Scottish Mortgage manager Baillie Gifford eyes £3bn return on historic Space X bet
Scottish investment juggernaut Baillie Gifford is in line to net a bumper £3.5bn return on its historic bet on Space X when the rocket maker floats on the stock market later this year, in what is believed to be one of the largest windfalls from a single debut in UK investment history.
A Morning Wire analysis found that across its four flagship investment trusts, the Edinburgh-headquartered asset manager can expect to book an average return of 18x their initial investment, assuming Space X fetches its rumoured $1.75 trillion (£1.3 trillion) IPO valuation.
Elon Musk’s cosmic tech firm is gearing up for what is set to be the largest public listing in stock market history later this year, with the Tesla boss hoping to raise roughly $75bn from investors to fund an expansive rocket rollout and space-based artificial intelligence investment.
The start-up submitted confidential IPO paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, and along with its army of advisers is currently sounding out potential investors ahead of a market launch later this year.
The market debut would constitute a momentous opportunity for Baillie Gifford to crystallise what is likely to be a mammoth return from its bumper bet on the space exploration firm.
Fund managers at Baillie Gifford, which manages London-listed trusts like Scottish Mortgage and Schiehallion, were among Space X’s earliest institutional backers, first investing in the Musk-run firm in 2018 when it was worth as little as $31bn.
Based on recent London Stock Exchange filings, the sum total of Baillie Gifford’s holding in Space X will be worth an estimated £3.9bn should it achieve the $1.75 trillion valuation believed to be at the upper end of its possible market capitalisation by analysts.
Space X IPO a ‘substantial liquidity event’ for Baillie Gifford trusts
Over 20 per cent of the Baillie Gifford-run Scottish Mortgage, the UK’s largest investment trust, is held in Musk’s space firm, lining the FTSE-100 trust up for a particularly large windfall. According to the Morning Wire analysis, its stake in Space X will be worth £3bn alone come the space firm’s public debut, a holding which has ballooned from the firm’s initial $200m investment five years ago.
“Space X can perhaps be considered a poster child Baillie Gifford investment, as they entered this private, founder-led company well before Spacetech interest was mainstream,” said Shavar Halberstadt, a research analyst at Winterflood Securities. “It has generated exponential returns since that investment in 2018, and will now cross over into public markets and deliver a substantial liquidity event for several of the trusts.”
Musk’s firm has also been a significant contributor to net asset value (NAV) returns for Baillie Gifford’s smaller trusts. Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (Ewit) and USA Growth Trust boast significant holdings Space X along with the FTSE 250-listed private megacap trust Schiehallion.
Unlike Scottish Mortgage, the trio of closed-end funds used a funding round late last year to trim some of their exposure to the space firm in a move their fund managers said would help dilute their portfolio’s concentration. Under USA Growth Trust’s mandate, the maximum direct investment in any one company is capped at 10 per cent of its total assets.
Edinburgh Worldwide is poised to notch up a 21.9x return, according to Morning Wire estimates, with its stake booming to £186m from an initial £8.5m investment, while USA Growth’s stake is set to grow from £6.5m to £125m.
Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG, said the trusts were “one of the simpler routes” retail investors could get a stake in the record-breaking IPO.
“Buying shares in these trusts offers indirect exposure to SpaceX, alongside a broader portfolio of innovative companies,” he said. The trade-off is that SpaceX is just one component, so its impact on returns is diluted.”
Baillie Gifford declined to comment.