Baillie Gifford European Growth

BGEU looks exceptionally cheap given the growth potential in the portfolio…

Baillie Gifford European Growth

BGEU is a high-risk, high-potential return strategy looking cheap on a portfolio and share price level…

Riding out the storm

Many investors are attracted to investment trusts for the discount opportunities: e.g. for the chance to buy £1 of assets for 80p or less (see our Discounted Opportunities Portfolio for some potential examples). However, particularly in volatile market environments such as today’s, some investors may be put off by the uncertainty that discounts bring: they may worry about the possibility of trying to ‘catch a falling knife’, as it can be difficult to call when a discount will rebound or when it

Baillie Gifford European Growth

BGEU offers investors an attractive option for European growth investing, combining listed and unlisted opportunities...

Board games

One of the key attractions of closed-ended funds is – in our biased view – the role of the board. Investment trust boards wield the power to overhaul the investment strategy, hire and fire investment managers, and negotiate commercial terms with these managers. It is fair to say the environment for active managers is becoming more competitive, with the rise of passive funds, of actively managed/specialist ETFs and easier access to open-ended funds via online platforms. This week's announcement o

Baillie Gifford European Growth - Overview

Baillie Gifford European Growth (BGEU) was renamed in November 2019 after management was awarded to Baillie Gifford. Stephen Paice and Moritz Sitte have since completely overhauled the portfolio and applied a quality growth strategy to stock selection, the same one which has led to strong outperformance on the open-ended fund they have run together for six years. The managers look for companies with defensible market positions which can compound their earnings consistently over the long run. The

Gimme shelter

The coronavirus pandemic has caused dividends to be cancelled or cut across the world, but the impact has yet to be fully felt – with more bad news likely to come in the second half of the year. Pressure has come through reduced revenues, due to a slowdown in economic activity and a regulatory interference in dividends being paid by industries which have received taxpayer support. The task for income investors is to identify the regions and sectors which are expected to be less affected; to whic

First Quarter of 2020

We have knitted together the impact on the investment companies from what is now widely considered to be the most severe pandemic in a century. The collapse in asset prices over the latter part of March, brought the curtain down on an up-market that lasted more than ten years. In amongst this, there were pockets, such as the technology sector, that held up well. For many industries, the worst is still to come, as we brace ourselves for the sharpest contraction to global growth since the US great

Children of the Revolution

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, but with March coming to a close we have perhaps seen the end of the first act. Most of the developed world is in various degrees of ‘lockdown’; anxiously watching poorly reported – and often poorly understood – numbers for indications that their government’s strategy is working. Meanwhile equity markets saw one of their worst ever quarters in Q1 2020, as whole swathes of the economy were shut down by government diktat. The speed with which the situation d

Ready for action

In our recent research, Measure for Measure, we discussed the importance of a manager’s activeness and the difficulties involved in gauging it. As we have highlighted before, the chance of generating alpha generally rises with how active a manager is, and the UK closed-ended universe has become significantly more active in response to the challenge of cheap passive products. In that article we took a look at a range of measures for assessing the ‘activeness’ of a manager and their strengths and

The European Investment Trust - Review of management arrangements

The European Investment Trust (EUT) is managed by Craig Armour at Edinburgh Partners. This company follows a strict value-based investment process, based on the philosophy that there is a stable relationship between expected share price total returns and a company’s current share price compared with its long-term earnings per share (see chart below). In recent years, global markets have been led by growth rather than value stocks, and EUT’s investment performance has consequently lagged that of

The European Investment Trust - Trade dispute weighing on investor sentiment

The European Investment Trust (EUT) is managed by Craig Armour at Edinburgh Partners (EP, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Franklin Templeton Investments). He aims to generate attractive investment returns from a diversified portfolio of continental European equities, employing a disciplined, valuation-based stock selection strategy. The manager believes investor sentiment has become too negative, on the back of slowing global growth in response to the US/China trade dispute. He says th

European Investment Trust (The) - Managing risk in a transition period

The European Investment Trust (EUT) adopts a strict valuation-based investment approach to construct a relatively concentrated portfolio of stocks that can be held for the long term. Manager Craig Armour says that monetary conditions are slowly normalising following the extreme policies adopted as a result of the global financial crisis. He believes that this process will lead to an increase in stock market volatility, which will in turn lead to a greater investor focus on company valuations. Ar

European Investment Trust (The) - Maintaining disciplined valuation-based approach

The European Investment Trust (EUT) has been managed by Edinburgh Partners (EP) since 2010. Lead manager Craig Armour employs EP’s strict valuation-driven investment process, aiming to generate long-term capital growth from a diversified portfolio of continental European equities. Following a period of outsized equity returns, Armour says that investors will once again pay more attention to individual company fundamentals and valuations. Since July 2017, EUT pays semi-annual, rather than annual

European Investment Trust (The) - Improving performance under new lead manager

The European Investment Trust (EUT) aims to generate long-term capital growth from a diversified portfolio of European equities. Since August 2016, EUT has been managed by Craig Armour, who follows the disciplined Edinburgh Partners valuation-driven investment process, aiming to buy stocks that are trading on a five-year P/E multiple (Y5 P/E) of less than 11x. The manager is currently more cautious on the outlook for continental European equities as EUT’s portfolio Y5 P/E is towards the high end

UK REITs: Building back better

UK commercial property has been a cornerstone asset for many income-seeking investors (both retail and institutional) in recent decades, particularly since the global financial crisis of 2007/8 and the resulting ultra-low interest rate environment. However, since rates began to rise in 2022 to tackle surging inflation, meaningful returns have once more become available on lower-risk assets such as cash and government bonds, which has led to a retrenchment from alternative income assets such as p

Hardman & Co Insight: 2023 was an annus horribilis for Quoted UK Infrastructure and Renewable Energy

The focus of Hardman & Co Research is on the nine quoted Infrastructure Investment Companies (IICs) and on the 22 Renewable Energy Infrastructure Funds (REIFs): the stocks analysed are all members of the Association of Investment Companies (AIC). We are updating our publication of January 2023, assessing both the lacklustre share price performances during 2023 and the key issues, including interest rates, inflation and power prices. As a 31-strong group, its combined market capitalisation is no

NextEnergy Solar Fund - Second Refinancing Delivered

NextEnergy Solar Fund has extended its £70m revolving credit facility by a year to June 2025 and improved the margin by 10bps. Along with the refinancing of £135m announced in April the move shows a willingness amongst lenders to support solar energy and storage on attractive terms in our view.

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund - Responding to challenging times

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund (GRID) is the largest UK fund investing in utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS). A recent sharp decline in gas prices, a ‘disappointing’ start to the Energy System Operator’s (ESO’s) new energy trading platform and systemic delays connecting completed projects to the national grid have raised concerns about the revenue generating capacity of the BESS sector. This has placed significant downward pressure on the share prices of GRID and others in th

Chesnara (CSN): Good 2023 results set platform for future progress

Chesnara has announced its 2023 results. Positive returns from equity markets and gains from acquisitions in the first half were somewhat offset by adverse changes to operating assumptions in the second. Economic Value profit of £59.1m marked a good turnaround from a loss of £85.1m in 2022. Economic Value of £524.7m was 2% higher than a year ago, reflecting the dividend payment and forex effects. The final dividend of 15.61p brought the full year up to 23.97p, a 3% increase over the previous yea

Bankers Investment Trust (The) - Well positioned for the current environment

The Bankers Investment Trust (BNKR) has been managed by Alex Crooke, co-head of equities at Janus Henderson Investors (JHI), since July 2003. It can be considered as a ‘one-stop shop’ for global equity exposure as the fund is made up of six geographic portfolios (sleeves), which harness the talent of JHI’s regional specialists. Crooke (in conjunction with the board) sets BNKR’s asset allocation and manages its gearing. He believes that inflation will remain elevated, and that future shareholder

Henderson Far East Income - Repositioning to raise total returns

Henderson Far East Income (HFEL) has consistently delivered on its objective to provide a rising dividend. However, like many investors, HFEL’s managers overestimated the potential for a post-pandemic rebound in China. The trust’s resultant overweight to Chinese consumer and other cyclicals led to a fall in portfolio revenues and underperformance in the financial year ended 31 August 2023 (FY23). With a view to improving future returns, HFEL’s board has since indicated an increased willingness t

H&T Group (HAT): Core franchise build, short-term retail noise

In our 15 March 2023 initiation, 'Pawnbroking royalty, with strong, profitable growth', and subsequent notes, we have highlighted the strong market for pawnbroking and why H&T, as the market leader, is uniquely placed to take advantage of these opportunities. These results reconfirmed both, with the pledge book up 28% and net pawnbroking revenue up 36%. Like many in the retail space, H&T faced the challenge of customers focusing on lower-value, lower-margin items in the key run-up to Christmas 2

BlackRock Frontiers Investment Trust - Flying the flag for developing economies

BlackRock Frontiers posted another year of strong returns in FY23 (ended 30 September) and has continued to outperform into 2024, with NAV and share price total returns over one, three, five and 10 years to end-January 2024 comfortably beating the average of its peers in the AIC Global Emerging Markets sector. The trust offers a highly differentiated proposition, avoiding the eight largest emerging markets, which between them tend to account for around 90% of GEM investment. Instead, co-ma

Morning Note – 3 May 2024

AVI Japan Opportunity

AJOT has delivered strong returns to date from a unique and original strategy…

Hardman & Co Healthcare Index: 2023 – Capital demands dent performance

The Hardman & Co Healthcare Index (HHI) has been running since 2009. Its main function is to highlight the attractions of life sciences investments over the long term. For the second year running, apart from global economic influences affecting world markets, performance in 2023 was dented by the capital-intensive nature of the sector. The HHI fell 3.7%, to 483.8, underperforming the main London markets – FTSE 100 (+3.8%) and FTSE All-Share (3.8%) but outperforming the FTSE AIM All-Share Index (

GCP Infrastructure – Don’t look back in anger

2023 was a challenging year for GCP Infrastructure Investments Limited (GCP) as rising interest rates and several other factors appeared to weigh on returns. Despite this, the company was still able to generate positive NAV returns which the advisers note was thanks mostly to inflation linkages and contracted earnings that helped offset the impact of rising discount rates. Unfortunately, negative sentiment continued to weigh on the company’s shares, with the discount widening to a record low, de

R&Q Insurance Holdings | Financing Update

R&Q has raised US$50m in preferred equity with potential to increase to US$60m. The financing is being provided by Scopia Capital Management which has a last disclosed holding of 8.0% in R&Q. The proceeds are to be used to increase capitalisation for the R&Q Legacy business and for general corporate purposes. R&Q has now received all approvals necessary to complete the separation of the Accredited program management and R&Q Legacy businesses in connection with which Accredited is no longer payin

PCI Pal - +25% FY23 revenue growth, FY24 growth of +28% reiterated

PCI Pal’s FY23 results show revenue growth of +25% to £14.9m, gross profit growth of +31% to £13.1m at a margin of 88%, and an outlook confirming robust momentum in H1 24. The FY23 results are as expected following the August trading update, and FY23 Total Annual Contract Value (TACV) is +23% yoy to £16.4m, with ARR +14% yoy to £12.6m due to £3.1m of contracts in deployment. We expect ARR will increase +35% and +31% to £17.0m and £22.2m in FY24 and FY25, as management lands and expands following