Welcome to the Lightrock Global Small-Cap website

At Lightrock, our expertise in driving positive impact and our focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors are actively applied within the public markets. We concentrate on the small-cap universe, offering solutions that aim to create long term value to stakeholders through engaged ownership and thorough fundamental research.

The Lightrock Global Small-Cap Fund strategy aims to generate positive long-term returns, by seeking to outperform the MSCI World Small Cap Index Total Net Return (“the Benchmark”). The strategy integrates ESG and positive impact considerations into the investment process.

Our committed team focuses on investments in equities issued by small-cap companies globally in developed markets. These companies are defined as companies that are no larger by market capitalisation than the largest constituent of the Benchmark. Furthermore, the strategy combines the principles of long-term investment with responsible active ownership, which includes proactive engagement with portfolio companies on a broad range of topics.

The investment strategy is based on a bottom-up fundamental research process with a long-term investment horizon. Key factors considered are the assessment of the leadership team, corporate governance, management’s capital allocation track record, the quality of the balance sheet, and the ability of the portfolio company to earn above average returns.

This leads to a strategy that invests in 50-75 portfolio companies, well diversified across different sectors and regions. Other targeted portfolio characteristics include robust sustainability and governance standards, an attractive valuation, high quality (measured by return on capital employed), strong balance sheets, and companies that trade at a discount to their intrinsic value. Lightrock believes that the best way to achieve positive long-term investment returns is to align the interests of clients with that of Lightrock employees, by investing alongside clients in the fund.