QuotedData’s morning briefing 2 June 2021 –
- The Scottish Investment Trust’s (SCIN’s) board is to undertake a review of the future investment management arrangements of the company. In 2015 SCIN adopted a high conviction, global contrarian investment approach. The board’s view at the time was that a period of at least 5 years would be required to evaluate returns under this mandate. SCIN does not have a formal benchmark but, by way of comparison, the announcement notes that the company’s NAV total return has underperformed the sterling total return of the MSCI all country world index over the 5 years ended 30 April 2021.
- Augmentum Fintech (AUGM) announced investments of £5m in UK-based Cushon and €2.5m in France-based Epsor, both workplace savings providers. Cushon provides workplace pensions and payroll-linked ISAs, with assets under management of £740m. In January 2021, AUGM says it became the first UK pension provider to launch a fully carbon neutral pension product. Epsor is a provider of employee and retirement savings plans delivered through an open ecosystem. It serves more than 40,000 savers and over 400 companies in France.
- Schroder REIT (SREI) delivered a NAV total return of 3.9% for the year to 31 March 2021. The group’s EPRA earnings was down 9% on the year to 2.3p per share, reflecting the impact of the pandemic on rent collections (which were 90% in the period). It paid a reduced dividend of 1.59p during the year (41.5% down on 2020), but has now raised its quarterly dividend by 5% to 0.656p.
- Phoenix Spree Deutschland (PSDL), which owns German residential real estate, has announced a further share buyback programme, with its shares currently trading at a 17% discount to NAV. This, the board says, does not reflect the “track record and performance of the underlying portfolio and the positive outlook following the removal of the Berlin rent controls”. It will make a “material allocation of capital to the buyback programme funded through a combination of existing cash balances, refinancing, condominium sale proceeds and the disposal of non-core assets”.
- St Peter Port says the auction process to sell all its remaining assets is taking longer than expected – about two months. It will publish its final results for the year to 31 March 2021 when the process is complete.
We also have an intention to float announcement from The UK Residential REIT and annual results from Shires Income.