Theodore White, the American political journalist, described inflation as ‘arriving gradually, is recognised too late and can be cured only by ruthless political surgery’.

In June the UK’s annual rate rose to a new four-decade high and is predicted to peak at 13% according to the latest Bank of England forecast.

While many of today’s investors have never seen meaningful inflation anybody who lived during the 1970s will need no reminder about how destructive inflation can be. In the UK, inflation jumped from 9.2% in September 1973 to 12.9% in March 1974.

The latest surge in prices has generated increased interest in investments which offer a degree of protection against inflation and this includes ETFs (exchange-traded funds).

In this article Shares profiles three relevant ETFs and looks at their strengths and drawbacks. They are: iShares Index Linked Gilts ETF (INXG), Invesco Perpetual Gold ETF (SGLD) and SPDR Morningstar Multi Asset Global Infrastructure (GIN).

INFLATION AND INDEX-LINKED GILTS

The first modern inflation-linked bonds, or ‘linkers’, were issued by the UK in 1981. It was issued by single price auction, and indexation was to the general index of retail prices (RPI).

Index-linked gilts work by benchmarking their coupons and principal repayment amount against an inflation index. Gilts issued by the UK government use RPI as their benchmark.

Coupons are paid on a semi-annual basis (i.e. twice yearly). The coupon amount you’ll get with each payment will be determined by how much the inflation index used as its benchmark has moved.

Prices for ultra-long inflation-linked debt have fallen in recent months after hitting an all-time high in December 2021, due to a broader drop in bond prices in anticipation of a global tightening of monetary policy to combat higher prices.

The 2073 index-linked bond is down 54% from its November 2021 all-time high, falling 22% in May alone.

Demand for British index-linked debt is generally strong, reflecting appetite from pension funds and insurers with inflation-linked liabilities. This demand has been accentuated by the surge in inflation over the past year.

In April the UK sold 50-year index-linked bonds with a face value of £1.8 billion.

iShares Index Linked Gilts ETF replicates the performance of the Bloomberg UK Government Inflation Bond index which tracks sterling denominated inflation-linked bonds.

The £794 million fund invests in UK inflation-linked bonds across the full range of maturities.

The fund has 32 holdings, with a weighted average coupon of 0.55%. The ETF uses a sampling technique to select the most relevant index constituents and has a 0.1% ongoing charge.

In performance terms, the ETF is showing few signs yet of helping to protect investors from inflationary pressures. On a one-year basis, the sterling return including dividends is -16.1%, and on a three-year basis it is -9.45%.

The problem with many of the index-linked bond products available to UK investors is that they have an extremely long duration which makes them very sensitive to interest rate moves.

In a rising rate environment this means any protection they might offer against rising prices is neutered.

GOLD AS AN INFLATION HEDGE

Swiss asset manager Unigestion has found that between 1974 and 2017 gold delivered an average return of 10% during periods of inflation.

The Invesco Physical Gold ETC (which trades under the ticker SGLP for sterling-priced shares and SGLD for those in dollars) is linked to gold held in JPMorgan’s bank vaults in London.

A key attraction is the total expense ratio that has fallen from 0.19% two years ago to its current level of 0.12%. Another appeal of the fund is its size with assets of £12.3 billion.

Over the last six months the fund has returned 9.3% at a time when most equity markets have experienced considerable declines.

On a one-year basis it has returned 11%, and over three years it has generated a return of 21.6%.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND INFLATION

Infrastructure according to asset manager  Cliffwater represents ‘the basic physical systems required to allow a business, community or nation to function’.

The inflation-linked revenues, low operating costs and high margins of infrastructure investments have increasingly captured investors’ attention.

In times of rising inflation, companies that own or operate infrastructure can be an attractive investment option. Investments in infrastructure that are linked to real assets and generate stable, transparent and predictable operating cash flows offer a partial hedge against inflation.

Investors who expect rising inflation can therefore potentially protect their portfolio with infrastructure investments.

On a long-term basis, infrastructure has generated a return well above the inflation rate.

The reasons for this lie in the specific characteristics of infrastructure companies, as can be seen in the example of several toll road operators.

The road concessions awarded by a regulator often contain appropriate clauses for adjusting tolls. Regulatory framework conditions, concessions and long-term contracts can explicitly link the revenues of the infrastructure company to inflation.

The SPDR Morningstar Multi Asset Global Infrastructure ETF tracks the Morningstar Global Multi Asset Infrastructure index which is equally weighted (50/50 split) between equities and bonds that fall within infrastructure-related industries. The index rebalances on a quarterly basis.

The fund has £1.31 billion of assets and an ongoing charge of 0.4% per year. While materially more expensive then vanilla trackers which match the performance of a stock index like the FTSE 100, these charges look undemanding given the greater complexity involved in tracking an index of infrastructure assets.

The two largest sector weightings are utilities (20.9%) and industrials (20%). Energy and real estate account for 4.4% and 2.9% of fund weightings respectively.

From a country perspective the US accounts for the majority of asset exposure at 49.3%, followed by Canada (6.8%), France (5.5%) and
the UK (3.5%).

On a one-year basis the fund has delivered a sterling return including dividends of 4.4%. On a three-year basis returns are 8.7%. The current dividend yield is 2.01%.

Infrastructure defined

Regardless of sector, the common shared attributes of most infrastructure investments are:

- High barriers to entry.

- Resilience to economic cycles.

- Long duration.

- Relatively inelastic demand.

- Relatively stable and predictable cash flows.

- Positive correlation to inflation.

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