It was a vintage year for the 2017 portfolio, which racked up a 30.4 per cent total return over the course of the year, and that was after booking some hefty profits along the way. In fact, if you had invested £1,000 in each of the 10 companies you will now have a portfolio worth £13,040, of which £2,820 is in cash. There is potential for further investment upside too.
Conygar Investment Company PLC (LON:CIC)
There is undoubtedly value on offer in the Aim-traded shares of property vulture fund Conygar, which trade on a 22 per cent discount to the company’s last reported NAV of 203p.
Last year’s £130m disposal of its investment portfolio to Regional REIT (RGL), a property company that owns a £700m-plus portfolio of UK commercial property, predominantly office and industrial units in regional centres outside the M25 motorway, left Conygar’s balance sheet debt-free and with a £37m cash pile available for acquisitions at the end of September 2017. The company also received 26.32m of new shares in Regional Reit as part of the transaction on which it receives annual dividend income of almost £2m, thus covering 75 per cent of its own administration costs. This means the £37m cash pile and the £27m shareholding in Regional Reit account for half of Conygar’s NAV of £136m, giving the board substantial firepower to make opportunistic acquisitions.
