What are we looking for?
How retail venture capital funds - better known as labour-sponsored investment funds - have fared. Investors typically get both federal and provincial tax credits but must stay in the fund for eight years.
The search
We screened retail venture capital funds with an eight-year track record to Sept. 30 to see which ones made investors money beyond tax credits. Duplicate versions of the funds were excluded.
What did we find?
Only six out of 17 funds emerged in the black.
Covington Venture Fund IV (also known as New Millennium Venture Fund - Balanced) posted the best return with an average annual gain of 7.6 per cent. The wrinkle to this play is that only half of its assets were in venture investments. The balance was in a zero-coupon bond.
This fund, which is closed to new investors, has outperformed its peers largely because of a fortuitous investment in software maker PlateSpin Ltd., which was bought in 2008 by Novell Inc. "That is the fundamental holding which drove the returns," said Scott Clark, managing director of Covington Capital Corp.
Covington acquired that fund from Triax Capital Management in 2005. Covington also did a deal recently to acquire five struggling funds run by Vengrowth Asset Management Inc. All will be merged with its Covington Fund II, including three that have lost between 7.8 per cent and 14 per cent annually over eight years.
Front Street Energy Growth Fund came second with an average annual gain of 6.6 per cent. Unlike most peers, it can invest anywhere in Canada rather than being limited to a particular province, but its investors only get federal tax credits. The fund invests in emerging energy companies through private placements, and three-quarters of them are public.
Laricina Energy Ltd., a private company that is expected to go public in the next two years, and publicly traded stocks such as Whitecap Resources Inc., Wild Stream Exploration Inc. and Midway Energy Ltd. have been contributors to performance, said manager Normand Lamarche of Front Street Capital Corp. "I own the four companies in my other funds because I like the companies. So it's smart for clients to get a little bit of tax credit at the same time while getting exposure to similar names."
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this Number Cruncher contained an out of date MER for Front Street Energy Gwth Fund. This version has been corrected.