‘Don’t believe there’s any need to change’: Mirrabooka delivers negative 10.8% portfolio return
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The news: Australian Financial Investment Corporation’s (AFIC) small-to-mid cap listed fund Mirrabooka delivered negative portfolio returns of 10.8% amid market uncertainty and bets on embattled companies like Tuas, IDP Education and Corporate Travel Management.
However, capital gains pushed full year profit higher and facilitated a special dividend declaration.
The numbers: The annual portfolio return was below the Combined S&P/ASX Mid Cap 50 and Small Ordinaries Accumulation benchmark which returned 7.8% over the 12 months to 30 June 2026, including franking.
However, a number of dispersals meant that full year profit was up 63.6% to $13 million, up from $7.9 million in the previous financial year, including fully selling out of Lynas Rare Earths and Infomedia.
The fund also still managed to maintain its final dividend at 6.5 cents per share fully franked and a special dividend of 3 cents per share that will both be paid on 21 August.
This puts total dividends for the year at 14 cents per share, up from 11 cents in the previous year.
The context: Assistant AFIC portfolio manager Stuart Low told Capital Brief that despite the underperformance, he remains pleased with the fund’s “longer term performance since inception” 27-years ago. It has an overall return of 11.6% per annum.
As such, he said “of course, when you have poor years, you reflect upon what you could do better. But we don’t believe there’s any need to change”.
“We’re not going to be sort of piling into resources at what we think is potentially close to the top of the cycle. We’ll continue to just look for good small and mid-cap companies that we think can grow and endure for many years,” Low said.
One of the company’s bets that have gone awry is Tuas. Mirrabooka invested in the stock earlier in the financial year partly on the hopes that its subsidiary Simba’s acquisition of M1 in Singapore would be a “highly synergistic acquisition”. The deal ultimately collapsed and the stock is now down 56.3% over the last 12 months.
Mirrabooka also sold out of IDP Education, down 40.5% over the last 12 months, as its faces regulatory headwinds and made an off-market sale of its holdings in Corporate Travel “at a significant loss”.
It also sold out of PEXA earlier this year shortly after the publication of a regulatory proposal that would slash the company’s Australian revenue by 20%.
What they said: “We’ve obviously been through tough markets before and over the long term, we still generate very good returns to shareholders, both in terms of capital growth and dividends,” Low said.
“We still believe the portfolio remains well positioned to deliver attractive long-term returns on income for shareholders. Mirrabooka is a long-term investor in this sort of sector of the markets, whatever we do you have to bear that in mind in terms of the way we run the portfolio”.
The source: ASX
