The Witan Pacific Investment Trust (LSE: WPC) tends to be overshadowed by its better-known sister fund, the Witan Investment Trust. Yet the fund “has a solid record from investing in Japan and the stockmarkets of southeast Asia”, says Jeff Prestridge in The Mail on Sunday. It has returned 24.7% over the past three years, compared to a benchmark performance of 19.3%.
That success is down to the way it is managed. The trust aims to provide investors with a balanced portfolio of investments in the Asia Pacific region. It achieves this by farming out the running of the fund’s portfolio to two investment firms with “established records in southeast Asia” – Nomura and Aberdeen, two management houses that “seem to complement each other”.
Nomura is more of an ‘index-hugger’ – its portion of the trust’s assets deliver returns broadly in line with the region’s main market indices. Meanwhile, Aberdeen “adopts a more stock-picking approach”, looking for undervalued companies across the region.
In its latest report, Witan states that it believes Asia is reviving following the earthquake in Japan. The MSCI Japan index has “recovered over half the fall it suffered following the disaster”. The rest of Asia’s markets have “fully recovered and most posted positive returns during April”. In its annual results published last month, the fund announced that it would pay a final dividend of 2.8p per share, an increase of 33% on the previous year. In response to growing dividend payments in the sector, the trust has “adopted a new policy which aims to grow the dividend in real terms” – great news for income investors.
Better yet, at present the trust trades at a 13.6% discount to net asset value, meaning that investors can pick up a basket of Asian equities at a tidy discount to their underlying market value.
Witan Pacific Investment Trust top ten holdings
| Name of holding | % of assets |
|---|---|
| Samsung Electronics | 3.1% |
| Rio Tinto | 2.7% |
| BHP Billiton | 2.2% |
| OCBC | 2.1% |
| Swire Pacific | 2.0% |
| Petrochina | 1.9% |
| Canon | 1.8% |
| Toyota Motor | 1.7% |
| Taiwan Semiconductor | 1.6% |
| Fanuc | 1.6% |