Edinburgh Investment Trust NAV return underperforms benchmark index
Edinburgh Investment Trust PLC on Wednesday drew attention to ‘significant challenges’ facing the investment trust sector, as it noted an ‘encouraging’ UK equity market performance in financial 2025.
The FTSE 250-listed trust invests primarily in large-cap UK securities. It said its net asset value total return with debt at fair value was 8.3% in the financial year that ended March 31, underperforming its benchmark, the FTSE All-Share Index, which had a return of 10.5%.
It attributed the NAV underperformance to share price weakness in a a small number of holdings.
NAV per share with debt at fair value rose 4.8% to 817.16 pence from 779.97p a year prior, while its share price rose 7.2% to 740.00p from 690.00p.
Edinburgh Investment Trust’s discount to NAV with debt at fair value narrowed to 9.4% from 11.5% over the period, owing to its active share buyback programme.
Its shares were down 0.2% at 800.40p on Wednesday morning in London.
The trust noted ‘significant challenges’ to the investment trust sector over the period, as well as beyond, including corporate activity seeking to exploit wide discounts, and ‘an evolving regulatory approach towards cost disclosure that has had the unintended consequence of making the sector less attractive to some wealth managers.’
It declared a final dividend of 7.5p per share, reflecting an 8.7% uplift from the previous year. Its total dividend increased 5.9% to 28.80p from 27.20p.
The trust said the UK equity market performance over the period has been ‘encouraging’, especially when compared to other markets such as the US. It said the MSCI US index returned 7.8% over the period, with the MSCI All Country World Index returning 4.9%.
Chair Elisabeth Stheeman said: ‘It is encouraging that the UK equity market has had a better year compared with other equity markets, with the returns of the market illustrating why we remain enthusiastic about the strength of the UK-listed businesses in the company.
‘At the time of writing, equity markets have recovered much of the ground lost after the uncertainty of President Trump’s tariffs announcement. Nonetheless, volatility in markets is a reminder of the short-term challenges that investors face as the global economic order evolves.
‘The portfolio managers’ diversified portfolio of deeply researched stocks means the company is well placed to continue to deliver attractive future returns for its shareholders in the years ahead and live up to its mantra to trust in a style to last through the ages.’
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