Aberdeen New Thai Investment Trust (LON:ANW) was launched in 1989 and is the only Thailand-focused investment trust listed in London. It aims to deliver a high level of long-term capital growth through investing in a relatively concentrated portfolio of quality companies, following a disciplined bottom-up approach. The Thai equity market has been relatively resilient this year compared to MSCI AC Asia ex Japan (HK:3010) and MSCI Emerging Markets, reflecting Thailand’s solid economic fundamentals. The manager believes Thai companies are particularly well-placed to benefit from the fast-growing neighbouring economies of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, and ANW offers some indirect exposure to these markets. The trust has delivered strong absolute returns over the past 10 years; an annualised NAV total return of 20.5%. Recent returns, however, have lagged the benchmark and the shares have traded at a persistently wide discount to cum-income NAV. In May 2018, the board announced a package of changes to address these issues which, if successful, should support further narrowing of the discount.
Investment strategy: Bottom-up, detailed analysis
The manager follows a disciplined bottom-up approach to find high-quality companies that are well-managed with strong balance sheets, yet are attractively valued. The well-resourced Aberdeen Standard Asian team includes four Bangkok-based investment managers to support an intensive approach involving over 1,000 company meetings each year, and detailed fundamental analysis.
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