Ezdehar Fund — May 2026 factsheet and manager commentary

Ezdehar Fund posted a 3.6% return in May, outperforming its blended benchmark by 90 basis points. The portfolio team trimmed selected real-estate exposure into strength and added to industrials and telecoms on conviction calls. Year-to-date the fund is +18.4%.

The bulk of May's attribution came from the additions in industrials and telecoms, and it is worth explaining what we mean when we describe these as conviction calls. In both sectors our research view had diverged from what we judged the market to be pricing, and the positions were sized accordingly — large enough to matter to benchmark-relative performance, but within the risk limits that govern how far the portfolio may lean away from its blended benchmark. When additions of this kind drive attribution in the same month they are established, some portion of the result is timing luck; we would rather be judged on how these positions perform over the quarters ahead than on a single favourable print.

The decision to trim selected real-estate exposure into strength reflects the same process in reverse. These were not names in which we had lost faith, but positions whose prices had moved toward our estimates of value faster than the underlying fundamentals had improved. Selling into strength is uncomfortable in a rising market and will occasionally look premature. We accept that cost, because recycling capital from positions approaching fair value into those where our conviction is highest is, in our experience, where benchmark-relative discipline is actually earned.

Ninety basis points of monthly outperformance is a satisfying print, but it is not the number we manage to. What we manage to is the consistency with which the portfolio's active positions reflect deliberate research views rather than residual exposures. Every deviation from the benchmark is intended, owned by an analyst, and revisited when the underlying thesis either plays out or breaks. Months in which that discipline produces outperformance and months in which it does not are, from a process standpoint, treated identically.

Year-to-date the fund stands at +18.4%, and we would caution investors against extrapolating that pace. A material share of this year's return reflects decisions taken in earlier months meeting a supportive market, and supportive markets are not a permanent condition. Past performance is not a guide to future results, and we would rather state that plainly than allow a strong sequence of monthly prints to set expectations the process is not designed to meet.

Heading into the summer, positioning is broadly where May's activity left it: fuller weightings in the industrial and telecom names added on conviction, lighter in the real-estate exposures trimmed into strength, and benchmark-relative risk held at levels consistent with the mandate. We will adjust as fundamentals and prices move — in that order of importance — and will report the reasoning, as always, in these pages.