Mirrabooka Investments Limited, an investor in mid and small cap companies, saw a profit drop to $3.9 million for the six months to December against $5 million last year, due to contribution of the trading and option portfolios which also saw a loss.
According to the company, its short-term portfolio was below its mid and small cap benchmark as the firm had few investments in the resource sector.
The landscape in this period was dominated by two themes: a relatively strong performance of the mid and small cap resources sectors and a rotation by the market out of highly priced mid and small industrial companies, many of which had been priced for perfection, back to larger companies which until recently had underperformed, Mirrabooka said.
At the same time, it confirmed that its longer term performance was still ahead of the benchmark.
During the aforementioned period, the company’s portfolio reduced the number of stocks to 77 from 89 as it concluded that, in some cases, the investment had become too risky or share prices were too high.
Also, Mirrabooka’s buying remained limited and the company said that in its view “there hasn’t been much value on offer”.
Mirrabooka maintained the interim dividend at 3.5 cents per share fully franked, the same as last year and following takeovers and the sale of some positions in the portfolio, the company held cash of $26.2 million at the end of the period, which represented seven per cent of its total portfolio.
Mirrabooka is a listed investment company specialising in investing in small and medium sized companies located within Australia and New Zealand.
