The Witan Investment Trust bumped up its position in Amazon in September as one of its underlying portfolio managers looked to capitalise on share price weakness.
During the month, the trust delivered a net asset value total return of -1.9% while the share price total return was -2.2% which managers, Witan CEO Andrew Bell and investment director James Hart, said was broadly in line with the benchmark – a composite of 85% MSCI All Country World index and 15% MSCI UK IMI index.
Bell and Hart noted in the latest factsheet that equity markets ended the third quarter of 2021 in a “downbeat mood” owing to fears of higher inflation. Meanwhile, bond yields rose sharply at the end of the month, while energy prices spiked and the UK experienced fuel delivery issues amid concerns over shortages in other goods and services ranging from semi-conductors to labour to wind.
The trust uses a multi-manager approach with the portfolio run by 11 underlying managers and one ETF. Bell and Hart said one of the underlying managers added to Amazon during the month as relative share price weakness provided a more attractive entry point. It was the portfolio’s top purchase during the month at £17.1m.
Elsewhere, WestRock, a US-based paper and packaging manufacturer, was added to the portfolio, identified by the manager in question as “specifically addressing the structural shift to more sustainable packaging and a drive to cut the use of plastics in food and retail packaging”.
In addition, US life sciences company, Repligen, was added. This, the Witan team said, is a pure play on the secular growth of biologics which is being driven by demographic trends, innovation in drug development and advances in personalised medicine.
Top sales in the portfolio during the month were the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, Abbott Laboratories, Charter Communications, Rio Tinto, Alphabet and Moody’s.
The underlying managers’ top concerns were inflation, lingering pandemic uncertainty, geopolitics, specifically in China, and evolving growth opportunities from infrastructure, electrification, digitisation and the revolution in medical science, the factsheet said.
In September last year, the portfolio managers ditched a £54m UK equity mandate plus a US equities ETF and handed the resulting $300m (£227.2m) to active US managers as it repositioned the portfolio to become more global.
The latest factsheet showed the portfolio has a 38% weighting in North America, 21% in the UK, 17% in Europe, 7% in Asia, 3% in Japan, and 1% in other. It has a 13% exposure to other investment companies.
The trust is trading on a 7.8% discount to net asset value, according to Association of Investment Companies data.
