Investment trust Aberdeen Asia Focus (LON:AAS) delivered an impressive NAV (net asset value) total return of 22.3% for the year to July 2026. This performance easily beat the 9.5% rise in the benchmark. It also meant the trust passed its five-year conditional tender offer test with flying colours.
Managers Gabriel Sacks and Xin-Yao Ng remain excited about the region’s prospects. They are sticking to their tried-and-tested process of backing high-quality businesses with strong balance sheets, resilient earnings and attractive long-term growth prospects. In many instances, these companies are not covered by mainstream funds.
Beating the benchmark
For the uninitiated, Aberdeen Asia Focus offers investors access to a diversified portfolio of market-leading but relatively smaller Asian businesses.
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As Krishna Shanmuganathan, chair, explains: ‘These holdings tend to be leaders in their field, and are often not represented in broader indices and are therefore often overlooked. Valuation discipline remains central to the investment process.’
Aberdeen Asia Focus generated a NAV total return of 22.3% in FY26, which exceeded the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan Small Cap Index’s 9.5% gain. The share price total return was even better at 23.9% as the discount to NAV narrowed from 10.1% to 9.1% with a helping hand from share buybacks.
Tech-driven returns
In FY26, the trust saw exceptionally strong earnings and returns from technology-related holdings. However, these were balanced with exposure to a range of sectors and underlying growth drivers ranging from diversified industrials and financial services to healthcare, logistics and domestic consumption.
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Top stock contributors included Taiwan Union Technology. Its shares rose more than 270% on surging demand for higher-end copper-clad laminates used in the advanced circuit boards the company makes.
Other winners were Chroma ATE, a provider of testing equipment for advanced electronic and semiconductor components. And network equipment manufacturer Accton Technology, which gained from growing investment in AI servers and datacentre infrastructure.
With these results, Aberdeen Asia Focus extended its formidable record of outperformance across multiple time periods. In fact, the trust has outperformed all of peers in the AIC’s (Association of Investment Companies) Asia Pacific Smaller Companies sector over one, three, five, 10 and 25 years.
| Asia Pacific Smaller Companies Sector | Discount to NAV | 10-yr share price total return |
| Aberdeen Asia Focus | –9% | +171.8% |
| Fidelity Asian Values | -4.3% | +114.2% |
| Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies | -10.3% | +48.8% |
Source: The AIC/Morningstar
We believe the current 9% NAV discount presents a buying opportunity for investors eager to harness the growth of Asia’s best growth businesses.
Income-hunters should also note the trust has maintained or raised the dividend every year since 1998. And the AIC has named Aberdeen Asia Focus in its list of the Next Generation of Dividend Heroes. The list recognises those investment trusts that have consistently increased their dividends for more than 10 years but fewer than 20.
