Unrest in the Middle East, slowing growth in China, continued sluggishness in the developed world. There aren’t many bright spots on the global economic scene. But this hasn’t stopped JB Taylor and Ajay Krishnan, co-managers of Wasatch Global Opportunities (WAGOX, 800-551-1700), from ferreting out promising investments. The duo has outperformed both the global-stock indexes and the typical global-stock fund during the past three years, gaining 16.6 percent annualized. How? By ignoring the headlines and doing due diligence on all sorts of companies here and abroad. JB oversees US investments while Ajay focuses on international. We spoke with both about where they’re finding the best deals now.

Given sluggish growth in the developed world and recent upheaval in the emerging markets, how are you positioning your portfolio?

Krishnan: We’re bottom-up, fundamental investors, meaning we assess the growth prospects of individual companies. And in many cases, that growth is independent from what’s happening at the macro level.

As bottom-up investors, we try to be systematic, not get swayed by sentiment and stay focused on the fundamentals over the next three to five years. This is how we’re able to find good opportunities around the globe.

If we were mainly invested in export- dependent companies, then we’d be more concerned about what’s happening on a global scale.

But many of our companies are powered by growth in domestic demand, be it for financial services or consumer goods, and the outlook is for them to increase their earnings north of 15 percent annually.

So where are you finding new opportunities now?

Krishnan: Despite the press reports, I think Turkey — where I was just recently — is in good stead now. Sure, there has been unrest and discontent with the government, but that’s true most everywhere. It’s just that the Turks (mostly the young people) are choosing to demonstrate in the streets, which is probably a good thing in the long run. The business fundamentals still look good however. When you tour the country, you see that businesses are still running and life remains relatively normal.

So in our portfolio we have Coca- Cola Icecek (Istanbul: CCOLA). This is the Coca-Cola bottler in Turkey, and the top bottler in the region. Based on virtually any metric, Icecek is one of the top bottlers in the entire system.

Not only do they sell into the Turkish market, they also service the neighboring region, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan. So you have significant headroom, an extremely well-managed business, phenomenal returns on capital, and Coke is a brand that’s there for the long haul.

What markets do you find undervalued, given your bottom-up approach?

Krishnan: We’re still overweight India, and we feel fine about that, although people do make the argument that the rupee has devalued and the prospects look bleak for Indian companies.

You have to consider that a number of Indian companies have done well in what’s been a tough environment, and this is a plus for their long-term prospects. With the exception of China, most countries — including India — haven’t been doing much to help the private sector with financing or market liquidity.

Therefore, when the Indian companies have done well, it’s been in spite of the government, not because of it. These are businesses that have learned how to manage operations as efficiently as possible when capital is in short supply or expensive. So they tend to be extremely well run and very good stewards of capital.

Most of our recent new investment in India is in some of the major pharmaceuticals that are exporting to the developed markets. And we have a significant weighting in banks. The penetration of banking services in India is about 50 percent, meaning that 600 million people don’t have a bank account. This is twice the population of the US, and provides a lot of headroom.

We also own paint companies there, since the penetration of paints is still pretty low in India’s small and mid-size cities. Paint isn’t something you would normally think of as a growth business, but it is in India.

What markets worry you?

I’m less excited about Brazil today than I was six months ago because of increasing government intervention in the economy. One of the names that we’ve sold recently is Santos Brasil (São Paulo: STBP11), an operator of ports. This is an area where the government is likely to start dictating to companies the level of return they can make.

The Brazilian government is already trying to set the level of fees a port can charge its customers, whereas the marketplace should be making that decision. When we see this kind of interference, we step away.

What are some of your other recent buys?

Krishnan: There are plenty of companies with interesting opportunities around the world, and I think we have a unique way of ferreting out these types of names.

Take Salvatore Ferragamo Italia (Milan: SFER). This is an Italian high-end clothing and accessories company, but what many people don’t realize is that 40 percent of its revenue comes from emerging markets. So it’s actually a proxy for emerging-market growth.

We’ve also been adding to our position in Domino’s Pizza Group (London: DOM), which operates in both the United Kingdom and Germany. There are actually fewer pizza restaurants in Germany than in the state of Utah. For similar reasons, we own Jubilant FoodWorks (Bombay: 533155), which operates Domino’s stores in India. These are business models we know can work well, based on success in the US. We like that their returns on capital are strong and the valuations are reasonable.

Taylor: Our list of holdings has been pretty constant. Within the last couple of months, we’ve added Oxford, Mass.-based IPG Photonics (NSDQ: IPGP), which is the dominant maker of fiber-optic lasers used for drilling, precision cutting and many other applications. The end markets are diverse, including semiconductor fabrication, biomedical uses and solar panel manufacturing.

IPG was founded in1990 by the Russian physicist Valentin Gapontsev, a pioneer in the field who figured out the technology required to create these new types of lasers. They’re more powerful, accurate and less costly to operate, so there’s lots of growth potential here.

And IPG’s business has fantastic profit margins, although results tend to be lumpy given that IPG is selling capital goods. But it has carved out a really interesting niche.

We also recently added Ensign Group (NSDQ: ENSG), which owns and operates skilled nursing home facilities.

This is an enormous industry that has generally been plagued by poor management, so a place where you’d often find low returns on capital and low growth. But here’s a company with a good management team and a system for taking over underperforming properties, consistently getting their metrics up and turning them into profitable operations.

Part of Ensign’s expertise includes navigating through what can be episodically difficult reimbursement environments. This company is very vigilant about cutting costs and focused on management and the types of people they put into position to control assets.

Ensign also has very little net debt, a rarity in the industry. And it has consistently generated strong top-line growth as well as profitability, while generating free cash flow. Again, this is something that is almost unheard of in this sector.

What have you been selling recently?

Taylor: We’ve recently sold Computer Programs & Systems (NSDQ: CPSI), a small company focused on health care information systems. That’s been an interesting growth market over the last several years, but the more we dug into it, the more challenges we found to CPSI’s business model in terms of competition from some of the larger players.

Krishnan: Another name that we sold recently is Koza Altin Islemeleri (Istanbul: KOZAL), which is a Turkish gold miner. We became concerned after seeing three straight quarters of deteriorating production metrics, and we just felt that this is going to ultimately show up in their reserve numbers, so we elected to sell.

The impact hasn’t yet surfaced in the fundamental numbers, but if you look at the leading indicators, we think they’re going to go down.