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Martin Currie Portfolio manager earned his fee last year

Martin Currie Portfolio manager earned his fee last year – Martin Currie Global Portfolio Trust has published results covering the 12 months ended 31 January 2021 and they are good.

The NAV total return was 20.2% and the share price total return 20.5%, both of which compare well with a benchmark total return of +12.3%.

Revenue earnings per share for the period amounted to 1.97p, a reduction of 22% compared with the last financial year. The total dividends with respect to the year to 31 January 2021 will be 4.2p, maintaining the same level of dividend as the previous year by dipping into reserves.

Martin Currie earned a performance fee of £2,819,000 for the year. However, this element of the management fee has now been removed for future years – as we wrote about here.

Extract from the manager’s report

As the pandemic crisis was unfolding in March, we reviewed all of our forecasts for all companies held, working on a scenario of a severe recession, a gradual recovery rather than a V-shaped one and with no return to previous activity levels projected until some point in 2022. We also stress-tested each company’s balance sheet and assessed its liquidity risks. That assessment was extended to the key suppliers and customers of all of the companies in which we were invested. It was probably the busiest period in our careers. We also tested our convictions on all of the holdings held in the portfolio to ensure that we retained confidence in the business models, in what was a rapidly changing environment.

During the year, we added some new holdings that increased our exposure to robotics and automation, with the purchase of Ansys in the first half of the year, which we funded through selling out of Spirax Sarco after a period of strong share price performance. We also increased our exposure to the structural growth opportunity that we foresee in the genomics space, with the purchase of world leader Illumina. We continued to build a position following its purchase of Grail which gives it an additional strong positioning in the liquid biopsy segment. Additionally, we further strengthened our exposure in the healthcare segment with the purchase of Veeva Systems which is at the forefront of bringing tailored software to drug development and commercialisation. It operates in a segment with high barriers to entry, unfulfilled demand and where the potential for growth is strong over the long term.

Towards the end of the year, we purchased Kingspan after the share price weakened, in order to increase exposure to the mid-term opportunities related to infrastructure spending and to green building initiatives that we believe provide strong long-term structural growth potential. Finally, we also purchased Wuxi Biologics, a healthcare bioprocessing company that should benefit from the shift to increasingly complex drug development and production favouring providers of tools for life science.”

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