Artemis Alpha announced results for the year ended 30 April 2015 late on Friday. These show it underperforming the FTSE All-Share index by some margin – the total return on net assets was -0.9% while the return on the index was 7.5%. Shareholders did even worse however as the discount widened from 10.2% to 15.7% leaving them with a return of -6.9%. The statement says that over the three years ended 30 April 2015 shareholders would have been 39.7% worse off than investing in the index and over five years 42.8% worse off.
The Chairman attributes this year’s underperformance to the fall in the oil price and reckons the impact of falling oil & gas stocks was -9.6%. 3.3% of the asset value was also lost when one unquoted investment, Gift-Library.com was put into administration. Offsetting these losses, hey sold their investment in The Hut Group for £15m and they hope to get £7m shortly as Lynton Holding Asia has sold its aviation business. in both cases these unquoted investments made them three times their money. The managers’ report provides some performance attribution numbers that show Hut adding 5.1% to the NAV and Lynton Asia 2.8% with an investment in, AIM quoted, Ashcourt Rowan adding 2.0% while Gift Library took 3.3% off the NAV, Africa Oil 2% and Providence Resources 1.6%.
The dividend was increased from 3.2p to 3.55p. The Board have been reviewing the dividend policy as the exposure to unquoted holdings that typically produce no income reduces and feel confident in targeting dividend growth of 10% per annum.
ATS : Artemis knocked by oil price and Gift-Library