24th Mar 2016 10:30
LONDON (Alliance News) - North American Income Trust PLC on Thursday said its net asset value per share performance was mixed against its benchmarks in its last financial year.
The trust said its net asset value per share rose by 3.2% on a total return basis in sterling terms in its financial year ended January 31, while its reference benchmark, the S&P 500, provided a total return of 5.2% in sterling terms and the Russell 1000 Value, which was incorporated as an additional measurement during the year, returned 0.6%.
"It is good to note that since the end of our financial year, the manager's value-oriented investment process in difficult markets has seen some recovery of the company's previous underperformance," Chairman James Ferguson said in a statement.
Between February 1 and March 21, its NAV outperformed the S&P 500 and the Russell 1000 Value indices by 2.5% and 1.4% respectively on a total return basis, the chairman said.
The trust's share price fell by 5.8% to 815.0p and ended the year at a 12.9% discount to total net asset value, compared with a 7.9% discount at the end of the 2015 financial year.
"This is far from ideal and the board continues to work with the manager in both promoting the company's benefits to a wider audience and providing liquidity to the market through the use of share buybacks," Ferguson said.
During the year 2.9 million shares were repurchased at a cost of GBP24.5 million, Ferguson said. Since the year-end, a further 848,700 shares were repurchased at a cost of GBP7.1 million and the discount as of March 22 was 10.8%.
Shares in North American Income Trust were up 0.1% at 892.33 pence on Thursday morning.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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