City of London Investment Group plc (LON:CLIG), a leading specialist asset management group offering a range of institutional and retail products investing primarily in closed-end funds, has announced that on a consolidated basis, as at 31 March 2021, FuM were US$11.1 billion (£8.0 billion). This compares with US$11.0 billion (£8.0 billion) as at 31 December 2020. A breakdown by strategy follows:
| FuM ($ million) | Strategy Index | ||||||||
| Mar-21 (estimate) | Dec-20 | % inc/dec | Net Flows | % inc/dec | |||||
| EM | 5,250 | 5,196 | 1% | (127) | MSCI EM Net TR | 2.3% | |||
| KIM | 3,815 | 3,749 | 2% | (7) | Not applicable | ||||
| INTL | 1,734 | 1,700 | 2% | (57) | MSCI ACWI ex US | 3.5% | |||
| OV | 233 | 306 | -24% | (85) | ACWI/Barclays Global Agg | 0.0% | |||
| Other* | 25 | 27 | -6% | (2) | |||||
| 11,057 | 10,978 | (278) | |||||||
* includes Frontier, REIT and seed investments
Strong investment performance across CLIG’s investment strategies was largely a result of good NAV performance.
During the period under review, CLIG flows were negative as clients continued to rebalance following significant equity market gains, with net outflows of circa US$278 million across the Group’s strategies.
With regard to business development, the Group continues to maintain an active pipeline across all of its major products.
Operations
Despite the ongoing restrictions imposed by the COVID -19 pandemic, important progress has been achieved in harmonising the infrastructure of both operating subsidiaries, CLIM and KIM, in the first two quarters of the post-merger period, particularly in the finance and IT areas.
The Group’s income currently accrues at a weighted average rate of approximately 73 basis points of CLIM’s FuM and at approximately 77 basis points of KIM’s FuM, net of third party commissions. “Fixed” costs are c.£1.6 million per month, and accordingly the run-rate for operating profit, before profit-share is approximately £3.3 million per month based upon current FuM and a US$/£ exchange rate of US$1.3783 to £1 as at 31 March 2021.
Dividend
An interim dividend of 11 pence per share was paid on 19 March 2021. The Board will announce the final dividend on Tuesday 13 July 2021 in its pre-close trading update.
