December was another decent month for performance; this brings to an end a strong year for the Trust’s performance on both an absolute and a relative basis.

Our performance in December was driven by the outperformance of a few key positions. Delivery Hero, a recent initiation for us in the food delivery space, contributed strongly after announcing a deal in the South Korean market that should enable the company to move from heavy losses to healthy profit in the region. Bawag, the Austrian bank, had a solid end to the year following a successful share buyback which removed the overhang of one of their original private equity owners who had been selling their position. SIG, the Swiss aseptic packaging business, has delivery solid results in their first full year since IPO and this has been rewarded by a solid share price performance and valuation rerating, especially in the second half of 2019.

During the month, we initiated new positions in Delivery Hero and Moncler. We see Delivery Hero as being the best business model in the very attractive food delivery industry. Based on consumer trends and the company’s well invested, hybrid business model; we believe Delivery Hero is well placed to succeed in the longer term. Moncler is a business that we have long admired; they consistently invest for the long term health of their brand, have excellent financial characteristics and have recently attracted publically-declared interest from Kering which provides some short term optionality.

We are confident in our positioning and will continue to retain balance in our exposures by considering two types of business for investment; those where we see high and sustainable returns that are undervalued by the market and those companies where we can see a material improvement in medium term business prospects.