THE THROGMORTON TRUST PLC
All information is at 31 March 2009 and unaudited.
Performance at month end is calculated on a cum income basis
One Three One Three
Month Months Year Years
Net asset value# 1.3% 3.9% -35.8% -46.5%
Net asset value* 1.3% 3.9% -39.0% -49.2%
Share price 4.0% 2.6% -34.6% -51.5%
HGSC plus AIM (ex Inv Cos) 5.0% 2.9% -41.9% -44.7%
# NAV performance prior to costs of repaying the debentures early
* NAV performance after costs of repaying the debentures early
Sources: BlackRock and Datastream
At month end
Net asset value Capital only: 91.78p
Net asset value incl Income: 99.01p
Share price: 77.50p
Discount to Capital only NAV: 15.6%
Net yield: 2.9%
Total assets: £81.5m *
Gearing: Nil
Ordinary shares in issue pool: 82,351,197 **
* Includes current year revenue.
** Excluding treasury shares.
Ten Largest Sector
Weightings % of Total Assets
Software & Computer Services 12.8
Financial Services 10.7
Support Services 9.7
Aerospace & Defence 7.9
Oil & Gas Producers 7.0
Industrial Engineering 5.3
Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology 4.5
Media 3.4
Technological Hardware & Equipment 3.3
Electronic & Electrical Equipment 3.2
----
Total 67.8
====
Ten Largest Equity Investments (in alphabetical order)
Company^
Brewin Dolphin
Chemring Group
Dechra Pharmaceuticals
Domino Prining Sciences
Fidessa
Rathbone Brothers
Rensburg Sheppards
Rotork
SDL
Ultra Electronics Holdings
^Excludes 4.3% held in BlackRock Institutional Liquidity Units
Commenting on the markets, Mike Prentis and Richard Plackett, representing the
Investment Manager noted:
March was a difficult month with early cyclical recovery stocks outperforming
strongly; these are not the type of stock we typically hold, preferring to
invest in high quality growth stocks. The NAV rose by 1.3% during the month,
well behind the benchmark which rose by 5.0%. In comparison the FTSE 100 Index
rose by 2.5%.
Of our underperformance in March, 1.6% was due to sector allocation in the long
only portfolio. Our significant overweight position in defence stocks cost 0.8%
in relative performance as the market chose to sell this sector which has
performed well over the last year.
Long only stock selection accounted for a similar level of underperformance.
Endace shares continued to react poorly to their warning in February. Umeco
shares were weak on worries it would need to raise equity and given that its
main market is civil aerospace. Core holdings such as Chemring and Connaught
all saw their share prices perform poorly. Each has good revenue visibility or
predictability; we remain happy to hold both on fundamental grounds. One other
contributor to underperformance was a lack of a holding in Venture Production,
a large benchmark constituent, which looks likely to be bid for by Centrica.
On the positive side, in relative terms the best performers were Tepnel Life
Sciences and Pace. Tepnel was subject to a bid from Gen-Probe of the US. Pace
announced very strong 2008 results, and a confident trading outlook which led
to substantial earnings upgrades for 2009.
The long only portfolio remains defensively positioned and underweight in UK
consumer stocks. However, we continue to look for attractively valued, early
cycle recovery stocks with dominant market positions. In this context we bought
0.5% of portfolio positions in 3i Group, Cookson and John Wood Group. We sold
holdings in Beazley, where we had some concerns about its investment portfolio,
Hampson, which is quite highly indebted and does not truly dominate its
markets, and Mitie, which continues to trade well but could suffer as corporate
customers revisit budgets.
As we move into April recovery stocks are continuing to outperform. We suspect
a lot of this is down to shortclosing of crowded trades. Many of the best
performing stocks in our benchmark index only joined it on 1 January 2009 at
the annual rebalancing, having fallen sharply in 2008, and are not typical
smallcaps. We are reviewing these companies to see which, if any, merit a place
in our portfolio.
The CFD portfolio struggled in March for the above reasons; many of the highly
indebted UK consumer facing companies in which we had a short interest actually
performed strongly. We have closed various short positions; the CFD portfolio
is net long and overall exposure to the market (long and CFD portfolio) is
approximately 106%.
Latest information is available by typing www.blackrock.co.uk/its on the
internet, "BLRKINDEX" on Reuters, "BLRK" on Bloomberg or "8800" on Topic 3 (ICV
terminal).
24 April 2009
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