News

QuotedData’s morning briefing 27 April 2020

  • European markets have followed Asia in starting the week on the front foot, reflecting the prospect of further central bank support. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern said the virus was “currently” eliminated, with new reported cases in single figures over a number of days (as reported by the BBC).
  • Norwegian, has said its fleet is likely to remain grounded for 12 months. The airline has been particularly hard hit, as it had run into difficulty before covid-19.
  • Schiehallion (MNTN) announced the appointment of Robert Natzler as a deputy manager with immediate effect. Robert is an investment manager in Baillie Gifford’s unlisted equities team which is headed by Peter Singlehurst, the lead manager of MNTN.
  • In October 2019, Life-sciences fund RTW Venture (RTW), raised a fraction of its $350m target with Woodford’s struggles in biotech. RTW has been been able to raise capital of late, in an environment that is perhaps more receptive to the sector. RTW said: Further to announcement released by the company on 24 April 2020 regarding the issue of equity, the company confirms that, due to further investor demand arising following the closing of that issue, the company intends to issue further new ordinary shares at the same price of US$1.165 per new ordinary share, reflecting a 15.3% premium to the 31 March 2020 NAV.”
  • EJF Investments (EJFI) announced final results for the year ended 31 December 2019. The company’s strategy is to focus on investing in opportunities created by regulatory and structural changes impacting the financial services sector, across areas that include structured debt and equity, loans, bonds, preference shares, convertible notes and private equity, in cash and potentially synthetic formats issued by entities companies across the US, UK and Europe. On a total return basis, NAV increased by 11.9%. Post period, the company said that NAV as at 31 March 2020, was £98.7m. No investment losses were crystallised, declines were mark-to-market driven, whichEJFI believes largely reflected sentiment rather than credit quality concerns at the time as a result of the disruption caused by covid-19.
  • We also had annual results from Ashmore Global Opportunities (AGOU), As at 31 December 2019, the NAV was US$14.2m compared to US$30.5m as at 31 December 2018. Going forward, the focus remains on realising AGOU’s remaining investments in an orderly manner, and the company expects to start to make progress on this later this year.
  • Hedge fund-sector company,Highbridge Tactical Credit (HTCF), completes this morning’s final results lineup. Over the year to 31 December 2019, NAV and share price returns were (1.3%) and (10.8%), respectively. In June 2019, Highbridge announced its decision to refocus its business around its credit strategies, including the Underlying Fund and certain other credit-focused funds. We wrote on this at the time.

We also have the first set of annual results from from Gresham House Energy Storage, annual results from Golden Precious Metals (the best performing investment trust in 2019), an update on SQN Secured Income‘s continuation vote, interim results from International Biotechnology Trust, a major new project announcement by Greencoat UK Wind,  a management update from Miton UK MicroCap.

This afternoon, we also had an update from BlackRock Throgmorton, and its manager Dan Whitestone.

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