Liontrust Sustainable Investment Annual Review 2022 - Flipbook - Page 24
IMPROVED HEALTH
This group of investment themes is all about improving our lives
through education, better diagnostics and treatment of disease
and healthier lifestyles.
Intuitive Surgical Inc is committed to advancing patient care in
surgery and other acute medical interventions. The company is
focused on innovating to enable physicians and healthcare providers
to improve the quality of and access to minimally invasive care. They
do this through robotic assisted surgery which is much less invasive
than traditional open surgery. For example, for prostrate surgery their
innovative way of doing surgery results in a halving of hospital stay
times, two thirds reduction in blood loss and more than a 10% saving
in time taken to perform an operation. This is part of our innovation in
healthcare theme which results in batter patient outcomes.
All of Illumina’s current revenues come from instruments, consumables
and services that enable the genetic understanding of disease. We
see huge positive opportunities to improve the way we treat disease
coming out of better understanding how disease works and, where
genetics plays a key role, there is the opportunity to make personalised
medicine that is very effective and cures disease. The current disease
treatment system is very generalised with many people taking drug
treatments that won’t necessarily be effective for them. While there
are serious ethical concerns about how these genetic technologies
are used, we think there are many interesting opportunities to invest
in companies that help us understand how disease works so we
can make more effective treatments eventually. This is linked to our
Innovation in healthcare theme.
24 - Liontrust Sustainable Investment: Annual Review 2022
Basic-Fit NV is Europe’s largest low-cost gym group with over
1000 sites across Benelux, France and Spain and over two million
members. Basic Fit enables physical activity through the provision
of exercise classes, weights and cardio equipment at less than
half of the price of traditional gyms. The arrival of low-cost gyms
has made gym membership affordable to a huge proportion of
the population who can get health benefits from exercise. This
company is exposed to our Enabling healthier lifestyles sustainable
investment theme where we see companies that improve our health
either by making exercise easier or improving the quality of the
food we eat. This can have big positive impacts on our health and
help reduce the incidence of obesity which is a global problem.
Learning Technologies Group is a software and consulting business
operating in the professional education market. Its e-learning
products operate via the Software-as-a-service model, serving
a broad range of industries including the public sector, finance,
media, and manufacturing. We saw during the Covid pandemic
how important a role e-learning can play and that includes a
professional setting to keep staff appropriately skilled and trained
to fulfil their roles. This is part of our Providing education theme.
Places for People provides housing facilities. The company owns
and manages over 209,000 properties in the UK from Inverness
to Truro with an average discount to market rent of 40-50%. This is
part of our Building better cities theme. The business provides good
quality housing at very good value rents which enables significant
savings on rent for occupants as compared to the broader market.
This business is held in our SF bond and SF multi-asset funds.