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  6. Witan Investment Trust Plc (WTAN)

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WTAN

Witan Investment Trust Plc

230.50
-1.00 (-0.43%)
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Share Name Share Symbol Market Stock Type
Witan Investment Trust Plc WTAN London Ordinary Share
  Price Change Price Change % Share Price Last Trade
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-1.00 -0.43% 230.50 14:09:41
Open Price Low Price High Price Close Price Previous Close
229.00 229.00 231.00 231.50
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Industry Sector
EQUITY INVESTMENT INSTRUMENTS

Witan Investment WTAN Dividends History

Announcement Date Type Currency Dividend Amount Ex Date Record Date Payment Date
07/02/2023InterimGBP0.014518/05/202319/05/202309/06/2023
07/02/2023InterimGBP0.01623/02/202324/02/202317/03/2023
10/02/2022InterimGBP0.01424/11/202225/11/202216/12/2022
10/02/2022InterimGBP0.01425/08/202226/08/202216/09/2022
10/02/2022InterimGBP0.01419/05/202220/05/202210/06/2022
10/02/2022InterimGBP0.015224/02/202225/02/202218/03/2022
09/02/2021InterimGBP0.013618/11/202119/11/202117/12/2021
09/02/2021InterimGBP0.013619/08/202120/08/202117/09/2021
09/02/2021InterimGBP0.013620/05/202121/05/202118/06/2021
09/02/2021InterimGBP0.014325/02/202126/02/202131/03/2021
12/02/2020InterimGBP0.013419/11/202020/11/202018/12/2020
12/02/2020InterimGBP0.013420/08/202021/08/202018/09/2020
12/02/2020InterimGBP0.013421/05/202022/05/202019/06/2020
12/02/2020InterimGBP0.0182527/02/202028/02/202003/04/2020
06/11/2019InterimGBP0.0117521/11/201922/11/201918/12/2019
07/02/2019InterimGBP0.0117521/11/201922/11/201918/12/2019
07/02/2019InterimGBP0.0117522/08/201923/08/201918/09/2019
06/02/2019InterimGBP0.0117530/05/201931/05/201924/06/2019

Top Dividend Posts

Top Posts
Posted at 19/8/2022 10:32 by vacendak
htTps://citywire.com/investment-trust-insider/news/alarm-bells-ring-as-witan-s-record-wanes-in-tough-first-half/a2395031

Now underperforming over 5 years.

More excuses about Ukraine and "not being prepared for it" as if their benchmark was.
The lamest excuse being about the timing of their interim results, with the usual "the second half of the reporting period looks better than the first".

The article mentions that the buybacks are not going anywhere. The discount remains high.

The dividend, while increasing to keep the "dividend hero" tag, is no longer covered (however, the reserves are still strong, so it can go on for a while like this) and WTAN compares badly to its peers.

I would not be surprised if the Board began to make some noise, if not, they should.
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Posted at 24/4/2022 17:12 by vacendak
Well, this is it. I have now sold and fully exited WTAN.
The latest factsheet was egregious in its wording to excuse bad performance.

"Whilst a wide discount (7.9% at the end of March) is
unwelcome, it may offer an opportunity for long-term investors and
affords the Company the opportunity to repurchase shares for the
benefit of our shareholders, who experience an uplift to the NAV of
the shares they hold."

Sorry, but a wide discount in this case it not Mr Market being wrong, it is the fund performing badly and running out of excuses.

As an aside, again in the March factsheet: While they kind of admit having realised that "it might be good to be at least a bit in Oil & Gas now", they are just too late doing so.

However, what took the biscuit was this:
"The other notable purchase was a new investment in the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF, an
Exchange Traded Fund designed to track the performance of an equal-weighted (as opposed to market-cap weighted) index of US biotechnology companies. This index has declined by over 40% since its peak just over a year ago, so appears to present an attractive entry point into a sector whose long-term growth prospects and specialist nature, make it an ideal candidate for inclusion within our Direct Holdings portfolio of specialist funds."

I did not mind their holding of some US tracker after having terminated one of the manager contracts and looking for another to replace them. This was a temporary measure. This one though is an "active" Investment Trust buying "passive" for the long term. So, no thank you, I could put this in my ISA on my own were I inclined to do it. As for the climate change obsession, I could just get one of those green bonds from National Savings instead of paying Witan for the privilege of seeing my money eroded by inflation but "doing good".

For the "Global/low risk/just beat the index" component of my portfolio I will now hold only FCIT (Foreign & Colonial). FCIT is also a piece of history and extremely liquid (offer/spread vanishingly small); while they are also getting a bit annoying with ESG/climate they still seem to ensure that making money is the first order of the day.
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Posted at 17/3/2022 17:11 by vacendak
hTtps://www.witan.com/news/insights/witan-full-year-results-2021/

Another year and another "Sorry we got it wrong again and are still below the benchmark... we had aligned the portfiolio for more growth... blah blah blah... Omicron... Blah blah blah... Putin/Ukraine... Not our fault..."

From the AR: Over the past five years, three of them have been below the benchmark (the last two significantly) and only two above. 2017 was the last time WTAN did its job and beat the benchmark in a decent way.

Put the discount on top of that: The last time there was a premium was 2013. The competition has done better. FCIT (Foreign & Colonial) was issuing treasury shares, enjoying a premium, last year.

Getting pretty annoyed at the moment.
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Posted at 21/11/2021 21:15 by sharesoc
In case you missed our webinar with Witan Investment Trust last month you can watch it here: hTTps://www.sharesoc.org/seminar/sharesoc-webinar-with-witan-investment-trust-wtan-12-october-2021/
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Posted at 09/9/2021 16:55 by octopus6
Useful WTAN info on a new doceo site - doceo.tv/funds/witan
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Posted at 07/9/2021 09:42 by vacendak
Topped up the "boring but safe" part of my portfolio yesterday with a bit of WTAN.
It has acquired a nice little momentum of late, so hopefully it will carry on like that.
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Posted at 06/10/2020 17:34 by vacendak
hTtps://www.edisongroup.com/publication/evolution-towards-a-more-global-portfolio/27922

An Edison report on WTAN.

Sort of optimistic when focusing on the last month and three months.
It is also true that the magnitude of the recent b*ollocksing up of the trust has had a very strong impact on the long term comparison to the benchmark. In other words, until early 2020, the 10 year vs. benchmark was positive.

Not so sure about the so called focus or specialist approach touted near the beginning of the report. This is only about 16% of the portfolio anyway, the rest being the usual mish-mash of global this/global that.

Maybe I am also too negative about it, but the new ESG/Climate change mandate thing is not really appealing: This is an investment trust: Either it makes money or it does not. I am not investing in a feel good factor.
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Posted at 04/9/2020 09:48 by vacendak
Https://www.investegate.co.uk/witan-inv-tst-plc/wtan/new-global-manager-appointments/202009040700030047Y/

The new US managers have been appointed and the poker chips allocated 2:1

$200 mils to WCM
Https://www.wcminvest.com/

$100 mils to Jennison
htTps://www.jennison.com/
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Posted at 02/6/2020 10:36 by vacendak
To his credit Andrew Bell has admitted (I think in one of the videos on the WTAN website) that they got caught with their pants down.
Near the end of last year they bet on "value coming back" and geared up.
Because of the lockdown, it did not go well at all, the newly increased gearing just magnified the mistake.

It sure does not look good right now, but they have admitted being wrong and are doing some reshuffle in the manager stable. So at least they are activelly managing things.

The other Witan trust has also been performing below average for a while now: WPC. This may in the end put into question the multi-manager approach. Maybe cracking the whip a bit more and ask for more sweat from the managers could help.
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Posted at 01/6/2020 18:04 by robow
from Investment Trust Insider

Witan drops Pease, Mitchell & Pzena in big, global revamp
By Gavin Lumsden 01 Jun, 2020 at 17:00

(Update) Witan (WTAN), the £1.5bn multi-manager global investment trust, has dropped three underperforming external fund managers out of its 10-strong lineup as it looks to reverse a 23% drop in its share price that has left the listed fund at the bottom of its sector this year.

The company, whose portfolio of external mandates is overseen by chief executive Andrew Bell (pictured), told investors today it had substantially reduced its allocations to star European fund managers Richard Pease of Crux Asset Management and Stuart Mitchell of SW Mitchell Capital in February.

It said the positions, which had each represented 4.3% of Witan’s assets at the end of last year but were cut to 2% at 30 April, had since been sold and the money redistributed mainly among its existing global fund managers, who include Nick Train, Veritas’ Andy Headley and Lansdowne Partners’ Peter Davies.

New York-based Pzena Investment Management was not a beneficiary of the reshuffle as the global value fund manager, which had been responsible for 12% of Witan’s assets, was also dropped.


This is Witan’s biggest revamp of its fund manager selections since Bell took over the portfolio 10 years ago. Its last major review was in 2017 when Bell and chief investment officer James Hart reduced its global mandates from five to three and gave more money to Pzena.

Although Witan’s reduced panel of external managers retains a mixture of investment styles, in addition to downgrading Europe in the portfolio, the changes also appear to mark a shift towards ‘growth’ investing by the ‘dividend hero’, which has increased shareholder dividends for the past 45 years.

This comes at a time when the 13-year dominance of growth over rival ‘value’ investing has ironically been boosted by the recessionary impact of Covid-19 on the global economy. This has made the small number of companies with intact growth prospects more valuable than ever, while making cheap stocks even cheaper in the stock market crash.

Witan’s annual report in March revealed that Crux, SW Mitchell and Pzena had all underperformed their stock market benchmarks since their appointment up to the end of December.

Pzena, whose Caroline Cai had run a ‘systematic value’ portfolio for Witan since December 2013, had delivered a 10.4% return over six years, behind the 12.4% gain of the FTSE All-World index.

Pease and Mitchell, who were both appointed October 2017, had by the end of 2019 generated total returns of just 2.7% and 1.3%, both behind the 3.4% of the FTSE Europe ex-UK index.

Pease, who founded Crux in 2014 after leaving the then Henderson Global Investors, ran for Witan a concentrated version of the Crux European Special Situations fund he manages with James Milne. It has had a difficult few years, falling 6.3% in the three years to the end of April to rank 87 our of 113 funds in the Europe sector.

Mitchell, a former JO Hambro star fund manager who set up on his own 15 years ago, runs the SWMC European fund which fell 5.5% in the three years to 30 April to stand around half-way down the 180 funds in its sector.

Witan said it sold the £216m held in Pzena investments and reinvested in equity index futures and a US equity exchange-traded fund (ETF) while it searched for a new global fund manager.

It said some of the money switched from Pease and Mitchell had also gone to two of the up-and-coming fund managers it backs within the trust’s direct portfolio managed by Bell and Hart. These are Freddie Lait at Latitude Investment Management, who Witan first invested in two years ago and raised his allocation to £23m last November; and GMO Climate Change Fund, in which it invested £20m a year ago.

Witan viewed both as ‘having strong potential to add value in the medium term’.

The changes follow an overhaul to Witan’s asset allocation benchmark at the start of the year which saw it switch Train’s £180m global mandate from a UK approach.

As part of this Witan cut its target weighting to the UK to 15% and lifted the rest of the world to 85%. In practice, an overlap between the two means the trust is looking to move towards an 19% UK and 81% non-UK split in its assets. At the end of April the UK weighting stood at 22%, down from 30% in December.

In April Bell admitted Witan had been wrong footed by the coronavirus pandemic and had been too bullishly positioned going into the crisis.

This year’s decline has depressed Witan’s long-term returns. Over 10 years it has delivered a total shareholder return of 151%, beating the 80% from the FTSE All-Share but trailing the 184% of the MSCI World index and the 263% average of its AIC Global sector. It also lags the 196% of Alliance Trust (ATST), its closest rival after switching to a multi-manager strategy nearly three years ago.

Witan’s other external managers include Artemis’s Derek Stuart with a UK recovery portfolio, Bevis Comer of Heronbridge with a UK value-growth approach, Yu Zhang of Matthews Asia and Rajiv Jain of emerging markets boutique GVG Partners.

The updated manager weightings will be published with Witan’s latest factsheet next week.
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