Finsbury lines up Games Workshop splurge using merger windfall
Nick Train’s Finsbury Income and Growth fund is preparing to launch a spending spree on Games Workshop shares after pocketing a windfall from a string of acquisitions in its portfolio.
The FTSE 250 investment trust – which can trace its roots back over a century – unveiled plans to use both debt and returns from the takeovers of Schroders and Intertek, in which it was a shareholder, to launch a buying spree of shares in the “fantastic” Warhammer owner.
Speaking at the closed-end fund’s latest shareholder update, co-manager Madeline Wright singled out Games Workshop’s high margins and its major US expansion as helping drive a fresh phase of growth at the group, despite the fact its shares have already more than trebled in the past four years.
“The appetite for this kind of content is huge,” she told investors, adding: “We’re currently building the position, and we’re going to continue to do that with the increased gearing and – depending on the timing – perhaps the cash from the M&A [mergers and acquisitions] as well.”
The move marks a rare episode of portfolio turnover at Finsbury, one of the UK’s largest investment trusts, after two of its longstanding holdings were plucked off the stock market this year. Investment manager Schroders and Intertek have accepted offers from Nuveen and EQT respectively, leaving feted stockpicker Train with a windfall worth tens of millions of pounds.
Games Workshop part of spending spree
Earlier this year the trust also announced plans to borrow considerably more cash in a bid to juice returns and showcase its “conviction” in a portfolio that has turned in several consecutive years of stuttering performance. Finsbury more than tripled its gearing – the term used to describe the amount of debt rolled into a fund or investment – from £29.9m to £100m, leaving the FTSE 250 vehicle with a glut of cash to plough into a “collection of outstanding, in most cases world class, UK-listed companies” in the coming months, it said.
Wright said that as well as dialling up its stake in Games Workshop, in which the trust first invested in autumn last year, Finsbury would use the windfall to top up its holdings in hero investments like the London Stock Exchange Group, Sage and Relx. The group will also initiate holdings in fresh stocks, she added.
Separately, Wright launched a withering assessment of Rathbones’ run-in with the Financial Conduct Authority last month, which saw the FTSE 100 giant forced to suspend £900m worth of inflows.
In what were her fund’s first public remarks since the fiasco, she said: “It’s very disappointing that this has happened. From our perspective, there’s going to be an overhang on the shares and the business.”
“It’s probably important to note that the management team in place now was not the management team that was in place when this happened,” she added. “And that’s important because if that was not the case, we would probably have been speaking to the board about whether new pairs of eyes were needed.”