The Sceptre UK Fund was up by 3.3% in November compared to a 0.7% decline in the FT All Share index. This brings the fund to being up by over 20% (before fees) YTD and by almost 17% net of all fees – compared to the index being up by 9.6% YTD

	Period YTD Trailing 12 mnth * Gross Net Gross Net Sceptre UK Fund 20.8% 16.9% 30.1% 24.1% FT All-share 9.6% - 13.8% -

The month was busy on the trading front with us adding to our new holding from October and also being able to add two new positions to the portfolio in November. It is unusual for us to find 3 new candidates for the fund within such a short space of time but we have been watching these stocks as the overall market has risen this year, whilst they have been left behind and, in 2 cases, declined in share price terms. The new holding from October is a technology stock in a growth market which is capitalised at £140m and has £16m of net cash on its balance sheet. Our new holdings from November are a specialist distributor with a £180m market cap, £38m net cash and £14m of free cashflow and a specialist bank with a £400m market cap. and £42m of after tax earnings. Both these businesses have grown at historically high rates (>10% pa over the last 6years) through a combination of organic and astute allocation of capital to acquisitions and have averaged greater than 20% ROCE each year over the same period.

We sold a large portion of our holding in one of our top 5 names which we have owned for over 18 months as the market has finally recognised the value of the property assets that the company has owned for many years but held at “conservative” valuations on its balance sheet. We also sold the total holding of a marketing services company which we had owned for 18 months for an annualised return of about 17%.

The fund has ended the month with a 5% cash weighting and 16 stocks.

Chris Broadhurst
CEO