The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) yes­ter­day re­port­ed net in­come of $5.46 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, which was a re­duc­tion of 89.4 per cent com­pared with the $51.68 mil­lion the mu­tu­al fund com­pa­ny earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

In ex­plain­ing the "sub­stan­tial re­duc­tion," in its unau­dit­ed re­sults for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, UTC chair, Jo-Anne Julien said, "The re­duc­tion was sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed by an in­crease in the lev­el of price guar­an­tee due to hold­ers of the Growth and In­come Fund (GIF) as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

"The low­er re­port­ed re­sult was heav­i­ly linked to the neg­a­tive re­turns on the lo­cal stock mar­ket, ev­i­denced by the neg­a­tive 12.82 per cent year-to-date re­turn on the T&T All In­dex."

The re­port of the UTC's per­for­mance for the nine-month pe­ri­od is on its web­site.

Julien said the de­cline in the All-T&T In­dex for the first nine months of the cal­en­dar year, led to two out­comes.

"The re­sult of this per­for­mance was a 6 per cent de­crease of the net as­set val­ue (NAV) of the GIF. As a re­minder, the GIF pro­vides a cap­i­tal guar­an­tee for unithold­ers who re­main in­vest­ed for a min­i­mum of three years.

"The guar­an­tee is in­verse­ly re­lat­ed to the GIF’s NAV, which means if its NAV falls, the price guar­an­tee li­a­bil­i­ty in­creas­es. At each re­port­ing pe­ri­od, the Group recog­nis­es the full li­a­bil­i­ty to fund the guar­an­tee, al­though ac­tu­al unithold­er with­drawals re­quir­ing cap­i­tal re­in­state­ment have his­tor­i­cal­ly been a frac­tion of the ac­tu­al li­a­bil­i­ty," the UTC chair stat­ed.

She added that for the pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30 2024, the in­crease in the price-guar­an­tee li­a­bil­i­ty re­sult­ed in an ex­pense of $73 mil­lion in the cur­rent year, an in­crease of $63 mil­lion over 2023.

"The sec­ond im­pact of the stock mar­ket per­for­mance was an un­favourable move­ment in fair val­ue of in­vest­ment se­cu­ri­ties of $307 mil­lion, a de­cline of 82 per cent when com­pared to the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od end­ed 30 Sep­tem­ber 2023. It is im­por­tant to note, as ad­vised in pre­vi­ous pe­ri­ods, that the move­ments in the fair val­ue of in­vest­ment se­cu­ri­ties and the price-guar­an­tee li­a­bil­i­ty are non-cash ex­pens­es and are sub­ject to con­tin­u­ous fluc­tu­a­tion," Julien ex­plained.

She said that de­spite the re­port­ed de­cline, the UTC’s gross in­come, which com­pris­es main­ly in­ter­est and div­i­dends, showed an im­prove­ment of $126 mil­lion or 20 per cent, prin­ci­pal­ly from high­er port­fo­lio yields in the in­come funds.

"The in­crease in cash in­come en­abled us to main­tain our fo­cus on pay­ing dis­tri­b­u­tions to our in­vestors. We dis­trib­uted $335 mil­lion for the nine months end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of $109 mil­lion or 62 per cent over last year," said Julien, adding that the UTC is ex­cit­ed about the fu­ture and thanked its in­vestors for their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment.

"You can rest as­sured that the Cor­po­ra­tion is res­olute in its fo­cus on its mis­sion: to cre­ate and en­hance wealth for all by pro­vid­ing in­no­v­a­tive in­vest­ment so­lu­tions and world-class cus­tomer ser­vice," said the UTC chair.