Annual Report2012 JPMorgan American Investment Trust plc Annual Report & Accounts for the year ended 31st December 2012 Features Contents Objective About the Company To achieve capital growth from North American investments by outperformance of the Company’s benchmark. 1 Financial Results 2 Chairman’s Statement Investment Policies Investment Review - To invest in quoted companies including, when appropriate, exposure to smaller capitalisation companies. 8 Investment Manager’s Report - To emphasise capital growth rather than income. 12 Summary of Results - To use gearing when appropriate to increase potential returns to shareholders. 13 Ten Year Performance - To hedge the currency risk only in respect of the geared portion of the portfolio. 14 Ten Year Financial Record - To invest no more than 15% of gross assets in other UK listed investment companies. 15 Ten Largest Equity Investments 17 Portfolio Analyses Further details of the Company’s investment policy and risk management are given in 18 Investment Activity the Directors’ Report on page 24. 19 List of Investments 22 Board of Directors Benchmark Index The S&P 500 Index expressed in sterling total return terms. Directors’ Report 24 Directors’ Report Capital Structure & Gearing 24 Business Review At 31st December 2012, the Company’s share capital comprised 50,241,592 ordinary 30 Corporate Governance shares of 25p each. Statement 35 Directors’ Remuneration Report The Company has a £50 million debenture in issue, carrying a fixed interest rate of 6.875%, per annum, repayable in June 2018. The Company’s policy is to use gearing Accounts in a range of 5% net cash to 20% geared in normal market conditions. Gearing for this purpose is defined as investments, excluding liquidity fund holdings, expressed as a 36 Statement of Directors’ percentage of total net assets. Responsibilities 37 Independent Auditor’s Report Management & Performance Fees 38 Income Statement 39 Reconciliation of Movements in The management fee is charged at a rate of 0.5% per annum, paid quarterly in Shareholders’ Funds arrears, on the Company’s total assets less current liabilities. The Company also has a 40 Balance Sheet performance fee calculated at the rate of 10% of the difference between the net asset 41 Cash Flow Statement value capital return and the capital return of the S&P 500 Index, expressed in sterling 42 Notes to the Accounts terms. Shareholder Information Management Company 62 Notice of Annual General Meeting The Company employs JPMorgan Asset Management (‘JPMAM’ or the ‘Manager’) to 66 Glossary of Terms and Definitions manage its assets. 69 Information about the Company The US equity management team consists of 89 investment professionals and manages around $135 billion for its clients worldwide. AIC The Company is a member of the Association of Investment Companies. Website The Company’s website, which can be found at www.jpmamerican.co.uk, includes useful information on the Company, such as daily prices, factsheets and current and historic half year and annual reports. Financial Results Total returns (including dividends reinvested) +7.3% +8.6% +10.5% Return to shareholders1 Return on net assets2 Benchmark Index1,3 (2011: +3.9%) (2011: +0.5%) (2011: +2.6%) 12.5p Long Term Performance (total returns) for periods ended 31st December 2012 Dividend % (2011: 11.0p) 140 125.3 120 109.1 100 96.7 80 60 47.4 40 35.6 35.4 33.5 33.0 29.0 20 0 3 Year Performance 5 Year Performance 10 Year Performance JPMorgan American – return to shareholders1 JPMorgan American – return on net assets2 Benchmark1,3 A glossary of terms and definitions is provided on page 66. 1Source: Morningstar. 2Source: J.P. Morgan. 3The Company’s benchmark index is the S&P 500 Index expressed in sterling total return terms. JPMorgan American Investment Trust plc. Annual Report & Accounts 2012 1 Chairman’s Statement Having become Chairman in May 2012, I wrote to you for the first time in the Company’s half-year report which was sent to shareholders in July 2012. I am now pleased to be reporting on the Company’s results for the full year to December 2012. Of course, by the time you read this statement, some months have passed and markets have moved on since the end of our financial year. As the Company’s net asset value (‘NAV’) is published daily and fact sheets are published monthly, you may well be aware of how things have changed since that point. Therefore I think it is worth trying to use my statement to give some longer term historic context and to discuss what your Board has been thinking about and doing over the year. For the 12 months to the end of December 2012, the US equity market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, provided a return, including dividends reinvested, of 10.5% (in sterling terms). This is despite the euroturmoil in the middle of the year, the US presidential election, the fiscal cliff challenge, worries about the strength of the US recovery and concerns over US corporate growth. The old phrase ‘markets climb a wall of worry’ seems particularly appropriate. Sterling strengthened during the year from US$1.55 to the pound, to US$1.63 to the pound. It is worth remembering that 2012 was a continuation of a recovery from the dark days of 2008 and the chart below illustrates this. S&P 500 Index Performance (US$) Index level 1,625 1,500 1,375 1,250 1,125 1,000 875 750 625 Jan-06 Dec-06 Dec-07 Dec-08 Dec-09 Dec-10 Dec-11 Dec-12 S&P 500 Index expressed in US$ total return terms. The S&P 500 Index has now risen by 71% from the low reached on 27th February 2009 in response to, or because of, the measures taken to stabilise the US financial system and economy. Shareholders might be interested to look at the ten year financial record tables on page 14. In some ways it feels as if the last 10 years have not been particularly profitable for equity investment. However, following the very difficult period for your Company during the unwinding of the dotcom boom, it is worth noting that since the end of December 2002, the NAV has risen from 502.3p per share to 925p per share (taking debt at its par value). The dividend per share has risen from 4.8p per share to 12.5p per share, giving a total return over the last 10 years of 108%, or 7.6% 2 JPMorgan American Investment Trust plc. Annual Report & Accounts 2012 per annum (the share price total return is higher). That compares with our benchmark, which has provided a total return of 89.8% over the same period. Performance of your Company NAV and Gearing Over the last year, your Company provided a positive NAV return, including income of 8.6%, which is somewhat less than the 10.5% return provided by the market (all in sterling terms). Over five years, which covers the downturn and the upturn, the NAV is just ahead of the S&P 500 Index and over 10 years (for all of which time Garrett Fish has had responsibility for the investment management of the Company) the NAV is ahead significantly. Looking at individual years, the NAV has outperformed in five out of the last 10, and the greatest margin of out-performance was in the market collapse in 2008. These facts are unusual and something to be pleased about. For the technicians amongst you, we are looking at the NAV with debt at par here, so are not taking account of movements in the estimated price of our debt. We think that is probably a fair way of assessing the Manager’s performance. The reasons for our underperformance compared with the market index this year were almost all to do with the gearing and its use. Our debenture costs the Company approximately 0.8% per annum. In addition, your investment manager was perhaps understandably rather cautious at various points, and held some cash. In the event (and we will probably not know how close it came) the worst did not happen, and markets bounced significantly in the last six months. Your Company did not benefit quite as much as it might have done from that bounce. We have been considering the way we use gearing. We do think the ability to use borrowings in a reasonably cautious way is an advantage to our structure and will add to returns, given our view of the long term outlook for investment in US equities. The debenture we have in place is expensive, with a coupon of 6.85%, costing us some 0.8% of NAV per annum, but to repay it at this point would involve paying a further premium which seems unwarranted to us. However, we think the level of gearing which it provides, at approximately 10% of net assets, is appropriate. We think shorter term or tactical market timing is very difficult and not the most reliable source of return for anyone. In particular, the use of JPMAM’s gearing models in current times, when quantitative easing is affecting the price of long and short term interest rates, is problematic. Our attribution systems show that Garrett Fish’s large cap investment approach has resulted in out-performance or performance in line with the S&P 500 Index in eight out of the last 10 years at portfolio level (that is the large capitalisation portfolio compared with the index, before costs). Over the last five years, however, the cost of debt and tactical asset allocation have detracted from our returns relative to our benchmark.