Scottish Mortgage Trades the Treasury for Demand as AI and SpaceX Reset the Story
31.05.2026 - 18:13:54 | boerse-global.de
Scottish Mortgage is using a very different tool from the one it relied on over the past two years. Instead of buying back stock to narrow a discount, the FTSE 100 investment trust is now selling shares from treasury because the market is willing to pay a premium.
On 29 May 2026, the trust issued 2.85 million shares at 1,521.59 pence each. The placement was made above the prevailing net asset value, a move that should be accretive for existing holders. After the transaction, a little over 1.11 billion shares were in issue, with 371.9 million still held in treasury.
The shift follows a lengthy buyback phase. Between 2024 and 2025, Scottish Mortgage repurchased around 3 billion pounds of its own stock in an effort to contain the discount to NAV. That helped steady the rating. Now the discount has flipped into a premium, and the trust has started to lean into demand rather than fight it. Since mid-May, it has been buying back treasury shares almost daily, a sign that appetite has remained strong.
Performance has helped fuel that change in sentiment. For the financial year to end-March 2026, Scottish Mortgage delivered a NAV total return of 27.4 percent, ahead of the FTSE All-World Index’s 18.0 percent. The shares have risen 30.13 percent since the start of the year, and they closed on Friday at 18.07 euro, up 10.01 percent over the past 30 days and just under four percent below the 52-week high.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Scottish Mortgage Investment?
A big part of the attraction is the trust’s exposure to private companies. As of 28 February 2026, unlisted holdings accounted for 37.2 percent of total assets, with SpaceX alone representing 15.4 percent of the portfolio. Scottish Mortgage also said it holds stakes in six of the world’s eight largest private companies.
SpaceX remains the most closely watched line item. The trust values its stake at 1.25 trillion dollars, and a long-awaited IPO is expected in June. Because Scottish Mortgage is a closed-end fund, it does not face redemption pressure and does not have to sell SpaceX shares when the company lists. That said, the exact lock-up terms for existing holders have not yet been disclosed, so it is still unclear whether Scottish Mortgage will face the same restrictions as other pre-IPO investors.
AI is the other major engine of interest. Anthropic, the Claude developer, reported annualized revenue of 45 billion dollars in May, up from 9 billion dollars a year earlier. Scottish Mortgage added Anthropic to the portfolio last year, alongside Loyal Animal Health and RedNote, and invested 254 million pounds in private companies over the period, almost twice the prior year’s figure. Tom Slater has described the trust’s approach to artificial intelligence as deliberately broad, spanning chips through Nvidia, ASML and TSMC, infrastructure via Amazon Web Services and Anthropic, and applications such as Aurora’s autonomous trucks.
The trust has also asked shareholders for more flexibility in private markets. They approved an extra 250 million pounds of capacity for new or follow-on investments in private companies, even where the 30 percent threshold is exceeded. That authority has to be renewed annually.
Costs remain low. Ongoing charges are around 0.33 percent and there are no performance fees. Leverage has eased over the year, with gearing falling from 13 percent to about 11 percent, while average borrowing costs stand at 3.6 percent. The decline in gearing was driven mainly by portfolio growth rather than a large reduction in debt. Total liabilities amount to 1.6 billion pounds.
Dividends continue to climb as well. Scottish Mortgage plans to pay a final dividend of 2.97 pence per share on 10 July 2026, taking the full-year payout to 4.57 pence. That would extend a 43-year run of annual dividend increases, a record that has earned the trust an AIC “Dividend Hero” label.
Risk has not disappeared. About 14 percent of the portfolio is tied to Chinese companies, including ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, and that was the weakest area of the trust’s holdings over the past year. Strongly financed businesses are still fighting for market share in an economy where private consumption is barely growing, and fresh US restrictions could add pressure.
Governance updates are also on the calendar. The annual general meeting is due on 2 July at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Heather Manners is set to join the board as an independent non-executive director, subject to shareholder approval, while Professor Maxwell will step down once the meeting concludes.
For now, the focus is on whether the premium holds. If it does, Scottish Mortgage has room to keep issuing treasury shares and use the proceeds to back its long-term growth bets.
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