Columbia Acorn International Fund (LAIAX)

Columbia Acorn International Fund (Ticker: LAIAX) is an international stock mutual fund. The mutual fund invests in non-US companies with small and mid-size market capitalization.

Columbia Acorn International A (Ticker: LAIAX)

The Columbia Acorn International fund aim is to provide long-term capital appreciation. The fund utilizes its total assets to purchase equities of foreign companies in developed markets. It invests in developed countries such as Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom and in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil. It mostly focuses in the common stock of small- and mid-sized companies with market capitalizations under $5 billion at the time of investment.

Fund Details

• Fund Inception Date: 10/12/2000
• Ticker Symbol: LAIAX
• CUSIP: 197199847
• Beta (3yr): 0.88
• Rank in category (YTD): 43%
• Category: Foreign Small/ Mid Growth
• Distribution: 0.15%
• Capital Gains: 0%
• Expense Ratio: 1.30%
• Net Assets: $ 6.47 billion
• Number of Years Up: 7 years
• Number of Years Down: 4 years
• Annual Turnover Rate: 32%

Updated on 12/13/2012

The current fund manager is P. Zachary Egan. He started managing this mutual fund in April 2003. He is the Director of International Research of the Advisor. This foreign small/mid growth fund was first introduced to public market in October 2000. It has annual expense ratio of 1.30%, which is slightly lower than the category average, 1.60%. There is a 0.25% management fee and 5.75% front-end sales load fee. It also has total net assets of $6.47 billion. Its 12-month dividend yield is only 0.15%. This dividend is distributed semi-annually.

More: Best Foreign Large Growth Mutual Funds

The best 1-year total return was recorded in 2009 with 50.40%. It has recorded 7 years of positive return and 4 years of negative return. The worst 1-year total return was occurred in 2008 with -46.09%. The fund’s benchmarks are S&P Global Ex-US, &P Global x United States Small Cap and MSCI EAFE Index Net. Morningstar analysts rank this fund with 3-stars and Silver rating. The YTD return of this Columbia Acorn fund is 16.39%. Based on the load adjusted return, the fund’s performance is listed below:

• 1-year: 11.79%
• 3-year: 6.17%
• 5-year: -1.84%
• 10-year: 13.28%

Investors, who are interested in this fund, can choose to open a brokerage account with minimum initial investment of $2,000. The minimum subsequent investment is $100. The retirement account is also available with minimum initial investment of $1,000 and minimum subsequent investment of $100.
This international equity fund is available for purchase through 122 brokerages, such as JP Morgan, Scottrade Load, Merrill Lynch, Edward Jones, Pershing Fund Center, Morgan Stanley Advisors, Ameriprise Brokerage, etc. The other classes of this fund are Class C (LAICX), Class I (CARIX), Class R (CACRX) and Class R5 (CAIRX).

The top 10 stocks as of September 2012 are Far Eastone Telecommunications Co Ltd (1.40%), Melco Crown Entertainme-ADR (1.35%), Hexagon Series B (1.31%), Eurofins Scientific (1.21%), Naspers Series N (1.12%), Gemalto (0.99%), Localiza Rent A Car (0.99%), Kansai Paint (0.96%), Seven Bank Ltd (0.95%) and Taiwan Mobile Co Ltd (0.93%).

According to the fund prospectus, the principal risks are Investment strategy risk, market risk, smaller company securities risk, sector risk, foreign securities risk, emerging market securities risk, etc.

Disclosure: No Position

Other international stock funds:

• Janus International Equity Fund