Scottish Mortgage shares up 105% amid Tesla success

Baillie Gifford

By Mark McSherry

The stock price of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust plc rose another 5.5% to £9.59 on Monday after shares of its top holding Tesla surged 11% on Friday ahead of the electric car maker’s likely inclusion in the US S&P 500 index.

Scottish Mortgage is a member of the FTSE 100 and is the flagship fund of Edinburgh-based investment giant Baillie Gifford, which has assets under management and advice of almost £200 billion.

The fund’s share price has soared 105% since March 18 to give Scottish Mortgage a current stock market valuation of around £14 billion.

The Edinburgh-based closed end fund is now the UK’s largest investment trust — and is a major shareholder in many prominent global companies including Tesla, Amazon, Illumina, Tencent, Netflix and Alibaba.

At May 31, Scottish Mortgage said it had assets valued at around £11.4 billion.

Over the past five years, Scottish mortgage NAV total return grew 124.6% and its share price total return grew 123.5%, compared to the 41.5% of the FTSE All-World index, the 69.1% of the investment trust global sector average NAV total return, and the 68.4% of the investment trust global sector average in share price total return.

Baillie Gifford employs about 1,300 people and is headquartered in Edinburgh with offices in Buenos Aires, Dublin, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Krakow, London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto and Zurich.