Utilico Emerging Markets Trust — High level of optimism about the trust’s future

Utilico Emerging Markets Trust’s (UEM’s) managers, Charles Jillings and Jacqueline Broers at ICM, are very excited about the company’s future in terms of available, attractive investment opportunities. Given high levels of stock market ‘noise’, they feel confident about their strategy of investing in high-quality, cash-generative, emerging market assets for the long term. This approach has proved successful over UEM’s 20-year life, with a 9.2% average annual NAV total return and a track record of considerable outperformance versus the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. The trust has a progressive dividend policy and an above-market dividend yield, while its annual distributions are fully covered by income. There is visible scope for a narrower discount, which would provide additional upside to the trust’s total return potential.