Utilico Emerging Markets Trust’s (UEM’s) managers, Charles Jillings and Jacqueline Broers at ICM, are very excited about the company’s future in terms of available, attractive investment opportunities. Given high levels of stock market ‘noise’, they feel confident about their strategy of investing in high-quality, cash-generative, emerging market assets for the long term. This approach has proved successful over UEM’s 20-year life, with a 9.2% average annual NAV total return and a track record of considerable outperformance versus the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. The trust has a progressive dividend policy and an above-market dividend yield, while its annual distributions are fully covered by income. There is visible scope for a narrower discount, which would provide additional upside to the trust’s total return potential.

Utilico Emerging Market Trust’s (UEM’s) board has announced a series of initiatives, aiming to make the company more attractive and to enhance value creation for new and existing shareholders. These measures are: a new performance-based tender offer; continuation of the share buyback programme; further annual dividend increases; and bringing forward the 2026 continuation vote. UEM celebrated its 20th anniversary as a public company on 20 July 2025; over two decades, it has generated an annual NAV total return of 9.1%. This equates to an aggregate total return of 470.6%, which is meaningfully higher than the MSCI Emerging Markets Index’s 349.7% total return.