RIT Capital Partners Regulatory News (RCP)

6 March 2014

RIT Capital Partners plc

Results for the year ending 31 December 2013

RIT Capital Partners plc today published its results for the year ending 31 December 2013.

Financial Highlights for the year ending 31 December 2013

· Growth in net assets of £343 million (before distributions)

· Total net assets now stand at £2,146 million, a new all-time high

· Net asset value per share (NAV) 1,384 pence

· NAV total return of 18.6%

· Share price total return of 14.0%

Performance Highlights

· Quoted equity book performed well with a focus on US cyclicality and increased Japan exposure

· Consolidation of external funds book contributed to performance

· Four external managers seeded over the past eighteen months, delivering enhanced economics and enriched market insight

· Foreign exchange allocation contributed to gains

· Since inception, RIT has now participated in 70% of market upside but only 38% of market declines

Dividends

· Dividends paid in April and October 2013 totalling 28 pence per share

· Board intends to pay dividends of 29.4 pence, 14.7 pence per share in April 2014 and 14.7 pence per share in October 2014. This represents an increase of 5% over the previous year

Commenting, Lord Rothschild, Chairman of RIT Capital Partners plc, said;

"As market conditions have become more volatile, I am increasingly satisfied with the progress which your Company made during the year under review.

The Company's total net assets increased by £343 million (before dividends and buy-backs of £44 million) to end the year at £2,146 million, a new all-time high. Our 2013 performance combined appropriate levels of caution with a significant participation in stock market increases. We did not forsake our focus on long-term growth and for this our shareholders have rewarded us with their loyalty.

With the world recovery still fragile and reliant to a large extent on policy support, it is not hard to envisage markets having to deal with shocks in the coming year."

Please click here to view the Company's Report and Accounts:

http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/6373B_-2014-3-5.pdf 

ENQUIRIES:

Brunswick Group LLP:

Tom Burns / Ben Fry 020 7404 5959

About RIT Capital Partners plc:

RIT Capital Partners plc is an investment trust listed on the London Stock Exchange with net assets of over £2 billion. It is chaired by Lord Rothschild, whose family interests retain a significant holding. www.ritcap.com

FINANCIAL SUMMARY

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

1: We have adopted RPI plus 3.0% as a key performance indicator.

2: The MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) we have adopted is a total return index and is based on 50% of the ACWI measured in Sterling and 50% measured in local currencies.

CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT

As market conditions have become more volatile, I am increasingly satisfied with the progress which your Company made during the year under review. The net asset value per share (NAV) increased from 1,191 pence to 1,384 pence, representing a total return of 18.6%. Total net assets increased by £343 million (before dividends and buy-backs of £44 million) to £2,146 million, a new all-time high.

Our shareholders expect a clear and consistent approach. At the heart of this approach, rests its commitment to the preservation of shareholders' capital, which remains our highest priority taking precedence over tactical manoeuvres based on short-term returns. Our 2013 performance combined appropriate levels of caution with a significant participation in stock market increases. We did not forsake our focus on long-term growth and for this our shareholders have rewarded us with their loyalty.

In 2013 we identified a number of key themes which helped to produce a strong performance in our quoted equity book. Our continued focus on the US and increased allocation to Japan were rewarded as these were the two strongest of the major stock markets in 2013. Investment in technology also proved to be a fertile area through direct stock selections as well as specialist money managers.

External funds performed strongly as we consolidated our relationships into a reduced number of money managers, whose skills we believe will deliver strong performance in the years ahead. For many years now, RIT has sought to identify and support emerging talent. We have seeded four different managers in the past 18 months, specialising in technology, financials, distressed debt and most recently Japanese equities. In addition to being good performers in their own right, these relationships typically come with enhanced economics, as well as enriching our market insights.

We have been active in managing our currency exposure, initially capitalising on Sterling's weakness by bringing our exposure to minimal levels, only to increase these levels materially when we saw early signs of a UK revival. We concentrated the vast majority of our non-Sterling exposure into the US Dollar, and therefore avoided the fallout that 'tapering' induced on many of the emerging market currencies.

Our direct private investment portfolio and the externally managed private funds gave modest financial returns during the year. As I have drawn attention to in the past, such investments should be assessed over a long time frame. A good example of this is Paypoint, where we sold our remaining shares for a 30% return during 2013. However the full story dates back to our initial £3 million investment in 1999 into what was then a private and problematic company. The company obtained a stock market listing in 2004 and, over its full life, has produced a return of 15 times our investment with an IRR of almost 29% per annum.

We have made two sizeable private investments in the past year. The first was in Metron, a promising Norwegian oil and gas services business. The second was our widely reported investment in Williams and Glyn's, the new 'challenger' bank created from the Royal Bank of Scotland. Last year I drew shareholders' attention to the potential of the global relationships which your Company has built. The investment in Williams and Glyn's emerged directly from one of these relationships, as the transaction was led by Corsair Capital, where we are investors in their General Partnership.

The main detractor from our performance during the year was our allocation to gold and gold miners, where the decline in the commodity price resulted in a negative return for our real asset investments. In the current year there has been an improvement in this sector.

As the significant amount of capital invested in low or zero yielding assets looks for alternative homes, the demand for equities has not surprisingly been strong, stimulated by central banks who remain concerned and cautious about removing the 'punchbowl'.

Inevitably higher valuations imply lower margins of safety and consequently the market's vulnerability to shocks is greater. With the world recovery still fragile and reliant to a large extent on policy support, it is not hard to envisage markets having to deal with such shocks in the coming year and indeed they were felt during January. Early in 2014 investors have become increasingly concerned on a number of fronts: these include signs of a slow-down in the Chinese economy, emerging market turmoil in response to the timing of the Federal Reserve's tapering, doubts as to whether 'Abenomics' in Japan will succeed, disappointing recent US economic data and the risk of deflation and economic stagnation in Europe. Lastly it is difficult to forecast with conviction the consequences of the massive money printing experiment of the past few years.

The new year has already displayed further volatility. Our latest reported NAV at the end of January was 1,371 pence. This represents a decline of 0.9% against broader market falls of 3% to 4%, reflecting our somewhat cautious approach. In February however, markets have improved.

Against this backdrop we cannot rely on the upward trajectory of markets to deliver performance. We therefore put even more emphasis on 'high conviction' stock-picking. We take advantage of volatility to create attractive entry levels on our favoured themes, relying on research and our network to identify investment opportunities. We are continuing to manage our currency exposure as a potential source of outperformance.

With interest rates held artificially low, we have also expanded our credit and absolute return strategies to ensure we are both enhancing and diversifying our sources of returns. This initiative is of particular interest at a time when we negotiated £400 million of new borrowing facilities at favourable rates, which we intend to deploy into such strategies. We consider the risk-adjusted returns to be favourable in enabling us to earn a reasonable margin of profit, both in supporting our portfolio returns and helping to offset our costs.

Dividend

We are intending to pay a dividend of 29.4 pence per share in 2014, in two equal payments in April and October. This represents a 5.0% increase over 2013, and we expect to maintain or increase this level in the years ahead, as long as this does not come into conflict with your Company's primary objective of capital preservation and growth.

Board and Management

We continue to strengthen your Board and I am grateful to Directors for the considerable time which they devote to the governance of the Company.

My daughter Hannah joined the Board in August. Her appointment serves to reinforce my family's ties to your Company. In October the Board was further strengthened by the appointment of Mike Wilson, a joint-founder together with myself of St James's Place plc where he served with distinction and success as their CEO.

As we have recently announced, Mike Power has now joined the Board as a non-executive Director. He is a Professor of Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science, an honorary fellow of the Institute of Risk Management and was until recently on the board of St James's Place plc.

We are delighted to have the benefit of these three non-executive Directors and on shareholders' behalf I would like to extend a warm welcome.

We said farewell to James Leigh-Pemberton during the year following his appointment to run UK Financial Investments. James joined the Board in 2004 and we were privileged to have the benefit of his experience and sage advice throughout this time. On behalf of shareholders, the Board and our entire Company, I would like to thank him for his significant contribution.

The executive management of your Company is entrusted to J Rothschild Capital Management (JRCM). We now have a young and well settled team to manage your Company's investments in the years ahead. My colleague Francesco Goedhuis has recently been appointed as Chairman of the Executive Committee. Ron Tabbouche, previously an executive of Global Asset Management (GAM), the company which I co-founded in 1983, is our Investment Director. Finance is managed by Andrew Jones our CFO and Operations by Jonathan Kestenbaum our COO.

This strong and motivated team, with support from our experienced non-executive Directors, permanent capital and global relationships, should stand shareholders in good stead.

Rothschild

5 March 2014

EXTRACT FROM STRATEGIC REPORT

Strategic Aims

Our strategic aims are best illustrated by our Corporate Objective:

"to deliver long-term capital growth, while preserving shareholders' capital; to invest without the constraints of a formal benchmark, but to deliver for shareholders increases in capital value in excess of the relevant indices over time."

We believe this accurately reflects our long-term aim. However we consider a degree of clarification may assist shareholders in understanding what we are trying to achieve for them over time - in particular because we differ from many other trusts who aim to be fully invested in equities.

The most important aspect of our objective is long term capital growth while preserving shareholders' capital. We believe that investors entrusting us with their hard-earned capital should consider us as a core feature of a multi-generational wealth creation approach. The essence of our investing DNA is about protecting and enhancing families' wealth.

There may be times when we will deliberately place protection of shareholders' funds ahead of growth - as happened during the latter stages of the dot com era and also in the run up to the most recent financial crisis. However we recognise that such 'market timing' is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term.

We believe that our approach of active management of equity exposure, combined with early identification of opportunities and themes across asset classes is more likely to lead to an asymmetric return profile. We would hope to display healthy participation in up markets, and reasonable protection in down markets. Over time, this should allow us to compound ahead of markets throughout the cycles and produce a high quality return.

It is also exactly what we have achieved in the past. Since inception, we have participated in 70% of the market upside but only 38% of the market declines. This has resulted in our NAV per share compounding at 11.7% per annum; a meaningful outperformance of global equity markets.

Investment Approach

These strategic aims are expressed in more practical terms in our Investment Policy:

"to invest in a widely diversified, international portfolio across a range of asset classes, both quoted and unquoted; to allocate part of the portfolio to exceptional managers in order to ensure access to the best external talent available."

It is this policy which guides us as we manage your portfolio. So, while we remain at our core an equity house, we nonetheless have the freedom and the agility to invest your portfolio across multiple asset classes, geographies, industries and currencies. This has been the basis of our successful style over many years - combining thematic investing with individual securities; and private investments with public stocks. The long-term success of your Company has been drawn from a distinctive blend of individual stocks, private investments, equity funds, currency positioning and a strong macro-economic overlay.

We believe the extent of our global reach and network of contacts allows us to maximise our ability to deploy capital wisely. We seek to achieve an optimum blend of the skills of an in-house team focusing on the broad macro-economic outlook, stocks and private investments with the best external managers.

The long-term nature of our aims and approach allows us to be patient. For example, in relation to private investments, we are not constrained by the typical industry model of a limited life partnership. This means we can hold such investments over the long term and choose to exit at the optimum time. In addition, we aim to avoid being forced sellers of stocks if we are comfortable with their underlying fundamentals.

Net Assets and exposure by Category

Note: Exposure reflects notional exposure through derivatives and adjustments for derivatives/liquidity held by managers.

Net Assets by Geography

Note: Includes long and short exposure via index futures

CURRENCY EXPOSURE OF NET ASSETS

Consolidated Income Statement

The total column of this statement represents the Group's Consolidated Income Statement, prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The supplementary revenue and capital columns are both prepared under guidance published by the Association of Investment Companies. All items in the above statement derive from continuing operations.

Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income

The amounts included above are net of tax where applicable.

Consolidated Income Statement

The total column of this statement represents the Group's Consolidated Income Statement, prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The supplementary revenue and capital columns are both prepared under guidance published by the Association of Investment Companies. All items in the above statement derive from continuing operations.

Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income

The amounts included above are net of tax where applicable.

Consolidated balance sheet

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY

CONSOLIDATED CASH FLOW STATEMENT

1: Shares are disclosed in 'Own shares reserve' on the consolidated balance sheet.

DIVIDEND

The above amounts were paid as distributions to equity holders of the Company in the relevant periods. The Directors proposed a final dividend of 8.0p in respect of year ended 31 March 2012 and an interim dividend of 20.0p in respect of the period ended 31 December 2012 on 26 July 2012. Following approval at the AGM these amounts were paid on 24 August 2012.

On 6 March 2013 the Board declared a first interim dividend of 14.0p per share in respect of the year ended 31 December 2013 that was paid on 26 April 2013. A second interim dividend of 14.0p per share was declared by the Board on 15 August 2013 and paid on 18 October 2013.

The Board declares the payment of a first interim dividend of 14.7p per share in respect of the year ended 31 December 2014. This will be paid on 29 April 2014 to shareholders on the register on 4 April 2014.

EARNINGS/(LOSS) PER ORDINARY SHARE - BASIC AND DILUTED

The basic earnings per ordinary share for the year ended 31 December 2013 is based on the profit of £339.9 million (period ended 31 December 2012: loss of £45.6 million) and the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during the year of 154.9 million (period ended 31 December 2012: 154.2 million). The weighted average number of shares is adjusted for shares held in the EBT in accordance with IAS 33.

The diluted earnings per ordinary share for the year ended 31 December 2013 (period ended 31 December 2012) is based on the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during the year adjusted for the weighted average dilutive effect of SARs awards at the average market price for the year ended 31 December 2013 (period ended 31 December 2012).

NET ASSET VALUE PER ORDINARY SHARE - BASIC AND DILUTED

Net asset value per ordinary share is based on the following data:

It is the intention of the Group to settle all SAR exercises using the ordinary shares of the Company.

BASIS OF PRESENTATION

The financial information for the year ended 31 December 2013 has been extracted from the statutory accounts for that year. The auditor's report on these accounts was unqualified and did not contain a statement under either Section 498(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006. The statutory accounts will be delivered to the Registrar of Companies following the Company's Annual General Meeting.

The financial information for the nine month period ended 31 December 2012 has been extracted from the statutory accounts for that period which have been delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The auditor's report on these accounts was unqualified and did not contain a statement under either Section 498(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006.

REPORT AND ACCOUNTS

The full statutory accounts are available to be viewed or downloaded from the Company's website at www.ritcap.com. Neither the contents of the Company's website nor the contents of any website accessible from the Company's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of this announcement.