Murray Income Trust - A happy anniversary for shareholders

Murray Income Trust (MUT) has just marked the first anniversary of its merger with Perpetual Income & Growth Investment Trust (PLI). This merger doubled the trust’s assets under management, improved the liquidity of its shares and delivered a significant reduction in its already competitive fee. MUT invests mainly in UK equities and aims to provide a high and growing income, combined with capital growth. Its quality bias ensured that its revenues proved very resilient during the pandemic, despite widespread dividend cuts. This allowed MUT to deliver its 48th consecutive year of increased annual dividends in 2021 and the board is expecting to maintain this record in future. The current dividend yield is 4%. After a rare and brief period of underperformance in late 2020 and early 2021, recent performance has improved. MUT has also outperformed the broad UK market over the longer term, delivering an annualised average return of 8.8% on a NAV basis and 8.0% in share price terms, compared to a market return of 7.3% over the past 10 years.