Welcome here. Thank you for coming to hear me. We're going to talk about Bankers Investment Trust. My name is Alex Crooke. As I said, I'm the co-fund manager of this trust. I've been managing this trust since 2003, so it's quite a long history here with it. So we're going to whistle-stop through it. Please come see me on the Janus Henderson stand. We're managed by Janus Henderson at the top right there. If you want some more details, I'll be available afterwards. So what are we going to talk about very quickly? We're going to run through really what The Bankers Investment Trust is, what it provides. Then we'll really try and spend a bit more time on where we're investing, why we invest in global equities. That's what the trust is about, and really what opportunities therefore that gives you as an investor in the trust.
So really just a bit of background on Bankers. It's a very old... jump through. There we go. It's actually one of the oldest investment companies in London, or listed on the Stock Exchange. You buy it on the London Stock Exchange through an investor account. And really it was launched in 1888 by a group of bankers from Williams and Glyn's, a bank that's now sort of part of NatWest. In 1888 it was designed to really democratise investment for smaller investors. In those days you were buying bonds. You know, they cost 100 pounds or way beyond most investors' reach. And we're still doing that, which is lovely. So 100, nearly 140 years later, it costs you just over a pound a share. So very, very modest investments. You can get exposure to global equities, to investments in companies all around the world.
We have two objectives. One is to grow the capital, so that's the amount of money, the share price effectively that we trade out in the stock market, but also to grow the dividend and to grow that dividend in real terms above inflation. Over the last 59 years, you can see the track record, the dividend there every year for the last 59 years since 1966 when they actually held it. They didn't cut it. We've increased the dividend every single year and roughly by about twice inflation, the rate of inflation over that period. So very strong growth record, capital and income.
We invest in companies, so we buy the equities of companies all around the world, focusing really on the quality names. So trying to find companies that grow their profits, grow their revenues, and particularly ones that are cash generative. So a little bit beyond the start-up phase, really trying to find companies that are cash positive because that cash that they generate can be used to grow further, grow quicker, to buy companies, but also to grow our dividends. Portfolio is roughly 100 stocks. We're quite a big trust. Nearly one and a half billion of assets, plenty of liquidity in the market. And as I've mentioned, really we can invest anywhere in the world. So you'll see that in a minute. All regions, all sectors. I think my clock's not going, by the way. Get an extra few minutes there. But you keep me good.
And finally the costs. You know, that's really important. You will find that I think it's critical that you pay a reasonable price. So 0.51% is our ongoing charge, and that's really I think very competitive in the market. And so, you know, that's I think again critical.
So the team. I've been managing, as I said, for 23 years this trust. Richard Clode on my left, again 20-odd years of experience in markets, has just joined last year to join me on this trust. And we're supported in terms of the stock picking. We pick the stocks, but we've got collaboration in Japan and Asia from my colleagues Junichi and Sat there, again both with nearly 30 years of experience. So you really are getting a very, I think, experienced top team as a trust. You know, there's an independent board here, so there's directors which appoint us, Janus Henderson. So I think there's another layer of support there and confidence I think you should have in terms of challenging us.
But we are also supported by the wider Janus Henderson team, which you can see at some scale here. You know, we are listed in New York, but we're very much the core is a British business. 2,000 employees globally, lots of experience in different markets. For me what's interesting is our central research. We have 38 analysts really just providing information, research on companies all around the world. We also cover some areas that are key sectors like technology, property, healthcare. Again, we've got three PhDs looking at healthcare stocks just for our own internal research. So again, really well resourced to find the best opportunities in the markets.
So let's get under the bonnet a bit quickly. What is Bankers in terms of where we invest and what do we own? So if you look at geographical spread, you can see, unsurprisingly, a lot of US. We've been building that recently, the last sort of six months. Our view is definitely that America is probably more insulated from some of the trends and pressures, particularly in the last month or so. Much less exposure to energy. Energy is a much smaller proportion of the economy and they generate all their own resources there. So again, I think as a shorter term, North America should be more insulated from a lot of the trends we're seeing.
The other big exposure, relatively speaking to many other trusts, is Japan, which we're very positive on. Again, we've got a new government. They're very pro-growth, pro-companies expanding, and we're seeing also corporate governance improving. So companies being better managed, better challenged to grow their dividends and invest. So again, that's a nice, I think, sideline investment there.
When you look at our sector exposure, again, you know, I'm sure you look at a lot of funds, but technology is a big component for us. But it doesn't dominate. So it's about a third of our investments. We're very much focused on hardware, semiconductors, which we feel, and again, is the best growth opportunity currently. Very little exposure to software, which is a bit more challenging with AI taking some, probably taking some of the margins in that business.
We used to be quite exposed to financials, again in the short term we've reduced that. Some pressures again coming, maybe interest rates go up to reflect higher inflation. And industrials is an area we've been building back into, which again you should see some interesting trends that I'll talk about, industrials and electrification, in a minute. So that's sort of where we're broadly invested. There's more online. Again, go and search us out, and there's a lot more details of some of our investments.
You know, we're very much global, and I think that's really important to make that point. It allows us to invest in major trends. So we've taken the last year or so. You know, memory has been a really important trend. We've seen very strong price appreciation of memory and the price of memory. But all the manufacturers of memory chips are really in Korea. So again, that gives us real global. We can go to Korea. We have very strong holdings in Hynix and Samsung, not quite making the 10 active positions there, but still key investments. TSMC again in Taiwan. So we can get hold of these very nice investment themes and put them in the portfolio.
We've also therefore allowed a bit of diversification. We're not all on one theme. We're not all on one region or one market or one sector. And therefore I think we have a greater investment universe relative to many other funds. I put the top 10 active positions here for those again that maybe don't think about that. It's relative to the benchmarks, so the global markets. So it sort of shows you where our bets are, where we're actually putting our money relative to the market and saying these are the investments you should own more of than the rest of the market.
And so you begin to see there some interesting trends. I mentioned US is our largest exposure. NatWest just makes it a UK bank onto that top 10 list. But behind this, NationalGrid, UniCredit, Italian bank, Japan Post Bank, largest Japanese holding. So there's plenty in the top 20 that are non-US. But you get a nice theme of some technology, but not all technology. Amazon is our largest sort of technology bet there, followed by Alphabet. And you see nice exposures to some of the key biggest banks in the world as well, which I think is interesting. Again, more online.
Let's talk about one of those themes. So how do we, you know, sometimes we find very interesting opportunities. So electrification is one that I think is very important. We've had the bar chart in the middle there. You see over this US power demand in the last 20, 25 years really very static. It's grown 9% over basically 20 years. And that's because of efficiency. LED lights, we're just using less for more. But you can see the blue lines are showing the next 20 years. We're expecting very strong growth, 38% growth in power consumption, and that's electrification. It's moving from carbon in your car or in your house burning gas for heating to electrification and the whole approach of how do we move that energy around.
So for us, we see the opportunities. I've listed some of our holdings. What you get there though, I think we see the greatest opportunity in the grid, the moving around of electricity and the infrastructure of building these grids so we can move electricity from maybe solar or wind offshore to where we actually need to use it. And so we see that as a very interesting opportunity. And some of these companies, you know, I think are very global and allow us some great growth opportunities over the long term, and they're less exposed to interest rates, to other factors in the markets.
Very quickly touching on technology, and I saw a short graph saying I think really where we've been moving in the last few years. We're sort of at this gigantic agentic AI, where AI is beginning to do things for us, to take over roles and improve our efficiency and gain. But we're moving now to the next stage of physical AI, self-driving cars. Again, if you take Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, one of our top 10 active positions, you know, they're doing half a million journeys a week now in a purely robo-taxi. They've done 20 million journeys since inception and now in 12 markets in the US. These things are coming very rapidly to us and generating growth opportunities for our investments.
I might not touch on that one. I mean, in terms of performance, you know, I think what you get with Bankers Investment Trust is hopefully a very good growth over the long term. You can see the share price on the left. I don't know why we picked 89, so roughly when I started work. But in that period, you know, just over 10% annualised return since I was sort of managing this in 2003. It's about 11% annualised return. So, you know, you're getting that as your core holding. I always think, you know, growing nice and consistently. Yes, there's some volatility. We own equities. They don't always go up every week. But I think in holding that through time you begin to see the consistency, hopefully building a nice pot for retirement or other means.
In terms of dividends, I mentioned that we grow roughly twice inflation. The orange line is CPI. You can see the Bankers purple line is generally above that. Occasionally you get spikes in inflation as we saw in sort of 21, 22. But you can see how again Bankers caught up with that quite quickly and over the long term delivering twice inflation.
So sort of touching really why now, why opportunities in global equities. You know, I do think AI is leading to great opportunities for us. It's more I think in efficiency and productivity gains. And therefore I still think we're in a mid-cycle recovery in markets. I know markets are on all-time highs, but I still think there's lots of opportunity. Investment spending is actually accelerating in a number of areas. That's always led to better earnings growth over time. And valuations are not stretched.
You know, again, you can go and look at some of these global names. Amazon is on about 20 times earnings, much, much cheaper than many other stocks in the market, growing at 20% per annum in terms of returns. So I think valuation is not stretched. There aren't obvious sort of signals of late cycle. Property market booming is not happening. Banks are not excessively lending. So again, a lot of the things I think are looking quite constrained. If anything, it's governments are spending probably beyond their means. So you're going to see a lot more issuance of government bonds. But I think equities are increasingly, you know, to some extent getting scarcer. You know, actually the companies are buying back material amounts of their own shares. And as I say, I think we're still mid-cycle in terms of earnings recovery.
So finally, we know where does this fit in. I've never sold a share of Bankers. I'm sort of in 23 years. It's my core holding. I own 12 other investment trusts around that. But to me it's a core holding. It should sit in the middle of your investment strategy and it's global. So again, we can invest in these trends. We can invest in companies all around the world. And then finally you get a lovely growing dividends on the back of it. So I'm 20 seconds out and I've just about nailed it on time. Thank you very much. Come and see me on the stand.
