Wouldn’t you love to get a 67% profit in just 12 months, and 435% in five years? That’s what investors in Liontrust Asset Management (LSE: LIO) have achieved, with another solid set of results pushing the share price up to 465p as I write.
Actually, it’s better than that, as the fund manager’s progressive dividend has reached 15p, for a yield of 3.2% on the current price. Liontrust is a great example of the power of a progressive dividend. Had you bought the shares in 2012 you’d have had no dividend at all that year, but you’d have effectively locked in a 2017 yield of 17% on the 86p price you’d have paid at the time — and forecasts suggest further inflation-busting rises to come.
Great track record
The company revealed a 15% rise in revenue to £51m, with adjusted pre-tax profit up 18% to £17.2m. Assets under management are soaring — up 36% over the year to £6.5bn, and the acquisition of Alliance Trust Investments Limited on 1 April added a further £2.5bn to that. Actual net inflows over the year amounted to £482m, up from £255m the year before, making it seven years of net inflows in a row.
Looking forward, analysts are predicting a further 21% rise in EPS for the coming year, putting the shares on a forward P/E of around 12.5 and a PEG as low as 0.6. With further progress forecast for the year after, including a dividend rising to a yield of 4.4%, Liontrust still looks good value to me even after its past five years of storming share price performance.
Property reselling
Mountview Estates (LSE: MTVW) is an interesting take on the property market because of its business model. It buys tenanted residential property when it can get it for a big discount and sells it on when it becomes vacant — and that’s something I’d expect to be less sensitive to the short-term direction of property prices.
The shares have trebled in value over the past five years, even though they’ve pretty much flatlined since early 2015. And they’re up today, by 2% to £114.99 apiece, after full-year results came in better than I at least had expected.
Interim figures had shown pre-tax profit dropping by 16% and earnings per share by 15.8%, though to some extent that was due to changes in stamp duty legislation which seriously affected the timing of the firm’s transactions.
And the full year has seen pre-tax profit fall by a relatively mild 7% (and by just 1.9% once investment property revaluation is excluded). Earnings per share fell by 6.4%, with net assets per share up by 7.9%, and the dividend was maintained at 300p per share for a 2.6% yield.
Long-term safety
A couple of factors seriously attract me to this company. I actually like the fact that it can take a very long time for a rental property to become vacant, even though that might seem frustrating, because it reinforces the long-term focus of the business and means there’s little scope for short-term chopping and changing.
That’s supported by the company’s ownership and management too. It’s currently run by a son of a co-founder (with the company stretching back to 1937), and the family retain around half the shares. So there’s really no conflict of interest between owners and managers, seeing as they’re mostly the same folks.
On a P/E of around 12, this looks like a great retirement investment to me.
