JPMorgan India Growth & Income PLC Reports Tough Half-Year Amid India Market Weakness and Middle East Conflict

JPMorgan India Growth & Income half-year results: painful six months, and the numbers do not hide it

JPMorgan India Growth & Income PLC has had a rough half-year. The trust was hit by a falling Indian stock market, a spike in oil price fears linked to the Middle East conflict, and weak sentiment towards some of the growth companies it favours.

For the six months to 31 March 2026, the trust’s net asset value, or NAV, fell 16.5% in sterling terms. NAV is the value of the portfolio after liabilities, and it is the main yardstick for an investment trust. That compares with a 12.4% fall for the MSCI India Index, so this was not just a bad market – it was underperformance too.

Key JPMorgan India Growth & Income numbers investors should focus on

Metric	Figure
NAV return for six months to 31 March 2026	-16.5%
MSCI India Index return	-12.4%
Share price return	-17.6%
NAV per share	906.2p
Net assets	£403.698 million
Discount to NAV at 31 March 2026	10.2%
Average discount during period	8.1%
Discount at 12 June 2026	9.2%
Shares bought back in period	776,263
Further shares bought back after period end	798,343
Quarterly dividend for FY2026	11.08p
Planned total annual dividend for FY2026	44.32p

Why the trust underperformed the India market benchmark

The company is quite clear about what went wrong. Its bias towards higher-quality small and mid-cap stocks hurt returns because those shares lagged more cyclical and value-style stocks. It also had overweight positions in what the manager calls “AI losers” – businesses seen by the market as vulnerable to artificial intelligence disruption.

That mattered most in IT services and platform businesses, including MakeMyTrip and Info Edge. Other drags included ITC, after higher taxation on cigarettes, and Syngene, which lost an important revenue stream after a client issue.

There were some bright spots. MCX did well, the trust benefited from IPOs in ICICI Prudential Asset Management and Lenskart, and defensive names such as Dr Reddy and Embassy REIT held up better than much of the market. But the winners were nowhere near enough to offset the broader damage.

There is another wrinkle here: Indian capital gains tax. The trust says the benchmark does not reflect this real cost, while the company’s NAV does. That is fair enough as an explanation, but even against the India ETF – which the manager says is a more realistic comparison because it also reflects capital gains tax – the ETF fell only 9.8%. So this was still a disappointing period by almost any sensible comparison.

Long-term JPMorgan India Growth & Income performance is the bigger concern

The short-term sell-off is one thing. The longer-term record is arguably the more important issue for investors deciding whether to stick around.

Over five years to the end of March 2026, the trust delivered an annualised NAV return of 2.0%. Over ten years, it returned 4.7% per annum. Both figures lag the benchmark, which returned 5.5% annualised over five years and 8.7% over ten years.

That is not a one-off stumble. It suggests a more persistent challenge in turning a strong India growth story into benchmark-beating returns for shareholders. If you are paying for active management, that gap matters.

Discount, buybacks and the 2028 tender offer: what this means for shareholders

Investment trusts often trade at a discount to NAV, meaning the share price is lower than the value of the underlying assets. JPMorgan India Growth & Income is actively trying to keep that under control.

During the period, it bought back 776,263 shares into Treasury, equal to 1.7% of the starting issued share capital excluding Treasury shares. Since the half-year end, it has bought back another 798,343 shares. That shows the board is serious about its policy of targeting a single-digit discount.

Even so, the discount widened from 8.9% at the prior year end to 10.2% at the half-year end. In plain English, investors became a bit less willing to pay up for the trust, despite buybacks. The 9.2% discount on 12 June 2026 is a mild improvement, but not a dramatic one.

The more interesting feature is the triennial tender offer due to start in Q2 2028. Shareholders are meant to get an opportunity to tender up to 100% of the outstanding share capital at a 3% discount to prevailing NAV. That could provide a useful exit route if the shares continue to trade cheaply.

But there is a big catch. The board can withdraw the tender offer if too many shares are tendered and the company’s NAV would fall below £150 million. If that happened, the board says it would expect to propose winding up the company. So the tender offer is helpful, but it is not a cast-iron safety net.

Dividend policy looks attractive, but investors should understand where the cash is coming from

The trust now has an enhanced dividend policy to pay at least 4% of NAV each year, based on the previous financial year end. For FY2026, each quarterly dividend is set at 11.08p per share, giving a planned total of 44.32p.

That will appeal to income investors, especially because the payments are quarterly in December, March, June and September. The company also introduced a dividend reinvestment plan, or DRIP, from the second quarterly interim dividend declared in January 2026.

But it is worth noting that these dividends are being funded from distributable capital reserves. In other words, this is not a classic “income covered by portfolio dividends” story. It is a managed payout policy, which can be perfectly legitimate, but investors should not confuse it with organic income growth.

Balance sheet, tax and financial position: ugly headline loss but some relief on deferred tax

The trust reported a net loss after taxation of £80.947 million for the half-year. Net assets fell to £403.698 million from £502.246 million at 30 September 2025.

One positive was the deferred tax liability for Indian capital gains tax, which dropped to £5.128 million from £17.833 million at the previous year end. That reversal helped, but not enough to offset weak portfolio performance.

Cash and cash equivalents ended the period at £1.485 million, up from £23,000 at the September 2025 year end. The company also says it remains a going concern, with no material uncertainty over the next 12 months.

My take on the JPMorgan India Growth & Income RNS

This is a bruising update. The board and manager make a reasonable case that external shocks, especially oil and geopolitics, have hammered Indian equities and created better entry points. That may be true, and India’s long-term structural growth story remains compelling on paper.

But retail investors should not gloss over the hard bit: this trust did worse than the benchmark, worse than the India ETF comparator mentioned in the report, and has lagged over both five and ten years. That makes this more than just “markets were weak”.

The positives are the active buyback policy, a clear dividend framework, and the possibility that a market sell-off gives the manager better opportunities than the richly valued conditions seen in recent years. The negatives are clear too: persistent underperformance, a still-wide discount, and exposure to growth names that can fall hard when sentiment turns.

For existing shareholders, this report is probably a reminder that patience is still being tested. For new investors, the question is simple: do you believe this manager can turn India’s long-term growth into better returns from here? The trust says yes. The recent track record says you should ask that question quite carefully.