29th Apr 2014 09:36
LONDON (Alliance News) - Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust PLC Tuesday said its net asset value total return with debt at market value was negative 0.80% while the share price total return was 0.93% over the three months to the end of March.
In a statement, the trust said its performance was behind that of its benchmark, the FTSE All World Index, which gave a 0.54% total return.
The trust's investment objective is to secure long-term growth in capital and income through a policy of investing primarily in an internationally diversified portfolio of publicly listed equities, as well as unlisted securities and private equity, with the use of gearing.
In March 2014 a new Global Multi-Manager portfolio was established to invest in 24 external funds. The move was funded by a reduction in the UK weighting. At the end of March the new portfolio accounted for 9.2% of total investments.
In the quarter there were private equity drawdown payments of GBP5.4 million and distributions received of GBP22.5 million. The private equity portfolio was valued at GBP371.4m, compared with GBP392.0m at the end of 2013. This was due to a combination of net distributions and exchange rate movements, the trust said.
Undrawn commitments marginally decreased to GBP71.7 million at the end of March, while no new commitments were made to private equity funds.
Net gearing with debt at par value fell in the three months since the end of 2013 to 7.7% from 8.0%.
During the period, about 1.9 million shares were bought back for cancellation at a cost of GBP7.0 million.
So far in April a further GBP2.4 million has been spent buying back 630,000 shares, resulting in a total of 0.44% of the share capital being bought back in the year to date.
The trust said it plans to increase the dividend for 2014 by paying three quarterly dividends of 2.20 pence each in August 2014, November 2014 and February 2015 and, subject to shareholder approval, a final dividend of 2.70 pence in May 2015. This total dividend of 9.30 pence would represent an increase of 3.3% on the 2013 total dividend and the forty fourth consecutive annual increase.
The trust's shares were Tuesday quoted at 369.91 pence, up 0.6%.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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