Schroder Global Real Estate has reported a 21.8% total return on net assets and a 14.5% return on share price for the year ended 31 December 2014. As these numbers suggest, the discount widened from 3.6% to 9.5% over the period – this despite the fund shrinking the number of shares in issue by 12.8% in an effort to control the discount. in the end the Board decided to scrap the fund’s discount control policy. The dividend was cut from 4.2p to 2.85p as the Board decided it made sense to concentrate on maximising total return rather than income.
This is the first results announcement since the appointment of Schroders as managers of the fund. However, while the investment managers give a brief overview of property markets around the world and say they have repositioned the portfolio towards stocks that they think can generate high total returns, there is no mention of any individual company.
SGRE : Schroder Global Real Estate discount widens as it abandons controls