Covestone delivers 30% return for investors

A fund run by Dublin-based wealth manager Covestone has delivered a 31 per cent return for its investors to the end of August, since it launched in June 2013.

This made the fund called Empiricus the best-performing global equities fund of 234 according to MoneyMate, the investment tracker. Its performance beat rival funds managed by much larger financial institutions such as Davy, Irish Life, Merrion, Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank and Zurich. It made double the average return generated by similar funds monitored by MoneyMate.

Covestone is led by former Matheson managing partner Donal Roche, son of the CRH founder of the same name. The Roche family is the larger investor in the fund, out of 200 clients.

Strong performance

The fund, which is managed by chief investment officer

Neil Osborne

, has increased its funds under management from €28 million last February to €35 million today as its strong performance attracts more attention. Mr Osborne, a former Davy executive, said Covestone made its investment decisions based on detailed historical financial analysis.

“We found that the best metrics are all valuation based, basically buying cheaply trumps everything else when it comes to investing,” he said.

“So we built the fund’s strategy with valuation at the core and financial health. Every quarter we systematically screen our universe of 10,000 companies for the cheapest 30 stocks and we buy them.

Since Empiricus launched 16 months ago, he said, it had invested in seven stocks which had later been taken over.

"Our investments are split geographically 30 per cent in Europe, 50 per cent in the US and 10 per cent in Japan. " He added: "We have never invested in an Irish stock. This is not because we are negative about Ireland, but just because we have seen better value elsewhere."