Henderson Opportunities Trust - Patience is bitter but the fruit is sweet

Underpinned by attractively low valuations, the investment managers for Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) believe that smaller companies will rally strongly on a turn in market sentiment. Although the timing and catalyst for this is no easier to pinpoint than when we wrote our detailed note in July, in their view, the most likely trigger will be a return to confidence in the UK economy. In this respect, growing indications that the interest rate cycle has peaked, and a more robust domestic eco

Henderson Opportunities Trust - Is a bird in the hand really worth two in the bush?

Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) seeks to identify the best investment opportunities across the breadth of the UK market. It has a strong bias towards smaller and early-stage companies with significant potential to grow into tomorrow’s leading British businesses, and a value-driven style that invests in out-of-favour or under-researched companies. In the past two years, UK market performance has been driven by the largest companies, with a broad sell-off in smaller companies, especially those

Henderson Opportunities Trust - Staying the contrarian course

Equity markets have been relatively weak and volatile so far in 2022 as a result of slowing economic growth, rising interest rates, soaring inflation and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT), which has a bias to midsized and smaller companies including those listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), has had a tougher time of it in 2022 after a very strong 2021. The investment process is, as with all James Henderson and Laura Foll mandates, mildly contrarian, i

Henderson Opportunities Trust - Riding the next wave with stabilisers

Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) is unusual in that its unconstrained mandate means it can buy into very small companies and hold them no matter how large they get. Managers James Henderson and Laura Foll explain that the investment trust structure enables them to own micro-caps (sub-£50m), which can be very illiquid and therefore unsuitable for an open-ended fund. For example, AIM-listed Serica Energy (the top holding at c 3.6% of the portfolio) now has a market cap of c £900m but it was onl

Henderson Opportunities Trust - Buckets of opportunity drive an impressive year

Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) has posted a very strong performance for FY21 (ended 31 October), with its NAV and share price both up almost 60% on the prior year, albeit with the bulk of the returns coming in H121. Co managers James Henderson and Laura Foll construct a deliberately diverse all-cap portfolio of between 70 and 100 UK equities, with a bias towards smaller and particularly AIM-listed stocks. While the emphasis is on capital growth, the trust also seeks to reward investors with

Henderson Opportunities - Overview

Managed by James Henderson and Laura Foll, Henderson Opportunities (HOT) trust aims to achieve capital growth in excess of the FTSE All-Share index through a portfolio of UK companies. Operating with an unconstrained mandate with regards to market capitalisation, the trust structurally incorporates exposure to seven different categories of stocks. As we discuss under Portfolio, there remains significant flexibility in the indicative ranges of these different categories and the managers are prim

Henderson Opportunities Trust - Feeling HOT HOT HOT?

Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) has performed particularly strongly over the past 12 months, leading to signs of a reappraisal among investors with the trust’s persistent double-digit discount to NAV narrowing almost to par. Managers James Henderson and Laura Foll have made the best of HOT’s flexible all-cap structure, reaping the benefits of strong performance from early-stage hydrogen plays in 2020 and rotating towards more cyclical names late in the year as the market focus switched to va

Time to back Britain?

The UK was the most unloved market among fund managers during the post-referendum period. From 23 June 2016 to the end of September 2020 (just before the vaccine rally), the FTSE All Share fell 3.5% in dollar terms, with the MSCI AC World Index up 50.5%, thanks in part to the pound falling 12.9% in USD. Even as late as April this year, fund managers were underweight the FTSE All Share, according to the BofA ML Fund Managers Survey – managers were around 1.5 standard deviations below their histor

Henderson Opportunities Trust - Enthusiastically esoteric UK equity portfolio

Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) has performed strongly since experiencing sharp NAV and share price declines in the Q120 market sell-off, powering to the top of the AIC UK All Companies sector over the past 12 months with an NAV total return of c 40% in the second half of 2020. Managers James Henderson and Laura Foll say performance has benefited from holding a number of ‘next-generation leaders’ in the UK. The portfolio is esoteric in its make-up and seeks to avoid being overly exposed to t

This time next year Rodney...

I once sat through a three-hour performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal which, despite the best efforts of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart – both of whom I like very much – to this day remains one of the dreariest experiences of my life. It is on that note that we welcome 2021, with all the promise it holds, and return to our ‘top picks’ for 2020, a year which is probably best summarised (for those of us lucky enough to have been not directly impacted by the virus

LIBERUM: Plus500: Strategic progress pays dividends

Tatton Asset Management (TAM LN) - Record net inflows

Tatton, the leading on-platform discretionary fund manager (DFM) and IFA support services Group has released a trading update ahead of its results to 31 March 2024, due on 18 June 2024.

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

Ondo InsurTech FY24 Trading Update

Ondo InsurTech has released a brief post-YE update revealing its good progress continued through 2H24 and consequently FY24 will be in line with market expectations.

BlackRock World Mining

BRWM’s managers: we see all the classic signs of high commodity prices...

NextEnergy Solar Fund - Attractive Refinancing

The refinancing of a £135m revolving credit facility and the extension of a similar £70m facility gives NESF firepower as development opportunities for new solar are especially attractive thanks to lower module prices in Europe. They give the fund key financial flexibility at a critical time as it pursues its capital recycling programme.

The Hardman & Co Monthly: April 2024

Feature article: Steady as she goes, but could be better: A review of investment company liquidity since 2016 Liquidity is the lifeblood of equity markets. The measurement of liquid asset availability to a market or company is a way of gauging a market’s health. This article builds on our previous work, which analysed the liquidity data for non-financial trading companies, by applying the same analytical techniques to the investment companies (IC) space. We analyse liquidity for ICs as a whol

M Winkworth+ (WINK, House Stock at 163p) - Solid FY23A results, well placed to grow

Initial Equity Trading Comments - 19 February 2024

Resilient FY24, confident long-term outlook

Vp’s full year update highlights sector-leading results, once again benefiting from the diversity of its end markets and the quality of its specialist businesses. With results expected to be broadly in line with expectations, we trim our FY24 PBT forecast by c.5% to £39.0m, a shade below the FY23 outturn (£40.2m). We consider this an impressively resilient performance set against a mixed market backdrop. Under new leadership, a strategic refresh is underway and management is confident in long

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 16/04/2024

16th April 2024 * A corporate client of Hybridan LLP ** Arranged by type of listing and date of announcement *** Alphabetically arranged **** Potential means Intention to Float (ITF) has been announced Dish of the day Admissions: Delistings: What’s baking in the oven? ** Potential**** Initial Public Offerings: Reverse Takeovers: Electric Guitar (ELEG.L) Concurrent with its Admission to trading on AIM, Electric Guitar is proposing to acquire the entire issued share capital of 3radical Limited for

Hybridan Research: Sector Review: Artificial intelligence in UK cybersecurity: the human uplift 17/04/2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a double-edged sword in cybersecurity. Whilst new AI models, architectures, and innovations are emerging to protect the security posture of organisations, attackers are also benefiting from deepfakes, sophisticated phishing, and automation of malicious codes. To ensure the impact of AI on cybersecurity to be a net-positive, we need to pit good AI against bad AI. Point solutions enhanced with machine learning: Global cybersecurity has been built with point soluti

AUM up 30% in FY24, record flows, forecasts raised

AUM jumped £3.8bn or +30% in FY24, reaching £16.6bn on 31 Mar 24, 12% above our previous forecast of £14.7bn. Including 50%-owned 8AM Global, Assets Under Influence hit £17.6bn. Investment performance provided a tailwind, adding £1.5bn to AUM. But our key takeaway from Tatton’s hugely impressive last few years, is that it has designed and implemented a superior offering in platform-MPS with net flows consistently far higher than peers. That leadership looks even more pronounced in H2-24 with net

Morning Note – 18 April 2024

NextEnergy Solar Fund – High- and growing-income opportunity?

NextEnergy Solar Fund (NESF) is almost 10 years old. Since launch, it has built a £1.2bn, 933MW portfolio of 100 operating solar assets, powering the equivalent of over 330,000 homes, declared dividends totalling £333m, and avoided the emission of about 2.2 Mt CO2e. NESF is on track to pay 8.35p in dividends, with forecast dividend cover of about 1.3x. Share price weakness that has afflicted the whole sector means that dividend translates to a yield of 11.1%, one of the highest in its sector, a