JPMorgan European Discovery Plc (LON:JEDT) is a European smaller companies specialist focused on generating capital growth. Over the last year JEDT has delivered strong outperformance of the index and, in 2025, investors have begun to allocate more capital to European equities, helping to add momentum to the wider market. Much of this capital has gone to large-caps and JEDT’s management team argue that small caps remain at historically low valuations compared to European large caps, where valuations have risen above long-term averages.
Since March 2024 JEDT has been under the Management of Jules Bloch, Jack Featherby and Jon Ingram, who have refined and built upon JEDT’s approach, centred around valuation discipline, strong business models and earnings momentum. Performance since then has been strong in absolute and relative terms, with an NAV TR of 26% comfortably ahead of the benchmark’s 19% total return. With the discount narrowing over this period, JEDT’s share price TR has been higher still at 32%. This strong run of performance brings the five-year NAV total return to c. 57% against the benchmark’s 54% and again, a narrowing discount means that the share price TR is higher at 76%.
JEDT’s Discount, c. 7% at the time of writing, has narrowed significantly compared to the five-year average of c. 12%. This coincides with the strong run of performance noted above and a share buyback programme, which has returned £110m to shareholders in 2025. Additionally, JEDT reduced management fees from 0.75% to a tiered 0.70% on the first £300m of net assets, and 0.65% thereafter.
JPMorgan European Discovery’s Gearing has remained relatively constant at c. 6% and while JEDT has seen Dividend increases over the last two years, its 2.2% yield can be viewed as an outcome rather than an objective of the strategy, and investors should not necessarily expect a progressive dividend.
