The Adviser
Jackson Square Partners, LLC (“Jackson Square”) is an investment adviser headquartered in San
Francisco, California. Jackson Square was organized as a Delaware limited liability company on August
9, 2013 and has been registered with the SEC since February 24, 2014.
Jackson Square’s majority owner is California Street Partners, LP, which represents the collective
ownership of certain members of the investment team and other key employees of Jackson Square.
Jackson Square’s minority owner is JSP Acquisition LLC (“AMG Member”), a wholly owned subsidiary
of Affiliated Managers Group, Inc. (“AMG”), a publicly traded holding company.1
Advisory Services
Jackson Square provides investment advisory services to separately managed accounts and pooled
investment vehicles including but not limited to those registered under the Investment Company Act of
1940, as amended (the “1940 Act” and such funds, the “Registered Funds”), collective investment trusts,
private funds and those established in accordance with foreign law (each a “Fund” and collectively, the
“Funds”).
The clients advised by Jackson Square generally pursue an investment strategy of long-term capital
growth. In pursuing this strategy, Jackson Square primarily recommends equity securities of U.S. and
non-U.S. issuers, although it recommends a variety of securities and does not limit its recommendations
to a particular type of security. Please see Item 8, “Methods of Analysis, Investment Strategies and Risk
of Loss” below for more information regarding Jackson Square’s investment strategies and the risks
relating thereto.
As the investment adviser for its clients, Jackson Square’s services include portfolio management,
investment research and analysis, and the securities trading capabilities needed for making investment
decisions for such clients, as well as managing client assets on an ongoing basis and placing orders for the
execution of securities transactions. Jackson Square provides investment advice directly to its clients,
subject to the discretion and control of the board of trustees or directors of a Fund, the investment adviser
of a Fund (if the Fund is sub-advised by Jackson Square) or the owner of the account, as applicable.
Jackson Square provides investment advisory services to each account in accordance with the account’s
investment restrictions and guidelines, which are established in a written investment management
agreement with the applicable client. With respect to each Fund, Jackson Square will be either the
investment adviser or the sub-adviser to the Fund. Jackson Square enters into an investment management
agreement or sub-advisory agreement with each Fund or the Fund’s investment adviser, if applicable.
With respect to the Registered Funds, each investment management agreement and sub-advisory
agreement is subject to periodic review and continuance (generally annually) by the Registered Fund’s
board of directors or trustees, as required under the 1940 Act. Each such Registered Fund’s board and, in
the case of a sub-advisory agreement, the investment adviser, supervises and directs Jackson Square’s
provision of advisory or sub-advisory services, as applicable.
Fund investment restrictions are also disclosed in the offering documents for the Fund. In addition,
although there may be many investors in Funds and other pooled vehicles, the investment mandate is not
1 AMG holds other equity and financial interests in certain other investment advisers unaffiliated with Jackson Square.
AMG does not have a controlling interest in Jackson Square or a role with respect to the day-to-day business of
Jackson Square and as such is not a control person. Please see Item 10 for additional information on AMG’s role with
Jackson Square.
tailored to each investor’s needs the way separate accounts are tailored to each client.
With respect to separate account clients, Jackson Square generally tailors its advisory services for the
owner of an account, agreeing with a client to manage the client’s assets against a particular benchmark
or pursuant to investment guidelines discussed and agreed upon with that particular client. To the extent
practicable and consistent with the intended investment strategy, Jackson Square may agree to implement
client-imposed limitations on Jackson Square’s discretionary authority with respect to the securities to be
bought or sold for an account, including, but not limited to, diversification requirements, benchmark
deviation, industry concentration, restrictions prohibiting the purchase of certain securities or securities of
certain types of issuers, prohibiting investments in
certain countries or markets, and prohibiting the
employment of certain investment strategies or techniques (e.g., derivatives). Please see Item 16,
“Investment Discretion,” which discusses these and other restrictions on Jackson Square’s discretionary
authority. Accounts that are subject to such limitations may perform differently (and potentially less
successfully) than other accounts with similar strategies managed by Jackson Square that do not have
such limitations.
Jackson Square may in the future organize or manage other investment funds or separately managed
accounts that may either co-invest with its clients or follow an investment program similar to or different
from the clients’ programs.
Investment Philosophy and Process
The Jackson Square Investment Team (the “team”) believes that enhanced returns can be realized by
holding a concentrated, conviction-weighted portfolio of companies with attractive business models and
opportunities to generate consistent, long-term growth of intrinsic business value. The team prefers to hold
companies with steady, stable business models and end markets, and to hold them for three-to-five years
or more. While Jackson Square, like other growth investors, typically invests in companies with the
general expectation of attractive revenue and earnings growth, a company’s cash economics – its returns
on invested capital and its ability to generate free cash flow, i.e., its intrinsic business value – are key to
the team’s evaluation.
Jackson Square’s investment process begins with idea sourcing. The team originates ideas in a
nontraditional fashion and does not regularly use quantitative screens. The team has typically found
fundamental change, at the industry level, the product level, or the management level, to be the best source
of new idea generation. The metrics on which growth managers typically screen however - earnings
acceleration, price momentum, and PE/Growth ratios - are a result of change, rather than a cause of it.
Therefore, quantitative and statistical screens are not particularly useful to the investment process.
Instead, the team focuses on staying abreast of fundamental change at a qualitative and granular level by
following trade journals, by listening closely when companies talk about their competitors, customers and
suppliers, and by attending investment and industry conferences. Additionally, the team has historically
found corporate actions such as spin offs to be very fertile ground for researching ideas.
Over the history of Jackson Square’s strategies, the vast majority of the team’s performance has been
driven by bottom-up, fundamental stock selection. Once an interesting idea or theme has surfaced, an
analyst/sponsor researches the company. The sponsor emphasizes three key areas in their analysis: the
nature of the fundamental change the company is experiencing, how its business model is positioned to
exploit the change, and whether, in their analysis, the future cash economics are fully reflected in the
current stock valuation.
The team also constructs a ten-year, two-stage discounted cash flow analysis to help determine a
company’s competitive advantage profile. Economic theory dictates that excess returns should be
competed away over time, so a great deal of the team’s time is devoted to estimating the sustainability of a
company’s competitive advantage profile. This process then feeds into the team’s model of future forecast
of margins, capital intensity and ultimately the potential for return on invested capital and free cash flow –
what the team considers to be the key to shareholder value creation.
Jackson Square became a signatory to the United Nations backed Principles for Responsible Investment
(“PRI”) in November 2018. The PRI reflects the view that an economically efficient, sustainable global
financial system is necessary for long-term value creation. As a PRI signatory, Jackson Square recognizes
that environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) issues can affect the performance of investment
portfolios. ESG factors fit within the investment team’s framework for pricing both positive and negative
externalities, an integral part of Jackson Square’s investment philosophy. Jackson Square applies a
principles-based approach to evaluate ESG factors that materially impact a company’s business
fundamentals, its cost of capital and its ability to withstand a transition to a low-carbon economy. ESG
investing is an evolving process, both for Jackson Square and the industry as a whole.
Assets Under Management
As of December 31, 2023, Jackson Square managed a total of $3,109,972,631 of client assets on a
discretionary basis.