Hennessy Funds

Hennessy Funds’ CIO and veteran portfolio manager, Neil Hennessy, will explain why he believes the current bull market will continue into 2020. He and his tenured investment team will discuss what’s driving energy, utilities, and financial stocks and the opportunities they are finding in those sectors.

You will learn why:

• Fundamentals should prolong the current bull market
• Natural gas has grown to be a fuel of choice in the U.S.
• U.S. energy supply growth is altering the global supply and demand balance
• The banking industry is healthy and the opportunity in non-bank financials

The presenters will be available after the presentation to answer attendees' questions live.

Over the last five years, a difficult operating environment and misalignments between midstream MLP (master limited partnership) investors and industry management teams have contributed to declines in distributions and stock prices. However, we believe that today midstream companies are at an important inflection point, poised to resume distribution growth that should attract favorable investor attention.

Energy is a large complex sector that accounts for just over 5% of the S&P 500 Index. The sector’s broad sub-industries can be divided into a “value chain,” each segment of which has different characteristics and offers different investment opportunities.

In the following commentary, Portfolio Manager Ryan Kelley discusses the drivers behind the strong growth in the natural gas market in 2018, how tight inventories might cause more volatility in the gas price and the outlook for continued growth in natural gas exports.

Portfolio Managers Toby Loftin, Trip Rodgers, and Tim Dumois discuss the Fund’s correlation to oil prices, how energy companies are responding to shareholder preferences, and the outlook for energy markets.

Portfolio Managers Toby Loftin and Ben Cook discuss growth prospects and the outlook for distribution and dividend growth for midstream companies. They also outline how the Fund’s holdings are poised to benefit from rising global energy demand.

Over the past decade, U.S. natural gas utility and pipeline companies have significantly increased investment in their infrastructure networks. We believe higher investment is a positive catalyst driving earnings growth for many natural gas distribution companies operating under rate of return (ROR) regulation.

Over the last decade, strong growth in production has allowed the U.S. to become a net exporter of natural gas. Both pipeline exports to Mexico and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the rest of the world, especially Asia, have been growing rapidly, and significant further growth is forecast.

Over the past decade, U.S. natural gas utility and pipeline companies have significantly increased investment in their infrastructure networks. We believe higher investment is a positive catalyst driving earnings growth for many natural gas distribution companies operating under rate of return (ROR) regulation.

Over the past year, global equity markets have made strong advances, fueled by continued, broad-based economic growth, and in spite of a somewhat unsettling geopolitical backdrop. Over the last 12 months the U.S. economy has continued to grow at a steady rate of almost 2.5% on an annualized basis, as measured by GDP.