Sophie Careford: So, we launched GEEI (Global Equity Enhanced Income Fund) in July of 2020 and since then, we've experienced a global pandemic, spiraling global inflation and one of the fastest central bank rate hiking cycles that we've seen in history. It's fair to say it's been a pretty eventful time, but we're really pleased with how GEEI has performed. So, since inception, we've delivered a total return of 9.9% on an annualized basis and 6% in terms of yield across a variety of different market environments. Further to that, we've also proven that we can deliver consistent alpha generation in both up and down markets. The fund outperformed the benchmark by approximately 200 basis points in both 2021 and 2022. Not only do we have strong benchmark relative numbers, but the fund is stacking up really well against its peers. We're in the top decile in our Morningstar peer group.

Eddie Cheng: When it comes to income investing, the technology sector doesn't often get a lot of attention due to its lower dividend payout tendency. However, this sector was one of the most important drivers of capital growth in the last few years. Our balanced approach actually allows us to have a much more holistic view of our stock selection process, regardless of its sector, its country, or its style classification. In fact, one of our top holdings is a technology company, which specializes in providing the key components of the software infrastructure, as well as the solution. And this holding not only provides a modest level of the income contribution, but also offers a crucial growth exposure for our overall portfolio to retain that potential for capital growth. Given our holistic approach in income investment, our quantitative research plays a crucial role to enable us to screen through a wide range of universe in a consistent way. But different from a typical quantitative manager, we pay equal amount, if not more attention, to our fundamental review process to those companies screened from our quantitative process. For example, recently, a communication company actually scored very highly from our quantitative process because its valuation metrics are very attractive, as well as a very high level of the dividend. However, after reviewing in detail through our fundamental review process, we decided to depart this company, given it's a higher than industry average level of the debt, as well as its deteriorating growth potential. A few months later, after we passed this company, this firm actually discontinued its dividend paying, as well as went into a significant restructuring program. This highlights the benefit and the power of combining quantitative, as well as the fundamental review process, which we call a quantamental approach.

Eddie Cheng: Income has always been one of the most important aspects of our investors' investment objectives. In fact, in a recent conference I attended, over 80% of the participants shared that they either already had some income exposure or they are looking to add to this allocation. However, we increasingly hear from our investors that today they not only focus on the level of their income, but they increasingly want to pay more and more attention on two other aspects of the income generation. First, they really value the stability and the sustainability of their income. Second of all, they also want their income generating asset to have a strong potential for long-term capital growth, so that they can protect their real purchasing power. As a result, we really think hard to focus on delivering these multiple objectives while we can pay a consistent and stable income for our investors. And this is why we started our Global Equity Enhanced Income strategy three years ago.

Sophie Careford: So, we think there are three core differentiators when it comes to GEEI (Global Equity Enhanced Income Fund). First, we're able to preserve stock-specific alpha within our equity portfolio because we use index options in our options overlay strategy. Second, we're able to capture broad equity market exposure because we're able to invest up to 10% of our portfolio in low or non-dividend paying stocks. Third, we explicitly avoid the style and structural biases that you often see in equity income strategies. We target balanced factor, industry, and region exposures to deliver a well-diversified portfolio.

Eddie Cheng: For our Global Equity Enhanced Income strategy, they are two main sources of income. First, we start with a well-diversified, dividend-focused equity portfolio as the first source of income. Here, we leverage our investment process to combine the best of quantitative modeling, as well as fundamental review to identify a high-quality company that delivers an attractive level of dividends directly linked to their business model. We then create a well-diversified portfolio in order to capture the different market drivers to retain the high potential for capital growth. Second, we enhance this income through collecting option premiums through an actively managed option strategy. Here, essentially, we sell core options and what it does is to allow us to sacrifice a very small portion of that potential upside in our equity portfolio in exchange to become a much more stable and consistent option premium. With these two different sources of income, we then leverage our decades-long asset allocation experience to actively manage and balance between these two different sources of income at a different part of the business cycle, so that we can actually deliver a consistent income for our investors while maintaining a strong potential for that capital growth.

Sophie Careford: So, we think are two primary use cases for this portfolio. First off, investors can use it as an income generator. We target high consistent yield and we really think that investors value that consistency element. The way we designed the portfolio means it's a really nice complement to other equity income strategies and it's also very diversifying for other income-generating assets, such as fixed income or money markets. Second, we think that the portfolio can be used as an equity diversifier. Because we target returns in line with the MSCI ACWI (All Country World Index), it can easily fit within an existing equity allocation. And because it has a more defensive profile, it can diversify existing holdings. So, because we target both income, total return, and try and do this with a well-balanced portfolio, we think that this positions GEEI as one portfolio that can meet more than one investor need.