14th Jul 2020 09:29
(Alliance News) - Polar Capital Technology Trust PLC on Tuesday said it beat its benchmark by a whisker in financial 2020, and the trust expects market volatility to continue amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The technology-focused investment trust said its net asset value per share rose 19% during the year to April 30 versus a 18% gain in the sterling-adjusted benchmark Dow Jones World Technology index.
Net asset value per share amounted to 1,715.59 pence versus 1,446.40p a year before.
The company's share price provided a total return of 31% and ended the period at 1,774.00p. Shares on Tuesday were down 3.9% on the day at 2,110.00p each in London.
Polar Capital said the most significant positive contribution to performance was made once again by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
In addition, the portfolio benefited from its overweight exposure to software-as-a-service companies, which delivered strong growth against a more challenging economic backdrop. The strongest performance was reserved for those with solutions that helped facilitate work from home, such as RingCentral, Everbridge and Five9.
In terms of negatives, the most significant detractors were what Polar Capital described as large but still underweight positions in both Apple Inc and Microsoft Inc.
Chair Sarah Bates said: "Over the last 10 years, with a starting point two years on from the global financial crisis, your company's NAV has risen by more than five times, or 19.2% annualised, from a starting NAV of GBP398.6 million.
"Such returns are spectacular and unusual. They do however mask considerable volatility and we would expect that volatility to continue. We worry about valuations and we worry that the sector has become a media favourite in some ways. At the same time, the longer term trends which guide our investment approach remain very robust, and in some ways the pandemic has given further strength to those trends. In a world where some sectors are in turmoil, we understand the attractions of ours."
By Tapan Panchal; [email protected]
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