Finsbury Growth & Income Trust manager Nick Train says he is looking to deploy cash into “one or two” new holdings due to a gradual increase in the trust’s cash reserves.
In the £1.5bn trust’s latest factsheet for October, he highlighted the strong performance of holdings LSEG and RELX in the month on the back of their respective Q3 updates.
The two companies were the top contributors to the fund’s performance in the month, alongside Burberry.
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Train said the trust would buy more shares in both if it could, but had to sell shares into rising prices as the holdings are close to the maximum position size for both companies.
“This is probably a good discipline, but the gradual increase in cash that has resulted makes us keen to initiate a new holding, or two,” Train said.
“There are several attractive candidates and we will look for tactical opportunities to begin. To be clear, all the companies on our watchlist are UK-listed businesses. Perhaps that is no surprise, given this is a UK Equity Strategy, but the continued disappointing performance of the UK stockmarket is certainly throwing up bargains and in world-class UK companies, too.”
In October, the NAV was down 2.0% on a total return basis and the share price was down 1.7%, on a total return basis, while the index was down 1.6%.
Rightmove
Despite detracting from the trust’s performance in October, Train praised Rightmove, saying he was “relieved” the company did not accept the takeover proposal lodged by REA.
The company makes up 5.4% of the Finsbury Growth & Income portfolio.
Rightmove’s share price was down 4.6% throughout October, and the managers took advantage of the dip by adding to their position in the month.
The trust currently trades at a 7.35% discount to its NAV, according to the Association of Investment Companies.
