Montanaro UK Smaller Companies underperformed a little against the Numis Smaller Companied ex Investment Companies Index over the year to the end of March 2015 as its NAV total return was -2.7% whilst the benchmark’s was -0.3%. The return to shareholders was -6.9% however as the discount widened from 12.9% to 16.5%. The final dividend was increased by 18.7% to 8.9p.
The board is changing the way expenses are allocated against capital and income and will now use a 75:25 split in place of 50:50 – to better reflect the make up of the company’s returns.
The manager’s report has no performance attribution information but does say that investor appetite for the sorts of stock they like to buy (high quality growth companies) picked up in the latter half of the period.
MTU : Montanaro UK Smaller sees second half improvement