Oil price falls impact Qatar Investment Fund

According to its Chairman’s statement, over the year that ended on 30 June 2016, Qatar Investment Fund’s share price fell 18.2% compared to the Qatar Exchange which fell 18.9% and a fall of 14.21% in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. It says the net asset value of the fund fell 20.8%, underperforming the benchmark. The Board proposes to pay a dividend of 4.0c per share for the period to end June 2016.

The manager’s statement has slightly different performance numbers – they say “QIF’s dividend adjusted NAV fell 18.3% from June 2015 to June 2016, while the Qatar Exchange index fell 19.0% during the same period.” The manager says “outperformance was driven by portfolio companies including Ooredoo (up 1.6%), Qatar Electricity & Water (down 8.8%), Qatar Islamic Bank (down 11.0%) and Qatar National Bank (down 12.9%). Additionally, the investment manager removed Doha bank (down 33.6%) from the portfolio and did not held Vodafone (down 35.7%) for most of the year until it bottomed-out in Q1 2016, which further contributed to the outperformance.”

The manager points out that the drop in oil prices late last year weighed on the performance of equity markets during H2 2015. All the GCC indices dropped during this period, with Saudi Arabia reporting the highest fall of 23.9%, followed by Dubai and Oman which were down 22.9% and 15.9%, respectively. Qatar fell 14.5% during H2 2015.

QIF : Oil price falls impact Qatar Investment Fund