This blog gives you the latest topical news plus some informal comments on them from ShareSoc’s directors and other contributors. These are the personal comments of the authors and not necessarily the considered views of ShareSoc. The writers may hold shares in the companies mentioned. You can add your own comments on the blog posts, but note that ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit comments where they are inappropriate or defamatory.

On-Line AGMs and City of London IT

I mentioned in a previous article the growing concerns about the use of “virtual” Annual General Meetings (AGMs) in the USA. There are not many on-line AGMs yet in the UK but yesterday there was a good example at the City of London Investment Trust (CTY). I actually had to complain to the company last year about the defects when I attempted to attend it on-line rather than in person – it did not work on the day, plus a later recording that was available had all the Q&A part cut out.

This year it was better, but a long way from perfect. Parts of fund manager Job Curtis’s presentation could not be heard. But at least it gave shareholders the opportunity to attend in person, or attend on-line. Questions could be submitted on-line.

Here’s a brief report on the company and the AGM:

The City of London IT is probably the most boring holding in my portfolio. It invests mainly in large cap UK listed companies. Top ten holdings are British American Tobacco, Royal Dutch Shell, HSBC, Diageo, Unilever, Vodafone, Prudential, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds Banking Group and BP, totalling 32% of the portfolio. It’s in the “UK Equity Income” sector for trusts. So you can see it’s not going to be any racehorse as these are quite defensive stocks. However the performance over many years has been good and it tends to outperform its benchmark. Not last year though where it underperformed the benchmark but still managed to achieve a total return of 14.5% (All-Share was up 18.1% for example with growth and smaller cap stocks more in fashion in a buoyant market). The current yield is 3.9%.

Here’s a few comments from fund manager Job Curtis from his presentation who has been with the fund management company (Henderson) for 26 years. He mentioned the fact that dividends have grown every year for more than 50 years. They manage this by keeping some cash back in revenue reserves in good years, which are then used to pay dividends in the bad years.

They use gearing and last year moved up the gearing to 7% by taking advantage of the very low interest rates – they are now borrowing at 2.4% over 32 years. (Note: have mentioned before how astonishing it is that such trusts can borrow at rates lower than inflation and for long periods).

Job Curtis said their on-going charge figure was now 0.42% which is the lowest in the equity income sector.

Positive contributors to performance last year were housebuilders (they hold three – Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley) and pharmaceuticals (Glaxo and AstraZeneca, but they also hold Merck, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis). They also benefited from a below average exposure to oil and gas producers. Detractors from performance were banks, mining companies and a holding in Provident Financial which they have now sold.

There were few questions in the Q&A session (a good indication that shareholders are happy), and you can hear those and the rest of the event by going to this web site: www.janushenderson.com/trustslive .

Certainly this format provides a good approach for those investors who cannot easily get to AGMs, while not prejudicing those who wish to attend in person and chat to the directors. They do need to iron out the technical glitches though.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.