(Alliance News) - Artemis Alpha Trust said on Wednesday that it underperformed against its benchmark index in its recently ended financial year.
In the financial year ended April 30, the trust record a net asset value total return of negative 8.6%, outperformed by last year's positive return of 11%. It was also beaten by the FTSE All-Share benchmark of 2.6%.
It's share price return was negative 8.9%, falling sharply from last year's 13.2%.
Its net asset value per share also dipped to 354.47 pence, in financial 2018 it had a value of 394.62p per share.
It had a total investment income of GBP3.3 million with pretax profit for the year at GBP2.8 million. Last year it a total investment income of GBP3.3 million and a pretax profit of GBP14.9 million.
Artemis said unquoted investments played a part in the results, "detracting 5.5% from our performance". This year it reduced its exposure to unquoted investments to 9% from 22% last year.
The trust also said that its decision to invest in companies "sensitive to the UK economy" also detracted 2.7%, due to Brexit uncertainty.
The company paid an first dividend of 2.00p per share for financial 2019 in January and has proposed a final dividend of 3.00p per share. Excluding special dividends, it is larger than financial 2018's total of 4.75p per share.
Last year however, the company paid an extra 1.60p per share special dividend, the proposed sum this year is 0.5p per share.
Shares in the company were 0.8% up at 287.86 pence each in London on Friday midday.
Artemis Alpha (ATS)