RESURGENT housebuilders and outstanding performance from some technology companies helped the Independent Investment Trust stage a strong recovery in the six months to the end of May.
The trust, which is managed and chaired respectively by former Baillie Gifford stalwarts Max Ward and Douglas McDougall, made a net asset value total return of 35.5 per cent over the period, far outstripping the FTSE All Share ‘s 13.6 per cent and FTSE World’s 10.1 per cent.
This is in stark contrast to the trust’s performance in the full year to November 2016, when heavy exposure to UK-focused companies in the wake of the Brexit vote saw it return just five percent against the indices respective returns of 9.8 per cent and 25.6 per cent.
Mr McDougall said the six months had been “relatively uneventful” in economic terms, meaning an interest rate rise in the US had little impact on stock markets while “a modest recovery in sterling” was of benefit to the trust.
“It has also been an outstanding period for our large technology and telecommunications stake - worth £44.6 million at 30 November 2016, it had risen in value to £61.0m by 31 May 2017 after £5.9m of net sales,” Mr McDougall said.
“The star of the show was the robotic process automation company, Blue Prism, which has become something of a stock market darling as its software robots have been snapped up by big blue chip companies on both sides of the Atlantic.”
On housebuilders, he said that “in contrast to the many gloomy predictions a year ago, the market for new homes has remained buoyant” with those holdings that target first-time buyers producing “results well in excess of the expectations we had before the vote to leave the European Union”.
The trust will pay an interim dividend of 2p per share and expects to make a final payment of 3p. Any surplus income will be paid out in a special dividend.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here