Your vote counts: investment trust AGMs in September 2022

Kepler Trust Intelligence details the investment trust AGMs taking place next month. 

August tends to be a quiet period for annual general meetings (AGMs), but next month will see a bounce-back as people return to the office, with shareholders starting to make their voices heard again.

Around 40 investment trusts will hold their AGMs in September. As you’d expect from such a large number, those trusts invest in a broad range of asset classes, illustrating the wide variety of opportunities the sector presents to investors.

Some of these have held up well in a volatile 2022. Others have had a tougher time, with the war in Ukraine and inflationary pressures resulting in serious drops in valuations, particularly for growth-oriented stocks that have driven returns for much of the past decade. With that in mind, here are a few of the trusts holding AGMs next month that we think are likely to be of interest to investors.

Hipgnosis Songs (LSE:SONG)has been a firm favourite for investment trust investors since its launch in 2018. The trust invests in the rights to music catalogues and generates income for shareholders through royalties revenues. It has regularly traded at a premium, but inflationary pressures have led to it trading at nearly 12% discount to its net asset value (NAV). The trust has experienced something of a bounce-back over the past month, potentially as a result of investors believing that interest rates may peak lower than previously expected. If that is to happen, it may result in the trust’s shares recovering their premium rating.

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Invesco Asia (LSE:IAT) invests – unsurprisingly – in companies across Asia. The trust is also trading at a wide discount of close to 14%. That’s in large part because of the lockdowns in China, which have hurt returns for investors in the region. However, IAT’s managers managed to avoid much of the froth in the Chinese market by selling off positions, which they viewed as overheated, prior to some of the more dramatic market falls last year. They’ve since taken some contrarian positions in Chinese stocks, which they believe are now undervalued.

Miton UK Microcap (LSE:MINI)has had a tough few months, largely because small caps have been hit hard by interest rates rising. However, MINI is an interesting trust because manager Gervais Williams has, in many ways, been predicting the sort of macroeconomic events we are seeing today, having written a book about the need to prepare for them several years ago. That is not a guarantee that he will be able to succeed in the current environment, but it is reassuring to know that the manager behind a given trust has been thinking about these dynamics and investing accordingly.

Source: AIC - Association of Investment Companies.