Performance at month end - Ma
Merrill Lynch UK Inv Tst PLC
18 June 2001
MONTHLY PERFORMANCE
MERRILL LYNCH UK INVESTMENT TRUST plc
All information is at 31 May 2001 and unaudited.
Performance at month end with net income reinvested
One month Three months One year Three years Five years
Net asset value -2.5% -2.6% -8.5% -3.2% 52.3%
Share price -1.0% -2.4% 2.8% -13.1% 40.3%
FTSE All-Share Index -1.8% -1.1% -4.6% 7.8% 70.4%
At month end
Net asset value* 1105.21p
Share price 1021.50p
Discount 7.6%
Total assets £195.1m
Net Yield 2.9%
Gearing: 25.4%
Effective gearing of Company 21.9%
Value of debt: £40.0m
Ordinary shares in issue 14,093,562
(There were no share repurchases during the month)
*Includes current year net revenue of 2.69p
UK Sectors % Portfolio
Financials 25.2
Cyclical Services 23.6
Non-Cyclical Consumer Goods 13.8
Resources 11.8
Non-Cyclical Services 11.3
Basic Industries 4.8
General Industrials 3.1
Utilities 3.0
Information Technology 1.4
Net current assets 2.0
Total 100.0
Ten Largest Equity Investments % of Investments
BP Amoco 6.6
GlaxoSmithKline 6.2
Vodafone 5.7
Barclays 5.2
AstraZeneca 5.1
Royal Bank of Scotland 4.6
HSBC 3.4
Shell Transport and Trading Co 2.9
Next 2.1
Amvescap 2.0
Total 43.8
Update commentary
The Trust's NAV underperformed the FTSE All Share Index, falling by 2.5%
during May 2001. The UK stockmarket sold-off slightly during the month, after
a strong April.
The Trust remains slightly underweight in telecoms overall, although we have
recently been adding to British Telecom. Our positioning within this sector
had a positive impact on relative performance in May. We remained underweight
in IT hardware and software shares, which suffered from near term earnings
worries and uncertainty surrounding the prospects for a recovery in technology
and telecoms-related capital expenditure.
The relatively robust outlook for UK consumer demand caused us to maintain our
emphasis on building & construction shares and general retailers, which
continued to perform well. Holdings in Next and Debenhams rose strongly. Also
part of the cyclical theme, mining shares continued to outperform the
stockmarket. The Trust benefited from its position in Lonmin, which was
boosted after announcing strong results.
We believe that the risk of protracted global recession is receding, and
expect the prospects for corporate earnings to improve later this year and
into early 2002. As a result, we are looking to increase our positions in '
growth-orientated' shares. We are overweight media companies where the
stockmarket is nervous about the outlook for spending on advertising. This is
providing some buying opportunities at lower levels in shares such as BSkyB
and Reuters. In our view, selected telecoms shares have become attractively
valued, although expectations of strong supply over coming months means that
the near term outlook remains unclear.
Sources: Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, Standard & Poor's Micropal
Latest information is available by typing www.mlim.co.uk/its on the internet,
'MLIMINDEX' on Reuters, 'MLIM' on Bloomberg or '8800' on Topic 3 (ICV
terminal).
14 June 2001
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