Boutique funds management groupHunter Hall Investment Managementhas reported an after tax profit of $2.28 million for the six months to December 2001, well ahead of forecasts of $884,000 predicted in the group’s prospectus.
Hunter Hall listed early last year after being heavily oversubscribed to the tune of $10.4 million, well in excess of the target set of $4.5 million.
The report outlining the group’s performance was released this morning by Hunter Hall International chairman Peter Hall and states the group’s shareholders will receive a fully franked dividend of 11 cents, to be paid out at the end of the month.
The profit surge is also reflected in the performance of the group’s premier fund, the Hunter Hall Value Growth Trust, with funds under management reaching $4.5 million higher than forecast and nearly $110 million higher than at December 31, 2000.
The fund underlined this performance by claiming the titles of top performing international trust and the second highest performing trust in Australia over the year to December 31, 2001.
According to Hall, the fund achieved a return of 26.4 per cent after all fees and expenses as compared with the 10.1 per cent return recorded by the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index.
Hall says while the profit figure was strong it was bolstered by a number of non-recurring and irregular items.
One of these was a performance fee of $4.23 million before tax of which half was paid to the investment management team in accordance with the float prospectus dated January 12, 2001.
At the same time, the group also had a number of costs including launching new products and the addition of staff which subtracted from recurring profit from investment management.
Looking forward, Hall says the profits achieved in the six months to December 31, 2001 are also in excess of the prospectus forecast for the year to June 30, 2002 and as such, the group will focus on improving the quality through increasing recurring profits from investment management.
He goes on to say that this can be done through growth in funds under management and that the group was well situated to grow funds from the current level of $271 million towards the prospectus forecast of $316 million by June 30, 2002.
