This podcast is being brought to you by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant, and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results, and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.

MF5950508 10/26

John Bryson

Hello and welcome to the Portfolio Intelligence Podcast. I'm your host, John Bryson, head of investment consulting and education savings at Manulife | John Hancock Investments. Today is September 14th, 2026, and we're diving into a topic that's rapidly moving from niche allocation to much more strategic portfolio conversation. And that's infrastructure. For years, investors thought of infrastructure primarily as utilities, toll roads, and other defensive income producing assets.

But today the conversation has expanded dramatically. Infrastructure is increasingly connected to some of the most powerful secular growth trends shaping our global economy, including artificial intelligence, energy demand in the modernization of critical systems around the world. To help us unpack these trends. I'm joined by Tom Levering of Wellington Management. Tom is a senior managing director, global industry analyst, focused on infrastructure portfolios.

He has spent more than two decades researching and investing across utilities, energy, infrastructure, and related industries. Tom, thanks for joining us.

Tom Levering

Yeah. Thanks, John. Happy to be here.

John Bryson

Excellent. Hey, Tom, I want to talk about infrastructure right now in the AI opportunity. Everybody talks about AI as a technology story, but you've often described it as an infrastructure story as well. Where are we today in that infrastructure buildout cycle, and what parts of the value chain do you think investors are still underestimating?

Tom Levering

Yeah. Well, I think it's clear we're in the very early days of the infrastructure build-out for artificial intelligence. It really is a massive capital investment opportunity. And it's one when you hear people talk about the data center opportunity, they tend to talk about it in electrical terms. That is, they talk about a megawatt data center, a five-megawatt data center – sort of hinting at the criticality of the electric generation and power supply for the data centers.

And when I think about, you know, the value chains that are most attractive to invest in, I think there's lots of risk throughout this whole value chain. But this most critical infrastructure, the power infrastructure, is the lowest risk part of the value chain. And that's where we see the opportunity. One doesn't need to stretch and take more risk by investing in the chips themselves or the technology within the data center. Better to, in my opinion, focus on the lower volatility, more stable, power infrastructure that supports AI.

John Bryson

Now, recently, we're hearing a lot of blowback about having data centers in folks’ backyards. And we're hearing a lot of concern about the pace of artificial intelligence and it getting out of control. And should we have some guardrails around it? What are your thoughts? Are those short-term concerns or a long-term concern for you?

Tom Levering

Yeah, I guess on the issue of ‘not in my backyard’, my view is that everybody's trying to get rich here, investing in a data center. So, there are probably ten times as many projects being proposed as will ultimately get built. So, the first point is there's this speculative angle. So, many more backyards are being threatened than in reality will be the case.

So, I think the NIMBY-ism will go away as the real solid projects move forward and the more speculative ones go away. And then I think on the concerns about AI taking over the world, which is a very legitimate concern, but I think just the competitive nature of the capitalist system in the U.S., as well as the geopolitical issues of making sure that our country stays ahead of China in this race, makes me feel that, despite these concerns, this growth will continue for a long time.

John Bryson

All right. So, if we look at infrastructure, it's been attracting a lot of attention from investors over the last couple of years. Many of the advisors we interact with have become more familiar with the asset class through the private-market offerings. As someone who follows both markets closely, public and private, what opportunities are you seeing in the public infrastructure market today?

And do you believe the valuations are adequately reflecting the long-term outlook?

Tom Levering

Yeah. Well, one thing that we say a lot on our team, or we recognize often, is that the opportunity to invest in infrastructure, stable infrastructure at high returns, really sits within the publicly listed infrastructure space. That is, 80% of the global opportunity in the space sits within publicly listed entities. So private infrastructure, while very good at raising capital, doesn't have nearly the opportunity to invest.

So, private equity feels to me in private infrastructure as though they’re long capital and short opportunity. Whereas on the publicly listed side, we are long opportunity and short capital. And the nice thing is that the publicly listed names are able to access the private markets for capital and actually get a lower cost of capital financing from private equity.

So it's a symbiotic relationship, that in my opinion, trends very favorably towards publicly listed infrastructure.

John Bryson

All right. That's great to know. Especially that 80% component available in the public markets versus the private. You've been researching infrastructure and utilities for much of your career – when you meet with advisors or investors, what's the biggest misconception you're still hearing about infrastructure, and what do you think people are missing about this opportunity?

Tom Levering

Yeah, I think there are two things that people miss. I think the first is that people think of these equities as bond-like equities, sort of a focus on the growth and the cash they generate. And while they do that, the really scarce and special thing that publicly listed infrastructure has going forward is the growth, tremendous growth. We're seeing growth that ten years ago might have been around 5%.

Today, it's in the 8 to 10% range. So, very high single-digit growth in the ability to invest above the company's cost of capital. So, it's really a value creation story more than it is an income or a bond-like story. So, think of this as a growth and value creation opportunity rather than just income. And then the second piece I think people misunderstand is that because these are such great companies, they're really monopolies or natural sort of oligopolies, they tend to have regulation, they tend to have government oversight.

And I think people view that as a threat. And I would just have people think of that as actually a protection that's offered by these companies. So, yes, the regulator can always do something to hurt the company. But the reality is that what the regulators provide and politicians provide are a regulatory scheme that allows the companies to recoup all their costs, allows them to pass on rising interest rates if those happen, and pass through inflation to make sure that these companies earn the returns that they need to continue to invest.

So, I would just want people to sort of reframe this discussion of the regulators. Don't view that as someone who's there to hurt you – that’s actually someone who is there to actually protect you as an infrastructure investor.

John Bryson

Really insightful, especially the growth component, because I agree with you. A lot of people look at it for income, but the growth going forward… Talking about going forward, as you look out the next call at 3 to 5 years, what developments are you most excited about within this space?

Tom Levering

Yeah, I think the most exciting developments are in the energy/power space. So, the first is that electricity is by far the fastest-growing form of energy. So, having exposure as we do, you know, probably a little less than half of our portfolio exposed to the electricity sector, is giving us exposure to that tremendous growth that is required for economies to grow and AI to grow.

So, the electrification, whether that is transmission wires, whether that is nuclear power, gas power, wind power, battery, solar power, this is just a tremendous long runway for growth, probably decades long. And then I think the second point is that when one thinks about generating power with fossil fuels, natural gas being the cleanest source of natural fossil fuel power, as well as being very abundant and relatively low cost, particularly in the U.S., I think there's going to be a ‘gasification’ of the fossil fuel mix, that is, oil and coal will lose share and continue losing share to natural gas.

So, sort of the electricity infrastructure being the big mega theme, but it's sort of the related natural gas infrastructure theme as well.

John Bryson

Okay, Tom, so you touched on this a little bit, but I want to make sure that we're clear. For an advisor today that's evaluating infrastructure, how should they think about it within their portfolio? Is it primarily this defensive income? Is it the growth opportunity? Is it still inflation? Or is it all the above – or something else?

Tom Levering

You know, I think one thing that hasn't changed about publicly listed infrastructure is that it is potentially very good at providing risk mitigation to portfolios. It's lower beta, lower volatility versus equities, broad equities. So that remains. So, I don't think that would surprise anyone. But I think it's just the general thought around – do people own enough of this?

That is – this is a very attractive asset class at good valuations today with this strong growth. And it's really that growth and the risk mitigation that comes from the regulatory protections that make this attractive at this time.

John Bryson

I love it. Tom, I want to thank you for being on the podcast today. You brought some great insights. I very much appreciate it. My biggest takeaway for the audience is, this is a great time to be exploring this asset class. We've got equity valuations near a high. We've got concerns about rising interest rates and inflation. You need to diversify your portfolio for situations like this.

I think infrastructure is a great way to diversify your portfolio. If you want some help with that, please reach out to Manulife | John Hancock Investments. We're here to help. And if you like what you heard, please subscribe to the Portfolio Intelligence podcast. Thanks again for listening, ‘bye now.

This podcast is being brought to you by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors, LLC, Member, Finra, SIPC. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security There's no guarantee that any investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results.

Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results, and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.

Diversification does not guarantee a profit or eliminate the risk of a loss.