Q&A

Worldwide Healthcare Trust (WWH) is a conventional investment trust giving investors a specialist, actively managed route into the global healthcare sector, and its managers aim to make money for shareholders by generating a high level of capital growth from a diversified portfolio of global healthcare stocks. Gearing and derivative transactions are used to enhance capital returns and mitigate risk. Generally, WWH pays the minimum dividends required to satisfy investment trust rules, as the board prefers capital to be reinvested into the portfolio. The trust is managed by OrbiMed, a global healthcare specialist investor with c US$20bn of assets under management. It was launched in late April 1995 and is traded on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange.

The investment case for Worldwide Healthcare Trust starts with OrbiMed, a global healthcare specialist whose public and private market resources give the managers access to a broad opportunity set and differentiated research. The trust’s long-term strategy favours innovation and growth, particularly through biotechnology, selective emerging markets exposure and the proprietary Biotech M&A Basket. That bias carries risk: in our June 2026 note, over the last decade, a downside capture rate of 111% implies WWH is likely to underperform by a little over 10% when healthcare stocks fall, while an upside capture rate of 99% implies broadly in-line performance when they rise. This reflects the focus on emerging biotech stocks, which have a higher beta than pharma stocks, to which WWH has below-index exposure. WWH is also exposed to political and regulatory risk.

Worldwide Healthcare Trust’s proposed annual dividend for FY26 is unchanged at 2.4p per share, paid as semi-annual distributions in January and July. The FY25 dividend was also 2.4p, down from 2.8p per share in FY24. The managers have no particular yield requirement, as the board believes the trust’s capital should be deployed in the portfolio rather than paid out as dividends. WWH generally pays the minimum dividends required to satisfy investment trust rules. Revenue per share fell to 2.2p in FY26 from 2.4p in FY25, largely due to relatively low exposure to higher-yielding stocks and a smaller portfolio following share buybacks. Revenue reserves at the end of FY26 were equivalent to c 1.9x the proposed annual distribution.

In our 24 June 2026 note, Worldwide Healthcare Trust’s then co-managers, Sven Borho and Trevor Polischuk, were positive on the outlook for global healthcare. Healthcare stocks underperformed broader markets in the first half of FY26 (April to September 2025) on US drug pricing and pharmaceutical tariff concerns. That changed materially from 30 September 2025, when the Trump administration and Pfizer announced the first of 17 agreements with biopharmaceutical companies. The managers believed this policy clarity had strengthened the case for healthcare’s relative performance to improve, though not all political risk had disappeared. In WWH’s 2026 playbook, the managers saw healthcare at a more attractive entry point than for some time. At end-May 2026, healthcare valuations looked more reasonable, with the MSCI World Health Care Index on 17.1x forward P/E, a c 13% discount to the MSCI World Index’s 19.6x. Since 3 August 2026, Trevor Polischuk has been lead portfolio manager and Geoff Hsu co-portfolio manager, following Sven Borho’s departure.