Perpetual Income and Growth fails to light up

The performance of the Perpetual Income and Growth Investment Trust trailed that of the FTSE Akk-Share index in the final quarter of 2011.

Net asset value on a total return basis (which includes dividend pay-outs) rose 5.6% in the three months to the end of the year, according to calculations by financial information provider Datastream. Over the same period the total return of the All-Share was 8.4%.

All investment trusts like to stress the longer term picture, however, and here the Datastream numbers do the investment manager of Perpetual Income and Growth a lot more favours: over one year the total return is +4.7% (All-Share -3.5%; over three years +45.2% (All-Share +43.9%) and over five years +15.8% (All-Share 6.2%).

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Total gross assets at the end of the year stood at £649.9m, and borrowings totalled £96.9m. The trust was fully invested at the end of the year, carryng minimal cash.

Cum (with) income net asset value per share stood at 256.1p at the end of 2011, a 1.21% premium to the mid-market share price of 253p; it is not unheard of, but fairly unusual, for investment trusts to trade at a premium to net asset value.

Year-end gearing stood at 18%. The gearing figure reflects the amount of net borrowings invested, i.e. borrowings

less cash and UK government bonds. It is based on net borrowings as a percentage of shareholders' funds.

A list of the company's top ten holdings show it heavily invested in tobacco companies, with Reynolds American, Imperal Tobacco and British American Tobacco the biggest, second biggest and fourth biggest holdings.