Ann: Half Yearly Report and Accounts, page-2

The fiveyear absolute return remained in excess of 8% per annum compound and has beenachieved with a fair degree of built in protection along the way. The Company’s long-term (since inception) return of 12.02% per annum was approximately 63% greater than the MSCI return of 7.38% over the last 25 and a half years.

Asillustrated in the Financial Information Summary, the Company has anoutstanding record of delivering absolute returns, largely as a consequence of containinglosses during market downturns. Over all rolling five-year periods,commencing each month since inception, the Company has achieved positivereturns far more frequently than the MSCI and with many more periods exceedinga compound return of 8% per annum. Moreover, the Company has recordedconsiderably fewer negative return periods and much smaller losses whennegative returns did occur, compared to the MSCI.

With regards to outlook, the Investment Manager reports that “…after such a strong year in the markets, an elementof caution is warranted in the short term. Having said that, we remaincomfortable with our portfolio positioning. Current valuations continue toremain attractive in comparison with market averages, and our quantitative andqualitative assessments lead us to believe that our portfolio is moreprofitable and faster growing than the global universe of stocks that wecover.”

Since 31 December 2019, the Investment Manager has commented with respect to the coronavirus that “Currently, it is hard toestimate the likely duration, scale and impact of the coronavirus and wecontinue to monitor this issue.”