The £890 million Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust plc said its share price and net asset value (NAV) returned 18% and 14.1% respectively for the six months to November 30, 2025.
This compares with a total return of 18.6% for the S&P 500 Index.
The fund’s discount decreased from 9.4% to 6.3% over the period.
Baillie Gifford US Growth seeks to invest predominantly in listed and unlisted US companies which the company believes have the potential to grow substantially faster than the average company, and to hold onto them for long periods of time.
The investment trust’s largest holdings in the period included SpaceX, Stripe, Shopify, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Netflix, Cloudflare, DoorDash and Tesla.
New York activist hedge fund Saba Capital Management, which recently failed in its attempts to remove the board of Baillie Gifford US Growth, maintains a roughly 28% shareholding in Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust.
The fund’s managers wrote: “In The Vertigo Years, Philipp Blom describes Europe from 1900 to 1914 as a world ‘dizzy with the speed of its own transformation’, a civilisation trying to absorb shocks from electricity, automobiles, telephones, mass media, new financial systems and rival scientific revolutions in physics and biology …
“We are living through a similar dislocation today …
“Electricity reorganised work and home; AI is reorganising cognition itself. Industrial machines replaced muscle; intelligent systems are beginning to reshape judgement, creativity and problem-solving. Intelligence itself is becoming a deployable utility …
“What we feel now – the excitement, the unease, the sense of standing on the edge of something vast – is vertigo.
“AI sits on the cusp of breathtaking possibility, but it is surrounded by a haze of uncertainty. The vertigo years of the early 20th century were noisy, speculative, unequal and, at times, overconfident, and yet they birthed the foundational technologies of the modern world. The signal was extraordinary, even if the noise was overwhelming.
“The institutions that thrived were those that adapted early, those able to see through the chaos to the underlying structural shift. That is precisely where we stand with AI.
“Yes, the pace is disorienting. Yes, it’s hard to separate substance from hype. Yes, there will be excesses and missteps. But the underlying transformation is as profound as the transition from muscle-powered industry to electrified industry. We are not looking at a trend. We are looking at a new foundation.”
The fund reported: “We made six new purchases over the reporting period: Circle Internet, Figma, Coinbase, Applovin, Knife River and Anthropic (private company). In addition, we made three complete sales during the period: Airbnb, Roku and Chewy.”
The investment trust explained: “The company reduced its holding in SpaceX during the period. As noted in the managers’ report, the position had grown to represent more than 10% of the portfolio, around twice the size of the next largest holding, and larger than we would like for our investment strategy which places importance on a diversified portfolio.
“Despite much media speculation, there is no clear timing on any potential IPO of SpaceX, and the managers felt it prudent to realise 48.5% of the growth in the company at this stage but we remain confident on the company’s future growth prospects. The managers continue to review all holdings on an ongoing basis, taking into account prospective returns, competition for capital and the importance of maintaining appropriate diversification as part of disciplined risk management.
“The board believes that this approach to portfolio construction best positions the Company to deliver on its long-term investment objective.
“During the period, BillionToOne listed successfully. One new private investment – Anthropic – was completed. At the period end, the company held 27 private companies, representing 29.9% of total assets (May 2025: 34.9%).”
Fund chair Tom Burnet said: “Looking ahead, we see exciting opportunities for our diversified portfolio of companies, with their transformative potential, and we are confident about the company’s ability to deliver growth and sustainable shareholder value.
“We have also continued to be highly focussed on addressing the discount to NAV using the levers within our control, including buybacks. Over the period under review, the discount decreased from 9.4% to 6.3%.
“The base effect created by the exceptional gains achieved during the COVID period continue to weigh on relative performance over five years.
“We believe that over the longer term, as the macro backdrop for innovative, growth focussed businesses improves, performance will continue to narrow the discount and deliver a share price that more accurately reflects the quality of the portfolio.”
On Saba, Burnet said: “In accordance with good corporate governance practice … the Chair and Senior Independent Director sought to engage with those shareholders who voted against the resolutions, principally Saba, to understand the rationale for the votes against.
“As stated above, Saba refused to engage with us. Based on feedback received from other shareholders earlier in the year and as evidenced by their votes at the AGM, they continue to be supportive of the current Board; accordingly, the Board does not plan to take any action as a consequence of the votes cast against the resolutions at the AGM.”