Scottish Mortgage took in £145m – Scottish Mortgage returned 25% in NAV terms over the year to 31 March 2018 and 21.6% in share price terms. These figures dwarf the return from the company’s benchmark, the All-World Index, which returned just 2.9% over the same period. The board is recommending a total distribution for the year of 3.07 pence per share, a year-on-year increase of just over 2%. Most of this will come as a transfer from capital. Scottish Mortgage’s ‘Ongoing Charges Ratio’ fell to 0.37%, down from 0.44% the previous year. Over the twelve months to 31 March 2018, the company issued 50.8 million shares from Treasury and bought back 14.0 million shares resulting in a net inflow of £145m.
The board believes the following areas to be amongst the most relevant considerations for the long term prospects for Scottish Mortgage:
1. The continual rise and development of China, in particular of its world leading digital economy.
2. The spread across all industries of the gathering and computer-facilitated use of data.
3. The structural shifts in the global healthcare industry and the industrialisation of biology.
4. The long run shift in much of the transportation infrastructure to electric and autonomous vehicles.
5. Shifts in energy generation to renewable sources and the proliferation of energy storage solutions for domestic and commercial use.
6. Greater social, political and regulatory scrutiny of large corporations.
There is no room for a statement from the managers in today’s results announcement but they are quite vocal about why they buy the stocks they do. they point interested investors to the website www.resoluteoptimism.com which looks at the broader context around the portfolio companies and explores issues around the responsible use of investment capital and the financial industry.
SMT : Scottish Mortgage took in £145m