A year that wasn’t terrible — just not S&P 500 good
JPMorgan American Investment Trust PLC’s annual report landed with the kind of vibe you get when your team made the playoffs but got bounced by the Yankees. For FY25, the trust posted a net asset value (NAV) total return of +4.6% in sterling terms, which is fine until you compare it with the S&P 500’s +9.6%. The share price return was even more of a shrug: +0.5%.
The long game still looks solid
Zoom out, though, and the picture gets less gloomy. The trust said its three-year NAV total return was +70.3% and its five-year NAV total return was +99.2%, both ahead of the benchmark. So if you’re the patient type, this wasn’t exactly a disaster — more like a year where the engine kept running, just not at top speed.
Costs down, capital returns doing the heavy lifting
There were a few shareholder-friendly moves tucked into the report:
- The ongoing charges ratio fell to 0.34%, which is the kind of small number investors love because fees are the financial version of termites.
- The company issued 1.4 million shares, raising £16.5 million at a slight premium to NAV.
- It also bought back 10.9 million shares into treasury at a cost of £116.4 million, which provided a modest boost to NAV per share for the folks still holding on.
Dividend gets a little bigger
Income investors also got a nudge in the right direction. The trust proposed a total FY25 dividend of 11.5p per share, up 4.5% from 11.0p last year. That includes an interim dividend already paid in October and a final dividend slated for 29 May 2026, assuming shareholders give it the thumbs-up.
Big picture: JADE’s annual report says the trust can still compound nicely over longer stretches, but in the near term it’s been playing catch-up to a very hot U.S. market. The buybacks and dividend bump help, but the real question for investors is whether the trust can close that benchmark gap without turning into a fee-cutting, capital-returning machine with the personality of a spreadsheet.