The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) has made a strong re­cov­ery from its $44.5 mil­lion loss caused by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in the first quar­ter of 2020, unau­dit­ed re­sults have stat­ed.

For the three months end­ed June 30, the UTC post­ed Net In­come of $73 mil­lion and over­all Net In­come of $28 mil­lion over the first six months of the year af­ter see­ing de­clines re­lat­ed to the mar­ket tur­moil in the first quar­ter.

As­sets Un­der Man­age­ment rose to $22.90 bil­lion in the sec­ond quar­ter 2020 com­pared with $22.60 bil­lion in the same pe­ri­od a year ago.

The UTC at­trib­uted its sec­ond-quar­ter gains to proac­tive, re­search-dri­ven in­vest­ment strate­gies.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to de­fine ‘the new nor­mal’ af­fect­ing in­vest­ment port­fo­lios, mar­kets and the broad­er economies. Our Cor­po­ra­tion has main­tained its de­lib­er­ate and strate­gic ap­proach of pro­tect­ing ‘lives’ whilst con­tin­u­ing to fo­cus on re­tain­ing and grow­ing the wealth of our Unithold­ers,” Ger­ry Brooks said in the chair­man’s state­ment.

“We cau­tion, how­ev­er, that the health and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with COVID-19 con­tin­ue to be el­e­vat­ed. Re­cent resur­gences of the virus in many ju­ris­dic­tions and mar­kets can eas­i­ly re­verse hard won gains from pru­dent in­vest­ment strat­e­gy and mar­ket re­bounds from Quar­ter One (Q1) lows,” he stat­ed.

Brooks said the UTC’s time­ly in­ter­ven­tions to pro-ac­tive­ly pro­tect and grow val­ues of our port­fo­lios pro­vid­ed an an­chor for im­proved per­for­mance in the sec­ond quar­ter.

“Notwith­stand­ing the sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in Q2, half year re­sults were $36 mil­lion less than the cor­re­spond­ing pri­or last year. This is a stark re­minder of the in­sid­i­ous ef­fect of COVID-19 in mar­kets and broad­er economies,” Brooks stat­ed.

“The Cor­po­ra­tion con­tin­ues to be cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that short-term mar­ket volatil­i­ty will not im­pair long-term growth prospects. Our team is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing our strate­gic, pro­fes­sion­al and re­searched ap­proach to en­sure our Unithold­ers ben­e­fit from the safe­ty, thought­ful­ness, strength and sta­bil­i­ty that the Cor­po­ra­tion has tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­vid­ed. Notwith­stand­ing the mar­ket volatil­i­ty and un­cer­tain­ty, our team re­mains con­fi­dent about our abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate the fu­ture,” he stat­ed.

“We are stay­ing fo­cused and will keep build­ing on our strengths even as we nav­i­gate the chal­lenges ahead,” said Nigel Ed­wards, the UTC’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor.

The UTC’s up­beat sec­ond-quar­ter earn­ings re­port fol­lows the open­ing of a new In­vest­ment Cen­tre in the city of San Fer­nan­do, com­plete with an En­ter­prise Suite for its busi­ness cus­tomers, and sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in its dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture which will im­prove the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence across the board the UTC not­ed.