Another great year for Finsbury Growth – Finsbury Growth and Income’s net asset value total return per share for the year ended 30 September 2019 was 17.4%, matched by its share price total return. Both significantly outperformed the All-Share Index, which returned 2.7% over the same period. Dividends totalled 16.6p for the year, an increase of 8.5% but putting this UK equity income trust on an historic yield of just 1.8%. [We think that the trust should consider augmenting its dividend with distributions from capital if it wants to retain its presence in the UK equity income sector. The next lowest yielding trust in this sector is Law Debenture, which yields 3.05%.]
The trust managed to issue 27m shares worth £226m over this period and another £58m worth since.
The trust has a £50m borrowing facility with Scotiabank Europe which can be extended by a further £50m. [This sounds like a lot of money but this puts the trust’s maximum gearing level at 5.3%, which would hardly move the dial.]
The best performing (in terms of the amount added to the NAV) investment last year was London Stock Exchange, followed by Mondelez, Diageo, RELX and Euromoney Institutional Investor. each of these added more value than the worst performing investment, Daily Mail & General Trust.
Nick Train’s commentary is worth reading, as always. We won’t reproduce it here but suggest you read the report once it is published. It should be available via the documents tab on the company page for the trust.
FGT : Another great year for Finsbury Growth