Scottish Mortgage: NAV Hits New Peak on SpaceX Revaluation as Private Market Risks Cool Share Price

Scottish Mortgage Trust's NAV hits fresh highs after marking up SpaceX stake, but share price falls sharply, reviving debate over discount and private-asset liquidity risks.

The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust finds itself caught in a peculiar tug-of-war. Its net asset value has climbed to fresh highs after managers marked up the SpaceX stake by a full 3.1 percentage points of portfolio weight, yet the share price fell sharply over the same week — a divergence that puts the spotlight squarely on the liquidity perils lurking in private markets.

The revaluation, disclosed on 4 June, lifted SpaceX’s position to 21.0% of total assets, up from 17.9% at the end of April. The move was triggered by SpaceX’s confirmation of its IPO price and followed the trust’s internal guidelines for unlisted holdings. The updated NAV stood at 1,493.98 pence on a cum-fair basis. QuotedData estimated the SpaceX holding now weighs in at roughly £3.5 billion, implying a company valuation of about $1.6 trillion.

But the share price told a different story. The stock closed Friday at €17.10 in Frankfurt, shedding 3.88% on the day and 5.39% for the week. That left the equity trading 12.31% below its 52-week high of €19.50, despite a year-to-date gain of 23.11%. The divergence between NAV and market price has revived the debate about the discount at which the trust’s shares change hands — and whether the public market is fully pricing in the risks attached to its heavy private-asset exposure.

Those risks were underscored by an event in Switzerland. On 3 June, Partners Group imposed a “redemption gate” on its $8.6 billion Global Value SICAV after second-quarter redemption requests hit 9.8% of net asset value, well above the standard 5% quarterly threshold. The move is designed to prevent fire sales of illiquid holdings, but it hammered Partners Group’s own shares and sent a shudder through the broader private-asset industry. For a trust like Scottish Mortgage, which allocates a large chunk of its portfolio to unlisted names, the episode served as a stark reminder that liquidity constraints can bite even the most prestigious private-market players.

Meanwhile, the very companies driving Scottish Mortgage’s valuation are moving closer to the public exchanges. SpaceX filed an amended prospectus with the SEC on 6 June, setting a price of $135 per Class A share, implying a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion. The final price is due on 11 June, with trading on the Nasdaq scheduled for the following day. For Scottish Mortgage, SpaceX remains the heavyweight: its stake was estimated at around 19.3% of the portfolio as of March, falling to 18% in early June before the revaluation.

Close behind is artificial-intelligence developer Anthropic. The company closed a $65 billion Series H financing round on 28 May at a post-money valuation of $965 billion, and it confidentially submitted an S-1 registration document to the SEC on 1 June — the first formal step toward an initial public offering. Anthropic, the operator of the Claude AI model, reported an annualised revenue run-rate of more than $47 billion in May 2024.

The trust itself demonstrated strong demand earlier in the week, issuing 3.85 million shares from its treasury at 1,545.42 pence — a premium to the then-NAV. Such issues are typical for investment trusts only when shares trade at a premium, and the move underscored solid institutional appetite before the week’s downturn. Yet the subsequent share-price slide suggests that investors are weighing the concentration risk and the eventual fate of those private holdings once lock-up periods expire post-IPO.

Technically, the decline does not yet signal a broken recovery. The stock remains 3.19% above its 50-day moving average of €16.57 and well above the 100-day line at €15.36. The relative strength index of 47.4 points to neutral territory, free of overbought or oversold extremes. If the price breaks below the 50-day support, the 100-day average becomes the next floor; on the upside, the 52-week high of €19.50 remains the benchmark for any re-rating of the trust’s private-market bets.

Investors now face a week heavy with macro events — the European Central Bank meets on 11 June, US inflation data for May and labour-market figures are due — but the immediate test for Scottish Mortgage is whether the NAV strength can restore confidence after the weekly loss. The SpaceX IPO will be the ultimate validator of the trust’s private-market thesis; until then, the gap between the book value and the market price tells its own story about the discipline the public markets impose.