Baillie Gifford Japan’s interim results, which cover the six months ended 28 February 2015, are pretty good. The net asset value total return was 20.5% over this period – 8.2% more than the return on the TOPIX. Stock selection was the major factor behind the outperformance. The statement highlights Baillie Giford Japan’s “active share” figure of 87%. […]
Highcroft Investments has published results for the year ended 31 December 2014. Over the year the fund’s net asset value rose by 12% to 923p. Gross property rental income rose by 13% to £3.1m, underpinning a 36p distribution to shareholders, up from 33.75p for 2013. The rental income increase was fuelled by the acquisitions they […]
The Board of BlackRock Throgmorton Trust plc has been advised by BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited that Ralph Cox, the lead portfolio manager for its Contracts for Difference (CFD) portfolio, has decided to take an extended career break and has resigned from BlackRock. The Board is pleased to announce that, with immediate effect, Dan Whitestone […]
BH Macro has published figures for 2014. They say the environment for their macro-trading strategies got more favourable towards the end of the year but this just offset poor performance earlier in the year and the return on net assets for 2014 as a whole turned out to be 0.26%. The Chairman’s statement says the weaker […]
TwentyFour Asset Management LLP, managers of TwentyFour Income Fund and TwentyFour Select Monthly Income, has announced that Vontobel is taking a 60% stake in it. “Vontobel will acquire a 60% shareholding in TwentyFour, with the working partners retaining a 40% stake in the business. The partners remain fully committed to TwentyFour with long-term lock-ins. The Investment Manager will […]
Aberdeen Asian Income’s results for the year that ended on 31 December 2014 show the fund generating a return on net assets of 7.6%, a bit behind the 9.5% return on the MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex Japan Index. The dividend was edged up from 7.9p to 8p and this was covered 1.03x. The fund […]
Final results for The North American Income Trust for the year that ended 31 January 2014 show the fund delivering an 18.9% return on net assets, which isn’t bad but does lag the 25.0% return on the S&P500 Index by some margin. The fund’s discount widened from 5% to 7.9% over the year and so […]
Brevan Howard Global reports net asset value growth of 2.5% for the US dollar share class and 2.1% for the Sterling share class. The Chairman makes the point that “An investment in the shares of BH Global is intended to be a portfolio diversifier that is only modestly correlated with equity markets and is subject […]
John Laing Infrastructure’s results for the period ended 31 December 2014 have been published. Its net asset value rose by 2.3% to 109.3p. A combination of dividends and a rising premium helped push the total shareholder return up to 12.6%. They increased the final dividend by 3.85% to 3.375p making a total dividend of 6.625p for the […]
DP Aircraft One, which owns two Dreamliners (Boeing 787s) that are leased to Norwegian Air Shuttle, has announced its first set of results covering the period from 5 July 2013 (when it was incorporated), through its launch in October 2013 and up to the 31 December 2014. The net asset value at the end of the period […]
SVG Capital has announced results for the thirteen months ended 31 January 2015. Over the period the company’s net asset value rose by 14% to 588p (from a total return on the investment portfolio of 17%). £330m of cash was generated by the portfolio during the period and the company returned £205m to shareholders – £100m via tenders and […]
Public Service Properties has announced its results for the year ended 31 December 2014. These have in large measure been superseded by the sale of its UK care home market and ancillary businesses for cash on 4 March 2015 and the sale of three of its German care homes in November 2014 and January 2015. […]
The Renewables Infrastructure Group is paying £8.6m to buy the Four Burrows solar farm in Cornwall. The plant has a generating capacity of 7.2MWp. It is located near Truro and is already operational – and has been since January 2015. It should qualify under the 1.4 ROC subsidy regime therefore but, if it doesn’t, the […]
Crystal Amber’s net asset value fell by 5% over the second half of 2014 to 152.7p – the total return was -4.7%. The NAV move lags the return on comparable indices – a total return of -0.5% for the FTSE Small Cap Index, 3.8% for the FTSE 250 and -4.1% for the Numis Smaller Companies […]
Trading Emissions has drawn up its accounts under IFRS10 for the first time and has restated its figures for previous years accordingly. On the new basis, its net asset value fell from 15.2p to 15.1p over the second half of 2014. The fall is largely down to increased provisions for legal expenses. The Chinese counterparties to […]
Invesco Income Growth’s Board has negotiated a change to the management fee. With effect from 1 April 2015, the fee will be 0.65% on the first £150m of market capitalisation and 0.55% above this level. The fee was 0.7% up to £100m, 0.6% on the next £50m and 0.55% on the next £50m and was based on funds […]
Dunedin Enterprise has reported a -0.4% total return on net assets for the year ended 31 December 2014. However the share price fell as the fund’s discount widened and the return to shareholders was -15.8%. The discount stood at 33% when they published these figures. They are paying a final dividend of 4.7p. The fund […]
Better Capital has the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of CAV Aerospace Limited from an overseas holding company. CAV is a specialist aerospace manufacturing business, which supplies complex metallic components and sub-assemblies to several major original equipment manufacturers including Airbus, Embraer and Gulfstream. The company operates from seven sites – four in the […]
JPMorgan US Smaller Companies published their results for the year ended 31 December 2014 yesterday. These show that the fund outperformed its benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index as the net asset value rose by 12.8% against 11.1% for the Index. Unfortunately however the discount widened out, leaving the return to shareholders at 5.6%. In the […]
Fundsmith Emerging Equities has published its inaugural results that cover the period from its incorporation on 31 October 2013 to 31 December 2014. The fund didn’t really get going until June 2014 however – it listed on 25 June 2014. Over the period the fund underperformed its benchmark, the MSCI Emerging and Frontier Markets Index, by 0.8% […]
2014 was not a great year for BlackRock World Mining. The net asset value total return fell by 26.4% and the share price fell by 30.4% both of which do not compare well to a fall in the Euromoney Global Mining Index of 13.0%. The larger fall in the share price reflects a widening of their […]
International Public Partnerships has followed up its investment in schools in the North East with a £10.2m investment in the Amber schools project which covers schools in Hertfordshire, Luton and Reading. The project will support the development of seven secondary schools on existing sites. Total capital expenditure on the schools in this batch is £144 […]
Kubera Cross Border’s asset value fell from 54 cents to 52 cents over the course of 2014 and its share price fell 16% to 26 cents over the same period as the discount widened to 50%. this is an extremely disappointing result in the context of the revival of India’s fortunes and the amazing year […]
Alliance Trust has published its rejection of Elliott’s proposals. for the sake of completeness we have reproduced the entire statement below but the thrust of it is that Elliott’s nominees wouldn’t be independent, would have a short-term agenda, might initiate moves that could threaten the dividend and the jobs of 250 Alliance Trust employees. They […]
Edinburgh Partners Global Opportunities returned 2.2% on net assets over the course of 2014, better than the 1.2% return on the FTSE All-Share index but well behind the 11.3% returned generated by the FTSE All-World Index. The Board aims to pay a dividend of 3.3p for the year (from revenues of 3.7p). The portfolio’s focus […]
India Capital Growth’s net asset value rose by 50.3% over the course of 2014, an impressive result but unfortunately quite a bit less than the company’s benchmark, the BSE Mid Cap Index, which returned 63.2%. The MSCI India index returned 28.75 over the same period. The Chairman makes the point that the BSE Index contains a number of […]
EPE Special Opportunities saw its net asset value rise by 5% over the year to the end of January 2015 but this modest increased was dwarfed by a 31% rise in its share price. They have £9.96m in net cash in the portfolio, plenty they say, to fund new investment opportunities. Major exits from the […]
Henderson High Income’s results for the year that finished on 31 December 2014 are quite good. The total return on net assets was 7.5% and the return to shareholders was 8.1%. these figures compare to a return on their benchmark, a composite of 80% of the FTSE All-Share Index (total return) and 20% of the […]
Burford Capital has, with its recent final results announcement for the year ended 31 December 2014, posted a 43% increase in its operating profit to $60.7m (2013: $42.5m). This represents a 17% return on equity. The company is also proposing a 34% increase in the dividend to 7.00c per share (2013: 5.23c). Burford saw a 35% increase […]
MirLand Development Corporation’s final results, for the year ended 31 December 2014, show an 18% increase in total revenues from investment properties. The company says this is due to both an increase in income from yielding assets as well as full consolidation of the Vernissage Mall in Yaroslavl. However, Mirland has also suffered a loss of $62.9m, during 2014, due to the […]
