Templeton fund announces special dividend
Australian listed investment company, Templeton Global Growth Fund (TGG), has announced a total shareholder return of 9.6 per cent as at 30 June 2018, with a fully franked ordinary dividend amounting to 4.5 cents per share and a special dividend delivering an additional 3.5 cents per share, also fully franked.
The benefit of listed investment company (LIC) capital gains of eight cents per share over both dividends to eligible shareholders was a key highlight of the result, TGG said.
The board said that with a pre-tax discount to net tangible assets of around eight per cent, TGG’s current share price represented a “potentially good buying opportunity for investors” and the board remained committed to narrowing the discount further.
According to TGG’s non-executive chairman, Chris Freeman, the strategy had paid off, resulting in solid numbers, and that the board would continue to focus on improving investor confidence, communications to the market along with an increasing media profile, and a share buy-back program
Looking forward, TGG continued to see investment opportunities for value stocks outside the US.
At the same time, European equities were experiencing their most extreme and sustained underperformance against the US in at least half a century, while the region was trading near its cheapest levels on record relative to the US.
TGG’s portfolio manager, Peter Wilmshurst, said: “We have been identifying value opportunities in Europe, particularly in financial and energy stocks, and both the equity market rally and the economic recovery in Europe remain less mature than in the US, and we believe it has much more room to run.”
“Highly valued growth and momentum stocks look most vulnerable to us in a climate of rising inflation and interest rates.”
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