LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - AIM-listed investment trust the North American Income Trust (NAIT) announced on Wednesday that it had slightly outperformed on the Russell 1000 value index, at the same time as dropping on the S&P 500 index.
NAIT posted a return of 0.06% over the six months leading to 31 July, which was "slightly ahead" of the Russell 1000 index return of 0.05%, but underperformed against the S&P 500 average return of 4.5%.

The Edinburgh based firm declared a dividend of 7.5p per share for its second quarter, raising its total dividend for the first half to 15p, marking a 7.1% increase for the period as opposed to the 9.1% increase it posted a year earlier.

Net asset value (NAV) per share was 1,308.3p on 31 July, a 1.15% decrease from its 31 January figure of 1,323.5p.

NAIT, which has a significant interest in both Telus and Cisco Systems, said that although nine of the eleven sectors within the S&P 500 index posting gains over the period, the energy and telecommunication services sectors, recorded negative returns which "significantly underperformed the overall market for the period."

Chairman James Ferguson said, "There has been a wide divergence in returns between various investment styles and sectors, with high growth companies in technology and healthcare having outperformed materially over the past year. Many cash generative companies which pay dividends have been out of favour but this sector of the market is becoming more attractive because the risk of higher interest rates has been discounted. We, therefore, believe that this sector is attracting more interest and our manager feels we are well positioned for the future."

As of 1110 BST, shares had dropped just 0.60% to 1,172.43p.

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