Letter to Shareholders
This 2022 Impact Report highlights how your investment capital is supporting advances in medical treatments and technologies, helping to improve health care outcomes around the world while seeking to offer competitive investment returns. We are committed to delivering on these dual objectives.
The Health Care Impact Equity team seeks out companies whose products and R&D efforts support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals* (U.N. SDGs), focusing on SDG 3, “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Investee companies are also expected to uphold solid environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk management while pursuing competitive returns. Our disciplined investment processes are critical to the way we evaluate companies through this lens.
Recent medical, pharmaceutical and technology-based breakthroughs offer new hope for treating and even curing diseases affecting millions of people. For example, knowledge gained from developing mRNA vaccines to battle COVID-19 is now used in cancer research. Treatments for genetically based diseases are under development with CRISPR technology. And these are just a few examples. These developments may lead to attractive investment opportunities and support economic sustainability globally. Illnesses and chronic diseases reduce worker productivity and negatively affect their livelihoods and consumer spending. This, in turn, hurts businesses and profitability. Thus, investing in health care is an opportunity to help society on many fronts.
Pursuing impact-oriented investment solutions is a natural extension of American Century Investments’ unique business model. We distribute over 40% of our dividends to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, which supports lifesaving research, including the global effort to fight cancer. In this way, our company and clients become a real force for positive impact.
This report shows how we invest to achieve competitive financial returns while supporting U.N. SDG 3. We continue to be inspired by the health care sector’s ability to apply cutting-edge research and leverage digital technologies to create safe, effective and commercially viable health care solutions. We continue to seek innovative companies that can have a positive impact on society and highlight several of them in this report. Health care is one of our firmwide sustainability themes, and we believe investing in these companies offers the potential to deliver compelling returns while promoting positive social change.
Thank you for partnering with us in this important undertaking.
*Developed by a global team of industry and government leaders and adopted by all 193 U.N. member states, the SDGs include 17 goals and 169 attendant targets aimed at solving some of the world’s most pressing problems by 2030.
Health Care Impact Themes
Our goal is to invest in companies that not only generate a financial return but also fuel societal change by contributing to one or more of our health care impact themes.
New or Innovative Treatments for Diseases, Including Cancer
Access to Medicines and Health Care Services
New Solutions for Lowering Health Care Costs
Enhancing the Productivity of Medical Equipment, Services and Software
Authors
Head of Sustainable Investing
Health Care Impact Equity
Download the full report or learn more about our Health Care Impact Equity strategy.
Many of American Century's investment strategies incorporate sustainability factors, using environmental, social, and/or governance (ESG) data, into their investment processes in addition to traditional financial analysis. However, when doing so, the portfolio managers may not consider sustainability-related factors with respect to every investment decision and, even when such factors are considered, they may conclude that other attributes of an investment outweigh sustainability factors when making decisions for the portfolio. The incorporation of sustainability factors may limit the investment opportunities available to a portfolio, and the portfolio may or may not outperform those investment strategies that do not incorporate sustainability factors. ESG data used by the portfolio managers often lacks standardization, consistency, and transparency, and for certain companies such data may not be available, complete, or accurate.
The opinions expressed are those of American Century Investments (or the portfolio manager) and are no guarantee of the future performance of any American Century Investments' portfolio. This material has been prepared for educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment, accounting, legal or tax advice.