Ian Mortimer and Matthew Page, fund managers of the Guinness Global Innovators Fund, discuss opportunities in innovation, the themes, and stocks they believe can turn these opportunities into profitable growth, focusing on the role of artificial intelligence and whether it’s a viable investment opportunity.

At a recent media event, Ian Mortimer and Matthew Page at London-based Guinness Global Investors highlighted investment opportunities in innovation and artificial intelligence – areas which are playing an increasingly important role in the sector.

Mortimer and Page are fund managers of the Guinness Global Innovators Fund which focuses on long-only equities, with 30 equally weighted stocks. The fund aims to invest in quality companies that can grow faster than the market over time, and which they believe can lead to outperformance over a cycle.

They look for companies which concentrate on long-lasting secular growth themes, and which have good potential pathways for growth at attractive valuations.

The managers have identified nine innovation themes in the fund, notably advanced healthcare, AI and big data, clean energy and sustainability, cloud computing, internet, mobile tech, next gen consumer, payments and fintech, robotics and automation. They focus on companies exposed to these themes.

Mortimer and Page said that semiconductor demand affects almost all of these themes, emphasising that the semiconductor industry spent $71.4 billion on research and development in 2021. They expect it to keep rising.

Top holdings in the Irish-domiciled fund, which has outperformed the MSCI World Index over a 10-year period, include NVIDEA Corp, a chip designer for graphics processing units used in generative AI systems, which also sells related software to clients. Another top holding is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which has 60 per cent of the foundry market and capabilities in chip manufacturing. It is also likely to be a beneficiary of increased high-end semiconductors for AI purposes, the firm said.

The fund’s exposure to AI also includes Alphabet which has introduced a range of AI tools, and has launched an upgraded AI-powered search engine that delivers answers similar to those of ChatGPT. Microsoft is another top holding that has incorporated generative AI into a broad range of services, and which is also an investor in OpenAI’s Chat GPT.

Founded by Tim Guinness in 2003, Guinness Global Investors has £7.3 billion ($9.3 billion) assets under management. See more about the firm’s funds here.