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When I see senior executives buying lots of shares in the company they help run, I tend to take notice. The passive income stock I’m writing about today has seen one senior insider invest more than £1m over the last year.
Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (LSE: SEQI) is not exactly a household name. But this specialist infrastructure fund has a market cap of more than £1bn and is a member of the FTSE 250. It also offers a 9% dividend yield, hence my interest.
What does the fund do?
Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund lends money for infrastructure projects. Examples include data centres, telecoms towers, renewable energy, and other utility projects.
By lending directly to developers and operators, the fund is able to get a good understanding of the risks involved and achieve high income yields.
The fund’s current loan portfolio has a cash yield of 7.5% and is expected to provide a total annualised return of almost 10%.
As an income investor, I’m attracted to debt investments because the risk of big losses should be lower than with equity.
Although some of the fund’s borrowers do fail to repay their loans, most debt is repaid in full. Interest payments are known in advance, unlike dividends.
However, investing in debt is difficult for most private investors, because the amounts of money involved are usually too large. This is one reason why I’m very interested in this investment at the moment. It gives me exposure to areas I’d otherwise struggle to access.
Too cheap to ignore?
The stock is currently trading at a discount of around 20% to the fund’s October 2024 net asset value of 94.4p per share. This discount has lifted the yield to more than 9%.
Without getting too technical, shares in many infrastructure funds are trading below book value due to the impact of higher interest rates. These make loans harder to afford, putting pressure on asset prices. It’s similar to housing, in a way.
There’s a risk that higher interest rates will lead to lower profits from lending and potentially a dividend cut. But this isn’t guaranteed.
If Sequoia maintains its record of loan quality and repayments, it could actually book additional profits as discounted loans are repaid in full.
Over time, investors may also regain confidence in the fund’s ability to lend profitably. That could lead to the shares rising to trade closer to book value, especially if interest rates fall.
One investor who seems confident about the outlook is Richard Sandstrom. He is chief executive of the fund’s investment adviser – the company that manages all the investments.
Sandstrom has spent more than £1m buying the fund’s shares over the last 12 months. His purchases have generally been at prices around 80p, just above the current price.
Buying for passive income
The dividend for the current financial year is expected to be 6.9p per share.
To generate an income of £175 a month, I would need to buy 30,434 shares. That would cost me around £23,100 at today’s prices.
Unfortunately I’m not able to invest quite this much cash in the shares at the moment.
But when Motley Fool regulations allow me to trade this stock, two working days after publishing, I plan to buy a smaller quantity of this high-yield stock for my personal portfolio.