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(Alliance News) - JPMorgan Emerging Markets Investment Trust PLC on Friday reported a rise in net assets over the first half and outperformed its benchmark.
At December 31, the trust's NAV per share stood at 1,111.30 pence compared to 1,075.80p at June 30, which represents a 3.2% growth.
JPMorgan Emerging's net assets grew 2.3% in the six-month period to GBP1.34 billion from GBP1.31 billion.
The trust declared an interim dividend of 5.0 pence, flat on the year before.
As a result, JPMorgan Emerging's total return in the first half was 4.2%, outperforming its benchmark, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which added 2.9% over the same period.
"This continues the company's outstanding record of long term performance, the net asset value and share price having both outperformed the benchmark index over one, two, three, five and ten years to December 31, 2019, and over five years the cumulative return to shareholders is 91.2%, against the benchmark return of 54.7%. I think it is worth re-stating that this sustained, long-term outperformance is a great credit to Austin Forey," Chair Sarah Arkle said.
Forey, the trust's investment manager added: "In spite of plenty of political noise about trade, this was a relatively uneventful period, with few big market events to offer anomalous prices and hence opportunity."
"Nevertheless the companies owned in the company's portfolio continued, in aggregate, to show solid growth in profits, even though corporate earnings in emerging markets as a whole were flat during the year," Forey added.
Forey noted "a few transactions" during the period, in which he increased the trust's exposure to Asia, and specifically China.
"The depth of investment opportunity in China in particular, combined with a level of entrepreneurial activity which is unmatched in other emerging markets, means that we are simply finding more interesting companies to look at there than elsewhere," he said.
Looking ahead, Arkle noted Forey's activist approach of focusing on high growth companies may not always outperform the benchmark index but believes the strategy is a winning one over the long term,
She added: "At the time of writing there are significant uncertainties surrounding the future direction of global economic growth and the potential impact from coronavirus, and the share price has fallen sharply from the highs reached in January 2020. However, your investment manager invests for the long term and believes that emerging markets still provide interesting opportunities to invest in companies with sustainable profit growth on reasonable valuations."
By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com
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