Scottish Mortgage Turns Premium as SpaceX IPO and Nvidia Earnings Converge

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust now trades at a 4% premium, reversing last year's 8% discount, after a 52% return fueled by AI infrastructure and SpaceX's upcoming IPO.

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has flipped from trading at a persistent discount to a net asset value premium, a shift that underscores mounting confidence in its dual bet on artificial intelligence infrastructure and private space travel. The trust placed more than three million shares from its own treasury in three separate tranches during May alone, all sold at a markup to NAV. Today, the stock commands a premium of around 4 percent, a stark reversal from the 8 percent average discount it suffered last year.

The renewed willingness of investors to pay a premium is rooted in performance. Over the past twelve months, Scottish Mortgage has returned nearly 52 percent, leading its global peer group. The portfolio is heavily tilted toward companies building the backbone of AI, with TSMC, ASML and Nvidia among its top holdings. But the single largest position is a private name: SpaceX, at over 18 percent of net assets. That exposure is now drawing intense scrutiny as Elon Musk’s rocket venture prepares for its long-awaited public listing.

SpaceX has set its Nasdaq debut for June 12, 2026, under the ticker SPCX. Shareholders recently approved a five-for-one stock split, reducing the implied fair value per share from $526.59 to $105.32 and making the equity more accessible to retail buyers. The company is targeting an offering size of up to $75 billion, which could push its total valuation toward $2 trillion — well above the $1.25 trillion internal estimate Scottish Mortgage has used to date. How the market prices the IPO will directly affect the trust’s NAV.

The IPO narrative rests increasingly on Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet division. In 2025, SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in revenue but posted a net loss of $4.94 billion, largely due to the costly merger with xAI. Starlink contributed $11.4 billion of that revenue and delivered an operating profit of $4.42 billion, giving the group a proven profit engine. For Scottish Mortgage, the more credible Starlink’s earnings trajectory, the easier it becomes to defend a lofty private valuation in the portfolio.

Ahead of the listing, another operational milestone looms: the twelfth test flight of Starship V3, scheduled for May 19, 2026, in Texas. The upgraded vehicle uses Raptor-3 engines and is designed to produce over 18 million pounds of thrust. A successful flight would bolster SpaceX’s technical narrative; a failure would make the trust’s billion-dollar bet look far riskier.

Meanwhile, a shorter-term catalyst arrives this week with Nvidia’s quarterly earnings. As one of the trust’s six largest holdings, the chip designer’s results will directly influence NAV. Analysts are watching for signs that global capital spending on AI infrastructure is accelerating, with industry estimates for 2026 already at $650 billion.

The bullish tilt extends beyond Scottish Mortgage. Baillie Gifford’s sister vehicle, the Schiehallion Fund, recently climbed back above $2.00 for the first time since 2022, more than doubling over twelve months. That signals a broader revival of risk appetite for late-stage private growth companies, including Anthropic and ByteDance, both of which appear in Scottish Mortgage’s portfolio. Anthropic, a developer of AI language models, was already generating an annualized revenue run rate of $1 billion early last year.

On a technical basis, Scottish Mortgage’s shares closed Friday at €16.98, leaving them up 22.28 percent year to date and within 1 percent of the 52-week high of €17.15. The stock trades roughly 10 percent above its 50-day moving average, while the 14-day relative strength index sits at 40.6 — suggesting there is room for further upside without overheating. The trust also placed an additional 500,000 shares at 1,438 pence in a recent tap.

Shareholders will get a chance to quiz management at the annual general meeting in Edinburgh on July 2. With the trust now issuing shares at a premium for the first time in years and the SpaceX IPO generating headlines, capital allocation is certain to dominate the agenda.