Digital 9 Infrastructure (DGI9 ) has become the second investment company to try and soothe market fears over its wide discount, with the board stating the directors and fund managers were not ‘aware of any portfolio-specific factors’ behind the shares losing a quarter of their value in the past month.

Shares in the £946m Triple Point managed portfolio had slumped to a 42% discount below net asset value (NAV) yesterday, which columnist David Stevenson said looked excessive. This reduced their market value to £551m and putting it in the Numis Securities’ ‘cheap’ list we publish in our weekly Trust Watch.

Today, they rose nearly 3% to 63p as the company revealed that Triple Point had bought another 150,000 shares through its Perihelion subsidiary at an average price of 61.4p. In addition, it said senior members of the fund manager’s digital infrastructure team had bought 240,000 shares.

That lifts Triple Point’s total to over 2.3m shares, or 0.27%, of the Jersey-based but London-listed closed-end fund launched at £1 in March 2021.

‘The board believes that the discount to net asset value at which the company’s share price currently trades materially undervalues the company and its portfolio. The board maintains confidence in the group’s diversified portfolio of nine high-quality data centre, subsea fibre, wireless and terrestrial fibre assets which continue to perform strongly, in line with management expectations,’ DGI9 said. 

Numis analyst Colette Ord said the statement was helpful but did not diminish the ‘capital allocation juggling act’ DGI9 faced trying to reduce debts, improve dividend cover, invest in its companies and appoint a new lead fund manager following the shock resignation of Thor Johnsen and investment director Andre Karihaloo.

The company said it was making progress securing a $100m loan facility for one of its portfolio companies and the syndication of a minority stake in other businesses to a ‘strategic capital partner’.

HydrogenOne Capital Growth (HGEN ) issued a similar statement on 29 March after its shares slumped 39% in March. They have gained 16% since but at 47.7p last night were still stranded on 51% below NAV. Against a one-year average discount of 12%, that made the investment trust the cheapest in the UK with a low ‘Z-score’ of -2.9. 

However, they added another 2.9p, or 6%, to 50.9p, today after annual results confirmed the portfolio of early-stage, revenue-generating project developers and equipment suppliers grew NAV by 1.6% last year.