Mid Wynd Trust - Full Year Results

Mid Wynd International (MWY) is a theme-based global investment trust. The strategy is to hold around 60 - 70 investments comprising between 8 to 10 themes. Current themes include Automation/Robots 14%, Emerging Market Consumer 15%, Tourism 5%, Healthcare & Immunology 17%, Online Services 16%, Low Carbon World 7%, Screen Time 11% and Scientific Equipment 6%.

The management team led by Simon Edelsten have built a portfolio of high-quality holdings which focus on a number of trends which offer the prospect of long term growth.

The shares were added to my ISA portfolio in April 2018 at the price of 474p.

Results

Mid Wynd have this week announced results for the full year to end June 2019 (link via Investegate). This has been another good year with share price total return up 15.2% compared to the All Country World Index 9.7%. Over the past 5 years, net assets have increased by 115%.

I have acquired this trust mainly for growth but it does offer a yield of around 1.0%. The total dividend for the full year will be increased by 5% to 5.83p (2018 5.55p) which is covered by revenues of 6.79p.

3 Yr Chart .. MWY v FTSE All Share
(click to enlarge)

Since acquiring these shares last year, I have written to the managers urging them to include climate as one of their themes and I am pleased to see that they have now made several additions under their Low Carbon theme...including Orsted. So, it obviously pays to ask and I am chuffed!

The managers appear to be climate-aware and avoid coal, fossil fuel stocks and the mining sector which together account for 12% of the global index. This is one of the big problems for ethical investors holding global index funds.

Low-Carbon World

Of course, one of the themes is tourism which is not so climate-friendly and I was pleased to see the managers have reduced exposure from 13% to 5% over the past 12 months. Maybe they will eliminate this theme by next year and build up Low Carbon.

Here's an extract on sustainable investing from their report :

"Over the year a number of investment houses have made much of the sustainability of their investments or of how their funds score on measures of environmental, social and governance factors. As we aim for longer term investment success, we have always included these factors in our selection process. Our interpretation of the factors is based on common sense and real-life situations, rather than any tick list or 'one-size-fits-all' screen. As an example, we think that air travel may remain essential in large Asian countries while the environmental damage of cheap flights may become unacceptable in Europe.

We are not, however, looking to change the world; and nor do we presume to have an ethical code that all would follow. Our aim is to invest in companies which prosper without damaging society or the environment. We believe that this is an aim that we share with our investors and that this perspective is, and has always been, central to the management of a successful Investment Trust".

This is early days for me, just a year and a half in. The share price is currently 595p so a rise of 25% since purchase. Having recently disposed of Scottish Mortgage Trust, I may well look to increase my holding in this trust should there be a dip in the price - which is currently at an all-time high.

But for now, this can return to the bottom drawer.

As ever, this article is merely a record of my personal investment decisions and should not be regarded as an endorsement or recommendation - always DYOR!