Edinburgh Investment Trust (EDIN) is reporting a NAV total return of 7.2% and share price total return of 8.5% for the year ended 31 March 2026. Both quite a way behind a 21.5% return on FTSE All-Share Index. The full year dividend has been raised by 11% to 32.0p.

While highlighting outperformance over the six-year period since Liontrust was appointed as manager, EDIN’s chair Elisabeth Stheeman described the return for this period as “disappointing relative to the index”. She says “The underperformance last year was a function of three main factors: share price weakness in holdings perceived to be losers from the Artificial Intelligence revolution, some operational underperformance in a small number of holdings, and being underweight in certain companies with a more pronounced value orientation.”

Manager Imran Sattar and his deputy Emily Barnard said “Over the last year the portfolio has had a bias to ‘quality growth’ stocks – this was born out of judgement and was principally driven by where we find the best bottom-up opportunities. Over the year this bias was a headwind to our returns relative to that of the index, even though the majority of portfolio holdings have delivered strategically, operationally and financially. There was, however, a notable derating in a number of portfolio holdings which the market has, we believe erroneously, characterised as ‘Artificial Intelligence losers’. Alongside this were a few holdings which underperformed operationally… Stronger performance from a number of larger value-oriented benchmark companies in which we are underweight was also a headwind.”