(Alliance News) - Alliance Trust PLC on Thursday reported a sharp jump in net asset value and hiked its dividend in line with its progressive policy.
At June 30, the global equity investment trust's NAV per share stood at 836.80 pence compared to 723.60p at December 31, which represents a 16% jump.
Alliance Trust declared a 6.980p dividend for the half, 3.0% higher than the 6.778p distributed the year before.
The investment trust's NAV total return in the six month period was 16.7%, which matched its benchmark, the MSCI ACWI Total Return.
"I am pleased to report an encouraging period of strong absolute returns to shareholders. Global equity markets rebounded strongly in the first half. Since we appointed Willis Towers Watson, our equity portfolio total return has been 22.2%, outperforming the benchmark, which returned 21.5%. We have also outperformed many of our peers in a challenging period for active managers," said Chair Robert Smith.
Alliance Trust appointed Willis Towers Watson in April 2017.
Smith continued: "With the sale of Alliance Trust Savings having closed in June, we have completed the simplification of the Trust as approved by our shareholders just over two years ago following the strategic review. We now have less than GBP14 million invested outside of global equities and we expect this to be realised by the end of the year."
He added: "We started 2019 expecting there to be increasingly difficult global economic conditions and continued political uncertainty, and this has proved to be the case. The first half brought significant volatility in the equity market which may well continue. We believe that our diversified, best ideas investment approach means that the trust is well positioned to take advantage of volatile markets, as all our stock pickers have extensive experience of a wide variety of market environments over many years, including both bull and bear markets. We are confident in their abilities to identify the winners and we believe they will deliver attractive investment performance over the long-term."
Shares in Alliance Trust were 0.6% higher in London on Thursday at 824.19 pence each.
