Unicorn Asset Management, the independently-owned fund management business specialising in small and mid-cap investment, has announced that the Unicorn UK Ethical Income Fund celebrated its third birthday with continued strong performance, returning 22.7% since its launch in April 2016.
It is one of very few UK funds to offer an ethical income yield.
The fund follows the same investment process as the award winning Unicorn UK Income Fund – with the addition of an integrated ethical screening process including a negative screen from MSCI ESG Research. The fund has the same partnership at the helm, managers Simon Moon and Fraser Mackersie.
Mackersie commented:
“The companies in our portfolio have good long term growth prospects, generate strong cash flows and offer an attractive dividend yield, while also meeting our strict ethical criteria. The objective is to construct an ethically focused fund with the ability to deliver both dividend income and capital growth for our investors over our longer term investment horizon”
Moon added:
“We are committed to finding companies that not only pay healthy dividends but also have the potential to grow, while always meeting our ethical criteria. This clear and consistently applied approach has generated pleasing total returns in the three year period since the launch of the fund.”
Alisdair Hinton, Sales Director LGBR Capital, responsible for the distribution of the funds to the intermediary market including DFMs, WMs and advisers, added:
“We have noticed that clients are becoming increasingly interested in ESG options, driven by young investors who have a highly developed awareness of ethical issues. As the wealth of the younger generation enters the UK equity market, Ethical Income Funds that can demonstrate an established and successful track record should attract increasing levels of interest, leading to sustained growth of the Ethical Income sector as a whole.”