KARACHI, Jan 19: National Investment Trust (NIT) posted earning per unit (eps), for the half year ended December 31, 2005, at Rs4.48, which reflected a huge jump of 220 per cent compared to Rs1.40 per unit earned in the same period last year. The earning per unit for the current six months exceeded even the eps of the fund for full year of 2004-05, which was Rs3.55.

A press release issued by NIT, following its board meeting on Thursday, said that the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the fund stood at Rs52.85 as on Dec 31, 2005, against Rs38.12 on June 30, 2005 (ex-dividend), representing a growth of 38.64 per cent. In the same period the KSE-100 index had registered growth of 28.27 per cent, which reflected that the fund had out-performed the index by 10.73 per cent.

Net income of the fund earned during the latest half year amounted to Rs6.70 billion, compared with Rs2.15 billion in the corresponding period of the previous year, depicting a rise of 212 per cent.

Net Assets under management of NIT rose to Rs79.08 billion at the end of half year under review, up by 29.64 per cent from Rs61 billion as on June 30, 2005.

“The unprecedented growth in net income of the Trust is mainly attributable to capital gains realized during the period that stood at all time high level of Rs5.64 billion, as compared to Rs0.70 billion during the same period of last year,” said the NIT statement.

The capital gains of Rs5.13 billion realized from the sale of NIT shareholding of National Refinery Limited through the Privatization Commission contributed mainly to the capital gains.

Dividend Income of the fund for the period under review stood at Rs1.792 billion as compared to Rs1.788 billion in the corresponding period of last year.

The press release concluded on the remarks by the Chairman and Managing Director of NIT Tariq Iqbal Khan: “The pro-active and dynamic guidelines set by the board of directors and timely and precise execution of such policies was attributable to consistent remarkable performance of the fund.”

Talking to Dawn after the release of the results, Mr Tariq Iqbal lamented the lack of depth of ‘our stock markets’. As an example, he said: “If NIT goes to buy only 20 million shares of, say PTCL, at the market price of Rs67, it would cost Rs1.3 billion, which would be an allocation of just 1.7 per cent of the funds under management of NIT, but it would account for as much as a quarter of the day’s volume in the PTCL scrip of around 80 million shares.”