Shares in Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust are at a 52-week high, underpinned by a 21.5% increase in the trust's net asset value per share (NAV) in the year to end-October.

The Baillie Gifford managed fund saw its NAV surge to 312.04p at the end of October 2010 from 256.73p. The 21.5% increase in NAV compares favourably to the 15.3% increase in the MSCI All Countries World Index over the same period.

The trust has total assets of £177.7 million (before deduction of loans of £24.8 million) as at 31 October 2010. Equity gearing was maintained throughout the year and stood at 13.6% at the year end.

Revenue earnings per share were 1.86p, down 49.9% from 3.71p last year. This was due to a lower level of dividend payments from underlying holdings and the maturing of the Bay Haven bond. The trust's stated aim is to concentrate on capital growth, so any income received is regarded as a bonus.

A final dividend of 1.50p is being recommended to give a total for the year of 2.00p.

"There has been good encouragement from the operational results of businesses that we own," the trust's investment manager, Mark Urquhart, said.

"Three areas stand out over the last twelve months: technology; luxury goods; and consumption in developing nations. In technology examples of strong growth include Apple - where the recently launched iPad device has seen the company's fastest ever adoption curve; Amazon - which is raising capex [capital expenditure] to open more fulfilment centres to keep up with booming demand and seeing a huge second business in cloud computing rapidly grow; eBay where the prospects of the payments business - PayPal - continue to brighten; and Baidu where the withdrawal of Google from the Chinese search market has led to a deluge of new clients at lower acquisition costs," Urquhart added.

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