Sanford DeLand's Free Spirit manager Eric Burns on the UK as a 'dirty word'

Manager Eric Burns

Elliot Gulliver-Needham
clock • 3 min read

As the UK smaller companies sector has suffered, with the FTSE Small Cap offering volatile returns since its Covid recovery, the UK has become "a dirty word, and small cap is even dirtier”, manager of the Sanford DeLand Free Spirit fund Eric Burns has argued.

Burns noted the UK had been a "difficult place to be", noting that in recent months the fund's price-to-earnings ratio had dropped from 30x to 20x, while its free cash flow yield surged from 3% to 5%. CCLA launches modern slavery benchmark for UK listed company investors However, he was keen to stress that the UK's woes did not necessarily translate to poor performance for the fund: "Just because a company is small, that does not mean it is UK focused." A majority of the fund's revenues comes from overseas, and Beggs stressed that many of their holdings were "global leaders in thei...

To continue reading this article...

Join Investment Week for free

  • Unlimited access to real-time news, analysis and opinion from the investment industry, including the Sustainable Hub covering fund news from the ESG space
  • Get ahead of regulatory and technological changes affecting fund management
  • Important and breaking news stories selected by the editors delivered straight to your inbox each day
  • Weekly members-only newsletter with exclusive opinion pieces from leading industry experts
  • Be the first to hear about our extensive events schedule and awards programmes

Join now

 

Already an Investment Week
member?

Login

More on UK

The Committee said it found the Edinburgh Reforms had so far had “limited impact of the Government’s flagship financial services reform programme”.
UK

London Capital & Finance scars raise risk concerns over LTAFs among MPs

Review of Edinburgh Reforms a year on

Eve Maddock-Jones
clock 08 December 2023 • 3 min read
James Baxter-Derrington, editor
UK

The Autumn Statement addenda

Friday Briefing

James Baxter-Derrington
clock 27 November 2023 • 4 min read
SDL fund managers Eric Burns, Chloe Smith and David Beggs
UK

Sanford DeLand's Free Spirit manager Eric Burns on the UK as a 'dirty word'

Manager Eric Burns

Elliot Gulliver-Needham
clock 21 November 2023 • 3 min read
Trustpilot