Utilico Emerging Markets Share Price (UEM)

Comments from Jacqueline Broers, Co-Fund Manager at UEM on what has driven emerging markets’ outperformance this year as well as what has done best in the portfolio. Read the full AIC article here - https://www.theaic.co.uk/aic/news/press-releases/why-emerging-markets-trusts-are-beating-the-world-this-year

From a recent Times article on UEM...

Should you buy shares in Utilico Emerging Markets trust?

Utilico Emerging Markets Trust (UEM) shares steamed from 200p to 300p between November 2024 and this February, but have been wobbling since then. Should investors be worried? 

The firm has been touted as the ideal vehicle for those who fancy a dabble in notoriously volatile emerging markets, but want to sleep at night. These markets arise in countries experiencing rapid economic growth as they move from “developing” to “developed”. But those transitions have often been punctuated by setbacks violent enough to shake investors.

UEM tries to soothe such worries by concentrating on essential services: water, waste management, electricity grids and toll roads, often government-regulated, with inflation-linked revenue streams. The formula has generally worked; dividends have grown every year for the past decade, thanks to 80 per cent of the portfolio’s holdings paying dividends to the fund.

The South African-born Jillings believes that drastic devaluations are a thing of the past in Brazil, shielded by high interest rates, so UEM can hook into South America’s urbanisation, energy transition, social infrastructure and expanding middle classes. 

But the region is not the only part of the world benefiting from those trends; they apply equally strongly to southeast Asia and other parts of the developing world. So Jillings and his team scour the developing world, applying a bottom-up policy to eyeball the best prospects, although they avoid the volatile Africa and Russia.

“We reduce every opportunity to a common framework so we can compare EV/ebitda [the enterprise multiple] globally,” he says. “If something comes up that looks compelling, we make room for it. If not, we don’t.”

Read the full article here - https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/tempus-utilico-emerging-markets-trust-xr9v9x3t8

In this episode of FocusIR Fireside Chats, we sit down with Charles Jillings, Portfolio Manager of the Utilico Emerging Markets Trust (FTSE 250), to uncover how infrastructure and utilities investments are delivering strong growth, resilient income, and long-term value across emerging markets.

With over 30 years of experience in global financial markets, Charles shares how his team identifies high-quality opportunities, why emerging markets are often misunderstood, and where investors should be looking next.

Watch here > https://youtu.be/xywmCZcmRJo

Moving up from Small Cap to FTSE 250 index.

Should help the share price.

Nav has finally breached 300.

Ibovespa looks like it could push through 160,000 now that some of the US tariffs have been dropped.

The discount has narrowed since Saba's intervention but it deserves to narrow further given the recent performance.