East Capital Awards 2024: Video award ceremony

East Capital CIO Jacob Grapengiesser meets the companies and presents the 2024 East Capital Awards

Best IPO Award: Optima Bank

Optima Bank is a Greek challenger bank. Founded in 2018, they have been steadily gaining market share thanks to a vastly superior customer offering, known for its fast service, sleek branch design and user-friendly mobile application. With a Net Promoter Score of 84, they rank among the best companies in the world in terms of customer satisfaction. Despite a contraction in the Greek lending market in the first half of 2024, they grew their loan book by 50%. Their strong brand, lean structure and a favourable competitive environment have led to an impressive return on equity of 27% in 1H 2024, one of the highest in the eurozone financial sector. The company raised EUR 151m through a heavily over-subscribed IPO on the Athens Stock Exchange in September 2023. Since then, the stock has returned 79% in EUR terms, generating significant alpha for many of our funds.

Discovery of the Year Award: Gravita

Gravita is one of India’s largest recycling companies, currently focused on lead (largely from vehicle batteries), with fast-growing aluminium, rubber and plastics businesses. The company has burst onto investors’ radars recently thanks to a number of positive regulatory changes that will accelerate the shift from informal to formal recycling, something Gravita will be a key beneficiary of, with earnings growth of 25%-30% expected for the next three years. When we first invested in September 2023, the stock wasn’t covered by any major brokers, but since then India’s six largest brokers have all initiated on the company, and the stock has surged 183% from our initial purchase price.

Best Growth Award: FPT Corporation

FPT Corporation is one of Vietnam's leading IT companies, it operates in local and global IT services, telecommunications, and education. The company has consistently grown its net income at a CAGR of 22% over the past five years (2019-24e), resulting in a cumulative earnings growth of 2.7x during this period. Reflecting its strong operational performance, FPT's share price has returned an impressive 41% in USD on an annualised rate basis since 2019, generating significant alpha for our Global Frontier Fund. We expect the company to continue expanding at similar levels, driven in particular by growth in its global IT services and education segments.

Best Corporate Governance Award: Qifu Technology

Qifu Technology is one of China’s leading lending platforms, with 51 million cumulative users and a best-in-class technology backbone. The company’s prudent risk management approach has led to significant outperformance against peers, with earnings up 32% in 1Q 2024 despite a challenging macroeconomic backdrop. Equally impressive is the company’s best-in-class approach to capital allocation, with excess capital returned to shareholders in a timely manner. The all-in-yield (dividends and buybacks) for 2024 was 17% in August, when the latest buyback programme was announced. Crucially, the company will also cancel any shares bought back. The company's governance is supported by a strong board, with an independent chairman and 5/9 independent directors, although we hope to see more gender diversity in the future - there is currently one woman on the board. Going forward, the company intends to maintain its total payout ratio at around 70% and plans to buy back 30% of its total shares over three years. This will no doubt continue to support the stock, which has returned 96.7% in USD YTD, generating significant alpha for our Global Emerging Markets Sustainable fund.