BFM Business: The technology sector has performed well in recent years. What explains this interest on the part of investors?
jonathan curtis : We believe that the technology sector attracts investors with its potential for secular growth fueled by digital transformation. Although we are still in the early stages, we believe that digital transformation represents a multi-billion dollar opportunity and offers the prospect of long-term, sustained and significant growth. From our perspective, it is transforming the way industries operate by helping companies use software and data to better understand their customers and business processes, and technology to radically change the way their industries operate. The pandemic has forced companies to develop new digital skills and adapt to a complex environment. With digital transformation proven to drive productivity and deepen customer relationships, we believe companies are now building on and scaling the approaches that worked during the Covid crisis, and extending their digital transformation initiatives to other parts of their business. business.
BFM Business: When did you create the Franklin Technology Fund? What are their characteristics?
jonathan curtis : Franklin Technology Fund was established in April 2000. The Fund is built on the great opportunities we see in digital transformation and the sub-themes that support it, namely 1) Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Automated Analytics, 2) New Trading, 3) Digital Media Transformation, 4) Secure Cloud and SaaS (Software as a Service), 5) Internet of Things and 5G, 6) Fintech and Digital Payments, 7) Cybersecurity, 8) Future of Work, 9) Digital Engagement of the client and 10) electrification and autonomy. We seek to identify our best investment ideas by taking a combined bottom-up and top-down approach to research. We start by looking at a specific industry in depth, identify attractive companies, and then focus research on them by applying our bottom-up analysis with the goal of identifying those we want to own over a multi-year horizon. This analysis is performed by our equity research team, located at our headquarters in Silicon Valley.
BFM Business: What are your expectations regarding the growth of the technology sector in the coming years?
jonathan curtis : We see significant opportunities in multiple sub-themes, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics, but also new commerce and digital customer engagement, not to mention cybersecurity, electrification and autonomous technology applied to automotive and robotics, artificial intelligence and analytical capabilities, to name a few. While all of these opportunities are exciting, we believe the secure cloud and SaaS sub-theme are the most promising as they underpin all other digitization trends. We believe that the other subtopics are not possible without the cloud. We are also very positive about the digital transformation of media and the rise of the metaverse (a fully accomplished digital world). In our opinion, the metaverse opportunity may represent the end result of “digital transformation.”
Source: BFM TV
