The Edinburgh Investment Trust plc
HALF-YEARLY FINANCIAL REPORT
FOR THE SIX MONTHS TO 30 SEPTEMBER 2025
26 November 2025 – The Directors of the Edinburgh Investment Trust plc (“the Company”) have today announced the half year results for the six-month period ended 30 September 2025.
Highlights
- Net asset value (“NAV”) rose by 7.9%
- The share price at the end of the period was 800p (an increase of 8.1% on the 740p at 31 March 2025)
- First interim dividend declared of 7.6p per share, a 10.1% increase on the 6.9p per share dividend paid at the same stage last year
- The Board expects dividends for the full financial year to be 32.0p per share, assuming no material change in market conditions and/or income levels
- The share price discount to NAV narrowed to 7.6% (from 9.4% as at 31 March 2025)
- Since March 2020, when Liontrust began managing the Company’s portfolio, the annualised NAV total return was 15.4% versus 13.1% for the FTSE All-Share Index.
Elisabeth Stheeman, Chair, said: “Since the Company’s year end at 31 March 2025, NAV total return was 7.9% and the share price returned 10.2%. Longer-term performance should be assessed since March 2020 when the team, now led by Imran Sattar, began managing the portfolio. Over these five and a half years, the annualised NAV total return was 15.4% versus 13.1% for the FTSE All-Share Index. It is encouraging to see that the UK’s longer-term equity market returns are increasingly comparable with those of other major markets. Stock markets around the world continue to perform well and your Company is well placed to capitalise on this, being fully invested across a range of high quality businesses.
“A first interim dividend of 7.6p per share has been declared – an increase of 10.1% from the same payment last year. Looking ahead, we have been giving thought to dividend strategy in terms of prevailing income, income growth and underlying company buybacks. We wish to achieve sustainable dividend per share payouts and deliver growth in excess of UK inflation. We expect Edinburgh’s dividends for this financial year as a whole to be 32.0p per share – assuming no material change in market conditions and/or income levels. This represents an attractive share price yield of 4.0%.”
Imran Sattar, Portfolio Manager, said: “We aim to deliver an attractive long-term total return of income growth and capital appreciation. To do this, we apply a flexible investment process to identify businesses with income and growth characteristics, and maintain an open-minded approach, for example, ‘growth’, ‘value’ and ‘recovery’ stocks. Currently the portfolio has 44 well diversified stocks.
“In the six months under review the UK market has enjoyed strong performance with notable strength in banking, mining and defence exposed stocks. We took advantage of some short-term share price weakness by adding to our holdings in Haleon and LSEG. We also introduced new positions in Marshalls and Trainline. We reduced the position in US-listed Verisk. The portfolio’s exposure to non-UK stocks is now 5.5%, the lowest for some years, in the main reflecting the strong supply of attractively priced stocks in the UK.
“We continue to identity many opportunities to invest in high quality businesses in the UK at attractive valuations. We remain focused on bottom-up stock selection and constructing a diversified portfolio over the medium-term, whilst keeping an eye on the macroeconomic outlook.”