil‑fuel price spikes—the fund has historically rebounded quickly, delivering strong total‑return performance over its nine‑year history.

Head of ESG Måns Carlsson earned a national award for work on modern slavery, underscoring the fund’s activist stance. When energy stocks are off‑limits, Ausbil pivots to “green metals” such as lithium, copper and rare earths, and maintains a gold allocation to cushion inflationary and geopolitical shocks.

For investors, ASUS offers a way to embed ESG considerations without sacrificing returns, complementing core holdings and meeting rising demand for sustainable products. Its proven resilience suggests ESG‑focused funds can compete with traditional equity strategies even in volatile markets.

Original Description

How do you drive outperformance when you're not allowed to touch 25% of the companies in the ASX 200? That's the challenge that faces the Ausbil Active Sustainable Equity Fund - Active ETF, and its Portfolio Manager Nicholas Condoleon.

But despite not being able to touch fossil fuels and some of the other industries that have driven returns recently, the fund has outperformed the ASX 200 accumulation index since inception in 2018, and is now available as an active ETF (ASX: ASUS).

Here, Condoleon explains what helps drive Ausbil's outperformance and how a strong sustainability process and agile thinking can drive market-beating returns.

Time codes

0:13 - Overview of Ausbil and the Ausbil Active Sustainable Equity Fund - Active ETF (ASUS)

0:57 - How Ausbil invests

1:25 - The opportunity for investors

2:18 - How Ausbil manages risks

3:24 - How it navigates opportunities when limited to sustainable stocks

4:47 - The role ASUS can play in a portfolio

5:30 - Where investors can get more information on ASUS