Strong Long-Term Performer30 Jun 2020 17:41
All right, it may not be the most popular spot on the LSE bulletin board but this Asian focused (Excluding Japan) investment trust has delivered for shareholders over a long period. That includes around 71p of dividends from 2010 to 2020. It has paid continuous dividends since 2003 - Its final dividend has risen from 0.5p in 2003 to 4p in 2019. Around 30% of its portfolio is concentrated in four Asian technology stocks. In order of size, these are Tencent, Alibaba, Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics. Over the past ten years, an investor could have bought at the peak price in any year and would still be in profit today and that excludes dividends. And, of course, it’s an investment trust structure - boring but reliable. For sure, it sells at only a slight discount to its net asset value but I would suggest that’s more of a reflection of the quality and liquidity of its underlying assets. Whether Asia in general and China, in particular, continues with its meteoric rise, who knows? But at the moment they appear to be in an increasingly strong position. And, longer term, technological innovation may come more from Asia than the US. Put crudely, in the past, the Americans built the technological track to fit their technological rolling stock. In the future the tracks may be built in Asia and, if that is the case, then it seems likely that so will the rolling stock.