Baillie Gifford’s $1.8 billion Schiehallion Fund investment trust company said its ordinary share net asset value (NAV) returned 32.6% and its share price returned 64.8% in the year to January 31, 2026.
Schiehallion Fund’s share price discount to NAV moved from a discount of 19.2% to a premium of 0.4% at the year-end.
Schiehallion Fund seeks to generate capital growth for investors through long-term minority investments in later stage private businesses that the fund considers to have “transformational growth potential and to have the potential to become publicly traded.”
The investment trust’s chair Linda Yueh wrote: “There is a prospect of some potentially generational IPOs later in 2026, including a few companies held in the portfolio.
“If this transpires, it would be an important marker for some of the most sought‑after private growth companies transitioning into public markets and would also offer further liquidity for the company to continue pursuing an attractive opportunities set across the private growth landscape.”
The fund’s managers, Peter Singlehurst and Robert Natzler, wrote: “The three largest contributors to absolute NAV performance were Italian digital product company Bending Spoons, space infrastructure giant SpaceX, as well as the Chinese social media company ByteDance.
“The three largest detractors to absolute NAV performance were Indian digital media and content platform Dailyhunt (Ver Se Innovation), the sustainable chemicals business Solugen, and corporate spend management platform Brex.
“Among the contributors, Bending Spoons continued to execute its acquisition-led strategy and ended the year with momentum, including announced agreements to acquire the digital internet media and content brand, AOL, as well as the shared experience marketplace, Eventbrite. The company also completed its latest funding round during the fourth quarter to support ongoing investment and future acquisitions.
“SpaceX’s contribution was driven most directly by secondary market signals. It was reported in December that the company would be commencing a secondary share sale that would potentially value it at US$800 billion.
“This ultimately resulted in a notable valuation uplift, making it the second largest holding within the portfolio (behind Bending Spoons). The company continues to exhibit arguably one of the strongest competitive advantages that we have ever seen.
“After the reporting period SpaceX also announced the acquisition of artificial intelligence company, xAI, potentially further strengthening the advantage around the core infrastructure it has already built in its launch and Starlink satellite businesses.
“ByteDance similarly finished the year strongly, supported by a reported share auction valuation and evolving clarity around the future structure of TikTok in the US. It continues to serve as a reminder of the fertile growth opportunities on offer in a geography like China …”
The fund’s 10 largest holdings at January 31 were Bending Spoons, SpaceX, ByteDance, Databricks, Wayve, Wise, Stripe, Affirm, Tekever and Anthropic.
Singlehurst and Natzler added: “The fundamental health of the portfolio remains robust. Weighted average revenue growth stood at 54% for the overall portfolio at 31 December 2025 – more than two and a half times that of the Nasdaq 100 public market index – with the top ten holdings growing faster still (66%).
“Furthermore, 62% of the portfolio is invested in companies that were profitable on a net income basis at 31 December 2025, while only 17% of the portfolio is exposed to holdings with a cash runway of less than two years, thereby giving us confidence about the overall financial resilience across the portfolio.
“By the end of the year the portfolio comprised 53 holdings, six of which are listed (11.9% of net assets). The geographic breakdown also continues to showcase the truly global nature of our opportunity set. While 54.3% of the portfolio is invested in US businesses, there are also notable allocations to Europe (20.6%), China (11.2%) and the UK (9.4%).
“The three largest sector exposures within the company are Information Technology (42.3%), Industrials (21.8%) and Financials (11.9%). The ten largest companies in the portfolio comprised 58.9% of total net assets, with such concentration expected given the asymmetric return profile that we would expect to continue seeing over time …
“By 31 January 2026 Schiehallion held investments in six of the ten largest private growth companies in the world (by publicly available estimates).
“The company therefore continues to offer an exceptionally compelling pathway for shareholders to benefit from the incredible amount of growth and innovation occurring within private markets.
“Finally, we cast our eyes towards our broader opportunity set, which makes us excited about pursuing new investments within the portfolio in the coming year. While the bar for entry remains high – particularly given the level of full deployment – we retain multiple avenues to create capacity over time, including the disciplined recycling of capital as liquidity events arise across the portfolio (such as IPOs or secondary transactions) and through ongoing portfolio management, ensuring we can act when truly exceptional opportunities present themselves.”