Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies’ net asset value returned 4.5% over the six months to the end of February 2015, ahead of the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan Small Cap Index which returned 2.4%. Smaller companies lagged larger ones during the period – the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan Index returned 5.9%. The discount widened a little to 6.6% and the return to shareholders was 2.1%. They paid a maintained dividend of 11.5p.
Scottish Oriental says it has cash equivalent to 11.8% of the portfolio (£34m worth) offset by 6.9% borrowings (£20m worth). The statement says they are waiting until they identify more attractive long term investment opportunities before committing this cash.
The statement doesn’t mention any individual holdings. They seem to imply that most market moves can be attributed to falling oil prices with India and Philippines being beneficiaries of this and Malaysia being a casualty.
SST : Scottish Oriental Smaller beats benchmark but discount widens