What you own in this crazy world

Behind every share price is a real business, employing people, serving customers and owning brands, products and assets that many of us encounter in our daily lives. Duncan Artus takes a step back from the numbers to look at a selection of companies held across our portfolios, highlighting some of the well-known brands and businesses that ultimately drive long-term shareholder value.

Given that most investment articles focus on returns, fund positioning, asset classes and economic statistics, it is easy to forget that as a client, you are a partial owner of the many underlying businesses held in our funds. These businesses own brands, products and assets or provide services that generate cash flows that drive the growth and value of these businesses over time. This value is reflected as a listed share price in the portfolio.

While this is only a small sample of the businesses we hold on your behalf … we hope that highlighting some of them … focuses attention on where the returns come from.

To make these ideas more tangible, in this article, we look at some of the brands and assets owned by the businesses in our portfolios.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) is the world’s largest brewer and the biggest individual position in our funds. We discussed the company in detail in our Q4 2025 Quarterly Commentary. AB InBev owns eight of the top 10 most valuable beer brands in the world, including Corona, which, in our view, sits at number one. Corona is a superpremium beer outside Mexico, its home market. It has been growing revenue in the low teens despite the low-growth beer market, partly thanks to its excellent brand-building execution.

Having been fortunate enough to visit the original Corona brewery in Mexico City, we can vouch for the brand’s strong heritage. Corona Cero, the zero-alcohol version of Corona, is showing significant growth, and we believe the brand is well suited for this new area. In fact, Corona Cero was the first-ever global beer sponsor of the Olympics.

Richemont, the world’s second-largest luxury goods company after LVMH, is a recent addition to our funds. While often historically associated with high-end watches, it is the jewellery division that now accounts for almost 100% of Richemont’s profits.

Within jewellery, the most valuable brand – or “maison”, as luxury companies call it – is Cartier. Founded in 1847, Cartier is the leading global jewellery brand, with iconic products such as the classic Love bracelet. Cartier is taking share from other luxury goods and within the jewellery segment itself. Interestingly, Cartier has also been showing significant strength in watches, which we estimate make up around 30% of revenue.

Woolworths Food is one of the best businesses in our portfolio. In fact, we believe it is one of the best food retail businesses globally. On our travels, when we run into South Africans living abroad, Woolworths food is often cited as one of the main things they miss about South Africa. As clients and shareholders, we are looking forward to the roll-out of the next generation of Woolworths stores, which we believe are world-class. Woolworths is known for its high-quality fresh food and innovation driven by its industry-leading supply chain built over many years that is difficult to compete with.

Japanese firm Nintendo was founded in 1889 making playing cards, but today, it is a global video game empire. Although it generates sales through devices such as the Wii and the Switch, Nintendo is probably most associated with the iconic moustache-sporting Mario Brothers, Mario and Luigi, who are instantly recognisable globally. The Financial Times recently described Mario as “one of the world’s most potent pieces of IP”.

Mario is what is often referred to as a tent-pole asset: The popularity of the characters has allowed Nintendo to grow outside video games and into new areas such as movies and merchandise. The two Super Mario Brothers movies each grossed over US$1bn at the box office. Nintendo is following the Walt Disney playbook of monetising its franchises across multiple segments. For example, there are now Super Nintendo Worlds within Universal Studio parks with characters from their games.

Our largest commodity exposure is via Glencore, which owns and operates mines as well as running the world’s largest commodity trading business. Within the mining division, the most exciting commodity is copper. The market is bullish on copper, with strong demand from electrification and infrastructure roll-outs such as data centres, meeting constrained supply. It is difficult to find new copper resources, and it is very expensive and time-consuming to build large mines. This scarcity premium has been increasing, given the importance of securing the supply of strategic minerals in an increasingly divided world.

Glencore has a portfolio of copper mines in Latin America and Africa. As an example, Glencore owns a 44% stake in the Collahuasi copper mine in Chile alongside Anglo American and Mitsui. Anglo American describes it as “a multigenerational asset”. Collahuasi is a great example of the value of owning a tier-one copper asset with good grades and a 60-year life of mine.

Southern Sun is the largest hotel company in South Africa, with 95 hotels and 16 942 rooms spanning luxury, full-service and economy segments that generate R7.2bn of annual revenue. Southern Sun has strong positions in Cape Town, Sandton and Durban. Hotels outside the Southern Sun brand include the Beverly Hills in Umhlanga, the Westin Cape Town and the Sandton Sun & Towers. These are strategic, valuable assets that are hard to replace, and well placed to benefit from any recovery in the economy and continued growth in tourism.

Standard Bank’s African franchise is a valuable asset, which the market and competitors are increasingly realising is difficult to replicate. Standard Bank, which operates as Stanbic outside South Africa, has paid a lot of school fees in Africa since purchasing ANZ Grindlays’ operations in 1992. Today, the business generates just under R20bn in earnings, which is 40% of the group total.

African earnings have compounded at 14% per year in rands over the last decade, despite the volatility that operating in Africa brings. Over 80% of the earnings are generated by the Commercial and Investment Banking (CIB) unit, which has a strong pan-African presence and the ability to bank multinationals doing business across the continent. This gives them strategic access to dollar funding, which has helped build a strong franchise in foreign exchange. Longer term, there is also upside from the Personal and Business Banking segments.

A different perspective

While this is only a small sample of the businesses we hold on your behalf across our portfolios, we hope that highlighting some of them and their underlying brands focuses attention on where the returns come from. Remind yourself of this next time you shop at Woolworths, or find yourself sipping an ice-cold Corona at the Beverly Hills hotel. It is an important perspective in an investment environment that is increasingly dominated by geopolitical and macroeconomic headlines.