Sanford DeLand's Free Spirit manager Eric Burns on the UK as a 'dirty word'

Manager Eric Burns

As the UK smaller companies sector has suffered, with the FTSE Small Cap offering volatile returns since its Covid recovery, the UK has become "a dirty word, and small cap is even dirtier”, manager of the Sanford DeLand Free Spirit fund Eric Burns has argued.

Burns noted the UK had been a "difficult place to be", noting that in recent months the fund's price-to-earnings ratio had dropped from 30x to 20x, while its free cash flow yield surged from 3% to 5%. CCLA launches modern slavery benchmark for UK listed company investors However, he was keen to stress that the UK's woes did not necessarily translate to poor performance for the fund: "Just because a company is small, that does not mean it is UK focused." A majority of the fund's revenues comes from overseas, and Beggs stressed that many of their holdings were "global leaders in thei...