Recent Purchases

We've talked consistently about our flexible investment style. And whilst we've had a quality growth bias over the last couple of years and retain a modest quality growth bias, we have found more opportunities in the value part of the equity market, principally through our bottom-up research. And you can see flexibility in action here, with many of the recent purchases in the value part of the market. We've found an interesting opportunity to add to the banks, which included HSBC, but also Lloyds and NatWest at the time of the Iran War, which kicked off at the end of February, beginning of March. And the shares were derated, and we'd been looking for an opportunity, in that provided us a great opportunity. And then below that, you can see purchases of Ibstock, that's the UK brick manufacturer. And then SigmaRoc, the lime materials business. Both examples of businesses in the construction and house building area where volumes have been depressed, and therefore their profits constrained. Now, we see a lot of value in both of those names, as we do in Marshalls, which we also hold. The opportunity is, is that if there's a recovery in house building volumes and construction activity, both of these businesses will benefit very materially in their profit. But over and above that, you're also likely to see a rerating. So, we're very excited about those names, but recognise that construction activity remains constrained today. And then in the data tech area, we found an opportunity to add to Softcat. Softcat is a value-added reseller that helps medium-sized corporates to spend their IT and tech budget. So think about spending on AI, cybersecurity, and cloud services. Now, Softcat has been an incredible success story for the last two decades. It's been a consistent market share winner. But it's got caught up in the crosshairs of AI disruption that we've just talked about. and we found a great opportunity to add to the position back in February at the peak of AI disruption risk. And this is a great example of how fickle the market is around this issue. Last year, Softcat was an incredible business. It's got an incredible track record, and it's very much a loved share by the stock market. And then in February, it gets derated very, very materially, and the stock market doesn't like it, and the shares decline rapidly. But as bottom-up stock pickers, we see that as an opportunity, and so we added to the position. And what we've seen since February is that the shares have bounced over the order of 50 or 60%. And so a great example of how fickle the market is. In February, it was a really bad business and now it's great business again. Opportunity for us as stock pickers. And then we added to BAE Systems, the defence contractor. The sector had been weak. The shares had been week. And we've found a good opportunity to buy some shares in BAE. And then finally to the discussion we had earlier about capital light and capital heavy businesses, we found a good opportunity to add to the position in Shell, the oil major, clearly the high oil price means that this business is generating huge amounts of extra cash flow and capital discipline by the way we've been very impressed with and it remains an attractive holding for the Trust. And lastly Weir, that's the mining equipment and parts business. Again, a great example of a high-quality business. Shares have been weak on the back of modest earnings weakness but we've found a great opportunity to buy an excellent business with an excellent long term future.