Standard Life Equity Income Trust
Accelerating dividend growth
11 July 2018
Aberdeen Standard Equity Income Trust (ASEI) aims to generate a generous level of dividend as well as long-term growth in capital and income. The board has announced that the FY18 dividend will be at least 18.7p, which is +9.4% year-on-year, considerably higher growth than the rate of UK inflation. This increase will mean that SLET’s dividend has grown for 18 consecutive years. Manager Thomas Moore is continuing to find attractively valued companies with positive fundamentals. He is confident that investment performance will improve with a change in investor focus away from high-growth, highly valued stocks, and he will be able to build on the trust’s positive longer-term record. He says the current growth style bias in the UK stock market means that reasonably priced companies delivering strong results are not being rewarded with higher valuations. MORE »
Unconstrained approach to UK equity investing
17 January 2018
Standard Life Equity Income Trust (SLET) has been managed by Thomas Moore since 2011. He aims to generate above-average income and real capital and income growth from a portfolio of UK equities, which is invested across the market cap spectrum. Following an index-agnostic approach, the manager has restructured SLET’s income stream over the past few years and shareholders are now enjoying a higher distribution, with less revenue going into reserves. The board has recently announced a higher than previously forecast final dividend for FY17 and says the annual dividend in FY18 will be at least 5% higher than the FY17 distribution. SLET’s current dividend yield is 3.5%. MORE »
Investment performance back on track
7 August 2017
Standard Life Equity Income Trust (SLET) aims to generate above-average income and real capital and income growth from a relatively concentrated portfolio of c 50-70 UK equities. Since 2011, SLET has been managed by Thomas Moore, who says that the trust’s strong revenue growth is leading to higher dividend growth. The board has indicated that the FY17 annual dividend will be at least 9.1% higher than in FY16. Following a tough period of relative performance surrounding the Brexit vote, as companies with domestic businesses underperformed those with overseas operations, the manager is now more positive on the outlook. SLET’s performance is improving versus both the FTSE All-Share benchmark and its peer group. Moore is placing greater emphasis on higher-growth smaller companies that are reasonably valued and have faster-than-average dividend growth. MORE »
Unconstrained investment in UK equities
30 January 2017
Standard Life Equity Income Trust (SLET) aims to generate above-average income and real growth in capital and income from a portfolio of UK equities across the capitalisation spectrum. At end-December 2016, more than 55% of the portfolio was invested outside of the FTSE 100 index. While the last year has seen a tough period of relative investment performance as a result of outperformance of large-cap companies with overseas earnings, which were not held, SLET continues to have a good long-term track record; it has outperformed the benchmark FTSE All-Share index over both five and 10 years. With the exception of one year of static dividends, SLET’s annual dividend has increased every year since launch. MORE »
Unconstrained approach to income and growth
6 June 2016
Standard Life Equity Income Trust (SLET) is a multi-cap UK portfolio made up of manager Thomas Moore’s 50-70 best ideas for achieving a high and growing income with the potential for capital appreciation. The manager seeks attractively valued stocks with strong earnings and dividend growth potential that may not have been fully appreciated by the market. He currently sees better fundamentals in stocks outside the blue-chip FTSE 100 Index, and the trust has a large weighting (60%+) to smaller and mid-cap stocks as a result. Recent performance has been affected by poor sentiment towards UK domestic stocks in the run-up to the EU referendum; there is potential for this to reverse if, as widely expected, Britain votes to remain in the EU, although a Brexit vote could have the opposite effect. MORE »
Multi-cap portfolio building a strong record
1 October 2015
Standard Life Equity Income Trust (SLET) follows an unconstrained approach to seeking above-average income with real capital and income growth potential. Manager Thomas Moore selects a portfolio of 50-70 UK stocks where dividend growth is backed by earnings growth, strong balance sheets and sensible valuations. Since taking on the fund in late 2011, Moore has changed SLET’s focus from a predominantly large-cap fund to a portfolio tilted to mid-sized and smaller companies, with exposure to AIM stocks as a further differentiating factor from most UK equity income peers. The trust has maintained or grown its dividend every year since launch and ranks second of 21 funds for risk-adjusted NAV total return performance over one and three years. SLET may use gearing of up to 15% and is currently c 11% geared. MORE »
