Following Nitin Bajaj’s appointment as manager, his repositioning of its portfolio and the change of benchmark, the Board has also decided to review the management fee and is shifting from a flat fee of 1% on gross assets to a tiered fee of 0.9% on the first £200m of gross assets and 0.85% on the balance. FAV […]
Over the six months ended 31 May 2015, BlackRock Commodities Income generated a negative return on net assets of -3.5%. The return to shareholders was -7.1%. The Euromoney Mining Index was off 5.8% and the MSCI World Energy index was -1%. Two quarterly interim dividends totalling 3p have been declared for the period, 0.8% higher […]
Damille 2’s interims, covering the six months ended 31 May 2015, show the NAV rising by 7%. They also returned £9.7m to shareholders via a redemption offer, bringing the total returned to shareholders to date to £19.2m. They say they have been taking advantage of market weakness to add to holdings. Since the Period end […]
LMS Capital’s interims for the first half of 2015 show its NAV rising by a penny to 94p. They sold off investments worth £26.6m including the sale of five fund positions in the secondary market which raised £9.2m after costs; ChyronHego Corporation (one of our US quoted investments) was bought by Vector Capital – the cash proceeds […]
Athelney Trust’s interim figures show its NAV total return was 6.4% over the six months ended 30 June 2015, behind returns on small cap indices with the FTSE Smaller Companies, Fledgling and Aim All-share being up by 7.1, 15.6 and 8.2 per cent respectively There is much musing on the economy in the report – […]
While Japan Residential’s net asset value rose 6.3% in yen terms over the six months ended 31 May 2015, in sterling terms the rise was just 0.4% as the yen weakened. The yen uplift in the NAV was driven by a 3.1% uplift in the value of their investment properties. The distribution was held steady […]
Hammerson’s EPRA NAV rose by 4.7% over the first half of 2015. Adjusted earnings rose by 13.3% as rents rose by a like for like 2.1% and the interim dividend was increased by 8% to 9.5p. The company’s loan to value ratio fell by 1% to 33% as they secured a new £415m five-year unsecured revolving […]
Foresight Solar has announced the acquisition of a portfolio of three operational assets totalling 34MW through a Joint Venture with Big60Million Limited. The 15MW Atherstone and 10MW Southam assets are located in Warwickshire, and the 9MW Paddock Wood asset is located in Kent. All three assets were connected to the Grid in March 2015 and […]
BlackRock Throgmorton says it generated a 19.85 return on net assets over the six months ended 31 May 2015 – ahead of the 15.7% return posted by the Numis Smaller Companies excluding AIM and investment companies index. Shareholders did even better as the discount narrowed taking their return to 23.8%. The interim dividend has been […]
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (“DECC”) has announced a series of measures aimed at restricting the subsidies it pays to support renewable energy. The measures include: Removing the guaranteed level of subsidy for biomass conversions and co-firing projects for the duration of the Renewable Obligation, known as grandfathering. Launching a consultation on controlling subsidies for […]
Allianz Technology just failed to match the performance of the Dow Jones World technology Index over the six months ending 31 May 2015 – its net asset value rose by 6.6% against 6.8% for the index. The discount narrowed though and that meant that shareholders saw an 8.3% uplift in the ordinary share price. The […]
Fresnillo, the world’s largest primary silver miner, has announced first half silver production results up almost 11% from the corresponding period of 2014. The company produced 23.9 Moz of silver in the six months to end June 2015 as its Saucito II mine, Mexico, commenced production. Full year silver production guidance remains on track at […]
Dexion Absolute has consulted shareholders about its idea to amend its investment strategy and decided not to take it forward. Instead the directors have said that if any class of shares trades at an average 5% discount or wider for the three months from 1 July 2015 to 30 September 2015 or from 1 January 2016 […]
The international gold price was fixed in London this morning at US$1,096.80/oz; the lowest am fixing since March 2010. The gold price declined 4% at the beginning of this week after heavy selling in thin markets. Bloomberg reports that a Goldman Sachs analyst is predicting that gold could fall below US$1,000/oz on a more positive […]
Over the first half of 2015 Herald Investment Trust’s total return was 7.9% and the share price return was 8.0%. These figures compare to an 8.3% return on the Numis Smaller Companies plus AIM Index and a 6% return on the Russell 2000 small cap. technology Index. The report says they saw a steady stream […]
Vietnam Infrastructure has completed its restructuring whereby investors get shares in a new company, Vietnam Infrastructure Listed, which invests via an open-ended fund, in addition to their shares in Vietnam Infrastructure, which gets renamed as Vietnam Infrastructure Private equity shares and is gradually wound up over the next couple of years. VNI / VNIL : […]
Spark Ventures has raised £10.1m from a placing of stock, a further £3.8m from stock swaps and will raise up to £3.1m via an open offer. They plan to put the money towards a new investment strategy and appoint Gresham House as its investment adviser. Gresham House is buying into Spark Ventures’ outgoing management company, SPARK […]
Aurora Russia has published results covering the year to the end of March 2015. The net asset value fell from 27.9p to 17.5p over the period. A large chunk of the decline relates to the fall in the Rouble Sterling exchange rate and a fall in the value of the company’s stake in Unistream from £8m […]
BlackRock World Mining made a $12m investment in Avanco Resources (a Brazilian copper play) in August 2014. Today it has announced the receipt of $4m from the company which is the first payment under the royalty contract. They say Avanco successfully completed an equity raising earlier in the year, which combined with the $12 million BlackRock […]
UK smaller companies funds feature quite prevalently in the lists on the back of a decisive election result in the UK and some funds close to the end of their lives made significant progress during the quarter for stock specific reasons. http://whichinvestmenttrust.com/the-investment-trust-winners-and-losers-in-q2/
Temple Bar, managed by Alastair Mundy (pictured) has released its interim results for the half year ended 30 June 2015. During this time, the trusts NAV total return of 4.5% beat that of the FTSE All-Share Index of 1.5%. The biggest contributor during the period was TNT Express, which received a bid from Fedex, whilst building products […]
CEB Resources has published its results for the year ended 30 April 2015. These show a loss in the period of US$ 122,000 with the NAV per share decreasing from 0.3 US cents in April 2014 to 0.2 US cents in April 2015. During the year, the company exited all of its coal investments in Poland and Australia […]
NextEnergy Solar Fund has announced that it has signed a £22.7m debt facility with NIBC Bank. This has been drawn down in full to finance its Cock Hill and Llwyndu projects (the total investment in the projects combined amounts to £32.7m). The facility has a 12-month duration, with a further 12-month extension available. The company […]
Fair Oaks Income Fund announced on 22 June 2015 that it was giving consideration to potentially issuing some ordinary shares or C-shares. The company has now followed this up with an announcement that, following consultation with certain existing and potential shareholders, it is making arrangements for a potential issue of up to 200 million C Shares at an […]
Shaftesbury, the REIT focused on London’s West End, saw an announcement yesterday from entities controlled by the ‘Lee Family’ (principally through Mr Samuel Tak Lee) of a tender offer to acquire up to 9.3% of the shares in Shaftesbury at a price of 888p per share. If the tender is successful, the Lee family will control 13.2% […]
Starwood European Real Estate announced yesterday (20 July 2015) a placing to raise up to £15m before costs with the proceeds of the placing to be used to fund a loan currently in execution and other transactions that the Investment Adviser believes have a high probability of execution in the short term. Starwood has subsequently announced today […]
Shanta Gold produced 14,664 oz of gold in Q2 2015, some 8% higher than Q1 but significantly down from Q2 2014 production of 21,940 oz. Cash Costs were US$834/oz.(up 10% on Q2 2014) and All in Sustaining Costs (AISC) US$1,157/oz (up 21%). The main reasons for the decrease in production, and increase in costs, were […]
