Polar Capital Technology reports on 'frustrating' year

Investment trust Polar Capital Technology published a set of lacklustre preliminary results on Tuesday, with its chairman describing the 12 months to the end of April as “frustrating”.

The FTSE 250 firm’s total net assets stood at £801.3m on 30 April, a 1% improvement on a year ago, with net assets per ordinary share also moving 1% higher to 605.51p.

Polar Cap’s price per ordinary share was down 4.4% to 566p, with the discount of ordinary share price to net asset value per share widening to 6.5% from 1.2%.

“It has been a frustrating year in world equity markets, with a protracted sideways movement punctured by severe setbacks of a similar magnitude and duration in both July 2015 and January 2016,” commented chairman Michael Moule.

“The global technology sector performed better than the broader indices for most of our financial year but finished in line with the FTSE World Index after a sharp decline in several of the leading technology stocks in April.”

Moule said the company’s investment team, led by Ben Rogoff, had a challenging year, but he said he was pleased with the 1% increase in net asset value against a decline of 0.1% in the benchmark.

“In local currency terms most markets were down slightly over our financial year, but a 4.7% decline in sterling versus the US dollar provided us with a fortuitous tailwind.

“The seemingly pedestrian performance of the past year should be viewed against the 30.7% increase in our NAV the year before, and our longer term performance versus the benchmark is positive over all periods in the last 6 years,” Moule explained.