Personal Assets Trust plc (LON:PNL) has announced the Company’s results for the year ended 30 April 2026.
The key points are as follows:
· The Company’s investment policy is to protect and increase (in that order) the value of shareholders’ funds per share over the long term.
· NAV Total Return(1) over the year to 30 April 2026 was 6.3% (2025: 7.5%), with the NAV per share at the period end being 540.84 pence (2025: 515.22 pence).
· Share Price Total Return(1) over the year to 30 April 2026 was 6.2% (2025: 7.4%), with the share price closing the period at 535.00 pence (2025: 511.00 pence).
· The Share Price Discount(1) to the Company’s NAV at 30 April 2026 was 1.1% (2025: 0.8%). Over the year PAT’s shares continued to trade close to NAV under the Company’s discount and premium control policy.
· Four interim dividends of 1.4 pence per Ordinary share have been paid to shareholders during the year (2025: four interim dividends of 1.4 pence). It is the Board’s intention, barring unforeseen circumstances, that a first interim dividend for the year ended 30 April 2027 of 1.4 pence per Ordinary share will be paid in July 2026.
· During the year, the Company continued to maintain a high level of liquidity. At 30 April 2026, liquidity was 54.8%. This included 30.6% in UK Gilts, UK index-linked bonds, UK cash, overseas cash, and net current assets and 24.2% in various classes of non-equity risk assets: 15.0% in US TIPS and 9.2% in Gold Bullion. This compared to holdings as at 30 April 2025 of 21.8% in UK Gilts, UK index-linked bonds, UK cash, overseas cash, and net current assets and 41.5% in various classes of non-equity risk assets: 26.7% in US TIPS, 4.0% in US Treasuries and 10.8% in Gold Bullion.
Performance
Total Returns to 30 April 2026
| 1 year | 3 years | 5 years | 10 years | Since 1990 | |
| Share Price Total Return(1) | 6.2% | 16.3% | 21.9% | 65.0% | 2,588.5% |
| NAV Total Return(1) | 6.3% | 17.5% | 24.7% | 69.3% | 1,663.9% |
| FTSE All-Share Index Total Return | 25.2% | 44.7% | 66.9% | 133.5% | 1,829.8% |
| CPI | 2.8% | 8.8% | 29.0% | 41.7% | 157.4% |
Source: Lipper, LSEG Datastream
(1) Alternative Performance Measure. Please see the Annual Report for a glossary of terms and definitions
The Chairman, Iain Ferguson, said:
Our world remains unpredictable, uncertain and volatile.
Internationally, President Trump has continued to dominate the world economic and geo-political agenda, moving on from tariffs to territorial ambitions, from encouraging regime change to direct action in Iran. The tectonic plates of international relations are moving quickly, and long-standing Western relationships and alliances are struggling to cope with the emerging reality of relying less on the US and becoming more self-sufficient for their own defence. The economic shock waves from the Iran conflict are very real and will persist well beyond resolution of the conflict and the reopening of The Straits of Hormuz. Sadly, the war in Ukraine also continues, now in its fifth year and with the peace process proving to be intractable. We have to hope that Presidents Trump and Putin have learnt the lesson that wars are easier to start than to conclude.
Domestically, our current government has gone from winning a “landslide” majority in July 2024, to being deeply unpopular and with the Prime Minister facing potential challenges to his leadership. The cost-of-living pressures, increasing size of the state and scale of government borrowing requirement are real and there are tough decisions ahead for whoever is leading our country.
This is the context in which we seek to deliver our core investment proposition, which is to protect and increase (in that order) the value of shareholders’ funds per share (also known as net asset value (‘NAV’) per share), over the long term. All the Personal Assets Trust plc (‘PAT’) Directors and our Investment Managers at Troy Asset Management Limited (‘Troy’), Sebastian Lyon and Charlotte Yonge, are shareholders in PAT. As such, we are all strongly aligned and are advocates for this investment proposition. As PAT Directors, we have a close, but also independent, relationship with the Troy team, bringing our collective experience to complement, inform, challenge and support.
We track the performance of the Company from 1990. Since then, the NAV total return has grown at an annual compound rate of 8.1% and the share price total return at 9.6%. This compares to 2.8% for the UK Consumer Price Index and 8.6% for the FTSE All-Share Index (total return), our two main comparators. From 1 May 2026, the performance comparator RPI was formally transitioned to CPI. We have also given this measure greater prominence and will present it alongside the FTSE All-Share Index in future reporting. This change follows discussions with shareholders, who consider CPI an important benchmark against which to assess the Company’s performance. Further detail on the rationale for this decision is provided in the Strategic Report on page 17 of the Annual Report. We also track the degree of risk experienced in achieving our financial performance. The results are tabulated in the Key Features section on page 3 of the Annual Report and the volatility experienced is indicated on the chart on page 2 of the Annual Report. Over the last 26 years the Company has been less volatile than the FTSE All-Share Index but more volatile than CPI. Our positioning between these two comparators is as anticipated given the Company’s policy to protect and increase (in that order) the value of shareholders’ funds per share over the long term. The Investment Manager’s focus remains on the avoidance of permanent capital loss (our preferred definition of risk) and on growing the real value of the Company’s capital over the long run. In their report which follows, Sebastian and Charlotte provide further details of our investment performance.
Discount Management
During the year we bought back 10,389,000 Ordinary shares into Treasury, and issued 5,345,000 Ordinary shares from Treasury, under the Company’s discount control policy, for a net outflow of £25 million. As at 30 April 2026 we had 392,805,200 Ordinary shares in issue, with 81,010,828 Ordinary shares in Treasury. It is the policy of the Company to ensure that, in normal market conditions, its Ordinary shares always trade at or close to NAV and this policy is enshrined in the Articles of Association. It is reassuring to report that since November 1999, when investment trusts were empowered to use capital to buy back shares and hence control the discount to NAV at which their shares trade, the PAT share price has closely tracked the NAV. This has held true both through periods of significant issuance and, as demonstrated in the recent past, through a period of sustained buyback avoiding the major discounts to NAV which have impacted many investment trusts across the wider market.
Dividend
The Company aims to pay as consistent and sustainable a dividend as is compatible with protecting and increasing the value of its shareholders’ funds and maintaining its investment flexibility. The Board remains committed to paying an annual dividend of 5.60p per share in line with this policy.
Board membership
The Board membership has been stable through the year and I am grateful for the continuing commitment and wise counsel of my colleagues. Sharon Brown formally joined the Board as a Director and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee with effect from the conclusion of the 2025 AGM. Sharon brings extensive financial and commercial experience together with contemporary knowledge of investment trusts. As part of our longer-term board succession planning, with effect from 1st May 2026 Robbie Robertson assumed the position of Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee, succeeding Paul Read. This allows for a period of transition before Mr Read’s expected retirement from the Board during 2027.
Review of key service providers
A major part of our oversight of key service providers is to conduct a formal annual review process with Troy. The review process is led by Mandy Clements and includes open discussions with all the PAT Directors and several members of the senior team at Troy. We have all found this to be a positive and helpful exercise. In summary, our relationship with Troy continues to be excellent and we benefit from access to the shared resources and focused support from the wider Troy team. We now hold at least two Board meetings each year in the Troy offices in London which has allowed us to get to know more members of the Troy team and to deepen our relationship on a broader base. We are pleased to confirm that we have agreed a revised management fee structure effective from 1 May 2026 which reduces the fees paid on shareholder funds over £1.5 billion from 0.45% to 0.35%. As our shareholder funds are above £1.5 billion, we believe this continues to position the Company competitively against its peer group. Details of the fee structure are shown on page 13 of the Annual Report. We also pay particular attention to ensuring the competitiveness of our ongoing charges ratio, this was maintained at 0.67% for the year ended 30 April 2026, having reduced from 0.89% in 2013.
We adopt a similar annual review process with Juniper Partners, again led by Mandy Clements. Our relationship with Juniper Partners, which provides our administrative, company secretarial, AIFM and discount control services, continues to be excellent with a very open and supportive culture. Juniper Partners provides a first-class service to the Company and works in close association with Troy to provide a seamless service to the PAT Board and shareholders.
Shareholder engagement
We recognise the continuing evolution of the Company’s shareholder base and the increasing number of investors holding shares through retail platforms who may not have direct access to communications with the Company. This is a challenge which is often discussed by the Board as we seek to improve communication and interaction with investors. We hope that our website (www.patplc.co.uk), our Quarterlies, our Annual and Interim Reports and our monthly Factsheet are providing investors with easy and effective access to information about PAT and we will continue to seek innovative ways of improving our dialogue with shareholders and with potential shareholders. We are encouraged by the positive reaction to the short topical videos featuring Sebastain and Charlotte which are now available on our website.
2026 Annual General Meeting
We are looking forward to holding the AGM at 12 noon on Thursday 16 July 2026 at The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The Investment Manager’s presentation will also be made available on our website following the AGM for those who cannot attend in person. I would encourage all shareholders to submit any questions for the AGM to our Company Secretary by email in advance of the meeting at [email protected] by Monday, 13 July 2026. In the meantime, I wish you all good health and thank you for entrusting your investment to PAT.
Iain Ferguson CBE
Chairman
16 June 2026
The Investment Co-managers, Sebastian Lyon and Charlotte Yonge, said:
Over the year to 30 April 2026, the net asset value total return per share of Personal Assets Trust (‘PAT’) rose by 6.3% while our traditional comparator, the FTSE All-Share Index total return was 25.2%. The UK Consumer Price Index (‘CPI’), which we also use as a comparator (see the inside front cover of this Report and Key Features and Record 1990-2025 on pages 3 and 63 of the Annual Report respectively), rose by 2.8%. The Company’s NAV and share price (thanks to the discount control policy) continued to demonstrate below‑average volatility compared to peers and the stock market.
Our aim is to protect and grow shareholders’ capital over the long term. This period of performance was an uninspiring one for the Company, at a time when stock markets were strong. Our equities in aggregate contributed around a third of the Company’s return (they were up approximately 6% over the period), with gold contributing the bulk of the rest – it was up approximately 41% over the year. This aggregate performance from the equities was comprised of divergent parts, with the Company’s largest holding, Alphabet, rising 140% over the twelve months and new holdings like Hubbell and Canadian National appreciating 42% and 17% respectively. These were in part offset by poor performance from the likes of Diageo and Experian, both down 27% over the period.
The Company’s financial year encompassed considerable change, starting with the continued strong recovery of stock markets in the aftermath of so-called Liberation Day. Beneath the surface of market indices however (which were led higher by defence and financials in the UK and by tech and industrials in the US), there have been strong winners and severe losers. AI has been a persistent and dominant theme, with major casualties from a share price perspective in the software and information services sectors. Investors are grappling with the impact of AI on companies’ terminal values, questioning the sustainability of current rates of growth and profitability. In the same way that during the internet boom and bust 26 years ago investors sought to target businesses that would be disrupted by the web, the market is moving fast to price in unknowable change.
We expect that the noise will continue throughout 2026 as OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX seek to IPO in the coming months. The valuations for these Large Language Model (‘LLM’) companies currently stand at $850bn, $800bn and $1.3tn respectively. Anthropic’s value more than doubled last month, from $380bn. These will rank as the largest IPOs on record and, in order to justify these valuations, we expect that the rapid pace of new releases from the LLM companies to continue unabated. Large, profitable sectors will continue to be targeted as the companies seek to build credible revenue streams to justify the investment. The market, having initially assumed a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ approach, appears to be starting to discriminate when it comes to the so-called ‘AI losers’. London Stock Exchange Group (‘LSEG’), for example, has rallied strongly from its February lows as the market appreciates the value in its proprietary datasets, which AI will struggle to replicate.
Meanwhile, the war with Iran provided the fourth material supply shock for the global economy this decade, following the pandemic in 2020, the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and tariffs in 2025. Central banks struggling to reach their inflation targets are today facing the spectre of stagflation once again. This is confirmation, if it were needed, that the 2020s are proving a more inflationary decade than the 2010s. The month of March in particular was a difficult month for a raft of companies facing higher input cost inflation. These included some of the consumer staples companies owned in the portfolio. Bond yields on both sides of the Atlantic have risen, with the UK 10-year yield breaching the 5% level for the first time since 2008. As investors will know, we own predominantly index-linked securities with modest duration for precisely the reason that we want inflation protection but do not want exposure to duration if expectations for interest rates rise.
March was also a challenging month for the gold price, which declined as investors and central banks sold to access liquidity, and in response to higher bond yields. At the end of January, we reduced the gold holding in PAT from 14% to 10% when the price reached over $5,100. Whilst we remain bullish long term on gold and expect continued demand as both investors and central banks move away from the dollar, we are also conscious of how fast it had appreciated, and how exuberant some of the purchasing behaviour was becoming. We are, as such, unsurprised by its recent setback.
In 2025, in the expectation of sustained US dollar weakness, we decided to begin a holding (~10%) in yen through the purchase of short-dated Japanese Government Bonds, a first for the Company. Thus far, the yen has modestly depreciated, but this does not unduly concern us because we expect it to strengthen when other assets, such as equities, are weak. The Japanese currency is the cheapest it has been for four decades and the dollar has risen by 55% against the yen since 2020, moving well away from purchasing power parity. We believe the holding will provide us with good diversification and an offset, should stock markets become more risk averse. The volume of yen-denominated borrowings allocated to global risk assets continues to be substantial. BCA Research estimates that total yen claims in overseas financial centres amount to approximately $650 billion. This has meant historically that investors will tend to repatriate their borrowings back into yen during crises, leading the currency to strengthen. There is also the fact that the weak yen is problematic for the domestic economy. The Japanese consumer is already battling with a cost-of-living crisis that is being exacerbated by the weak currency. There is growing political impetus to address the problem.
In terms of portfolio activity, we have made a handful of additions to the portfolio and sold a few holdings where prospective returns looked poor. In addition to LSEG, we added both Hubbell and Alcon to the portfolio last year. Alcon is the largest eye care device company in the world with its surgical and vision care products (contact lenses and lens care products) touching the lives of people in over 140 countries with conditions such as cataracts or glaucoma. Following a de-rating in the shares, we started a modest holding. Hubbell is the leading US manufacturer of essential infrastructure components for electric utilities, offering the broadest and most reliable product portfolio in the industry. Its solutions are critical to the safe and uninterrupted operation of the power grid, with a low relative cost compared to the high risk of failure, making them indispensable to utility customers who prioritise quality and resilience. Founded in 1888, Hubbell has a long track record of superior value creation, compounding total shareholder returns at approximately 15% annually over the past 20 years, well ahead of the S&P 500. Three companies were sold from the portfolio during the period: American Express, Moody’s and LVMH.
Markets appear remarkably complacent about the threats posed from the conflict in the Gulf. With energy reserves running low, the world’s economy is running on fumes. The impact of lost oil output is yet to be felt. If the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened soon, the tail risk of a stagflationary outcome may become an inevitability. GDP cannot grow without energy. Meanwhile, stretched government balance sheets provide minimal slack for more stimulative handouts (and such measures risk further fanning the flames of inflation). With all this in mind, the Company exits its financial year with 36% of the portfolio in equities, 30% in index-linked bonds, 9% in gold and the rest in liquidity, including the Japanese yen. This is defensive positioning at a time when markets are making new all-time highs. As opportunities emerge, we will continue to add selectively to risk when we are paid to take it.
Sebastian Lyon and Charlotte Yonge
Troy Asset Management Limited
