National Investment Trust shareholders for diversified portifolio

By Martin Yewo Phiri:

National Investment Trust (NITL) plc shareholders have implored leadership of the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE)-listed company to consider investing in high yielding instruments to further improve profitability.

The shareholders took turns to commend the firm for its outstanding performance in the year ended December 31 2023 at its 22nd annual general meeting in Blantyre on Friday.

During the year under review, the firm posted a K21.5 billion profit after tax.

But the shareholders said there remained vast room for further growth if the company diversified its investment options.

One of the shareholders, Brian Kampanje, said the results could have been much better if they invested in high yielding instruments.

“By concentrating on equity instruments, they have forfeited a lot of interest income. We have advised them that they should diversify the portfolio,” he said

NITL Board Chairperson Esther Gondwe said the 2023 performance was based on high dividends declared by investee companies and share revaluation gains on Malawi MSE from K6.58 billion to K20.4 billion.

“Our shareholders have indicated that much as we are performing well, they still are concerned about low dividend yield compared to the market average. We will be looking into how to improve shareholders’ return apart from the objectives and structure of the company,” she said.

Gondwe said over 90 percent of NITL’s investment is on the stock exchange, which is limited, but the leadership took the advice to spread risk across different sectors and asset classes to improve performance and visibility of the company.

“We will look at investing in areas that are important for national development such as technologies. It is not something we will do overnight but we accept that we can do better by looking at other areas,” she said. Gondwe said the current investment environment is still challenging with high interest rates, scarcity of foreign exchange and yield loss in agriculture due erratic rains affecting performance of investment companies.