WAM Capital increases dividend
WAM Capital has reported an operating profit after tax of $68.9 million for the full year to 30 June, 2017 and it has increased fully franked dividend to 15 cents per share.
The company also said it achieved strong growth in assets as they grew from $300 million to $1.2 billion, thanks to the performance of the investment portfolio which increased 11.7 per cent for the year.
WAM’s chief investment officer, Chris Scott, said: “The investment performance of 11.7 per cent was achieved with an average 63.9 per cent invested in equities, with the investment portfolio recording a standard deviation of 7.1 per cent against the market’s 9.2 per cent for the year.
“The return on the equity portion of our portfolio was 17.2 per cent and the return on the cash portion of the portfolio was 1.9 per cent for the year.
According to WAM, the five best performing investments in FY2017 were Credit Corp Group, Afterpay Touch Group, Nick Scali, Pinnacle Investment Management Group and Imdex.
The investment team said that the 2018 financial year would see attractive investment opportunities in the Australian equity market.
“In our view, low-risk trading opportunities will continue to present themselves,” Scott said.
“We expect the trend of geopolitical event driven volatility experienced in the 2017 financial year will continue and we are well positioned to take advantage of the resulting equity market mispricing.
“We remain focused on identifying and unlocking value in discounted asset plays, particularly within the listed investment company sector.”
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