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Murray Income Trust - Income focus keeps paying dividends

Murray Income Trust (MUT) invests in high-quality, mainly UK-listed stocks. MUT’s manager, Charles Luke, believes quality stocks are best placed to support the trust’s objective to provide a high and rising dividend. The trust has realised this objective, delivering continually rising dividends for 51 years, and looks set to extend this record in FY25. MUT’s quality focus has undermined its relative performance over recent years, as value stocks have outperformed, but long-term performance has been positive and close to the benchmark, satisfying MUT’s capital growth goal. And Luke is optimistic about the prospects for UK equities, especially the quality businesses he targets. Investors have been underweight this market for some time, suggesting a rise in inflows is overdue, especially as the UK’s political environment has stabilised. Furthermore, declining interest rates should encourage greater M&A activity as investors seek to take advantage of valuations that Luke believes remain ‘compelling’.