Gresham House Strategic delivers 20.4% return to shareholders – Gresham House Strategic (GHS) uses a more involved private equity style of investing to take positions (no more than 10-15) in mainly UK-based small-cap stocks (it can also invest upto 30% in unquoteds). GHS has been one of the best performing small-cap funds over the three years Gresham House has been its manager.
GHS reported a strong set of unaudited results for its March-end financial year today, with the following key highlights:
Investment highlights
- One of the top-performing UK small-cap funds in its financial year from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019, delivering NAV total return performance of 8.0% versus FTSE small cap index total return of -3.1%
- NAV total return of 31.4% since inception three years ago
- Driven by strong performance of its strategic investments including Augean, Tax Systems, IMImobile and Northbridge
- Realisations of £18.8m from profitable investments in the period; including IMImobile (£13.8m), Miton group (£1.7m), and Tax Systems (£2.0m)
- A number of value recovery plans underway or being prepared for underperforming investments – the potential benefits of the team’s value-recovery efforts can be seen at BeHeard in their latest results
Operational highlights
- GHS was the top-performing UK small-cap fund for the calendar year 2018 versus open-ended and investment trust peers
- Total shareholder returns of 20.4% in the year
- Share price discount to NAV reduced from 30.0% at 31 March 2018 to 22.6% at 31 March 2019
- Pipeline of strategic deals targeting completion for Q2 2019
GHS: Gresham House Strategic delivers 20.4% return to shareholders