Scottish Mortgage on the Verge of a $750bn Valuation Windfall as SpaceX IPO Looms

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust surges 27.4% in 2026, driven by its massive SpaceX stake. The upcoming IPO could trigger a revaluation worth up to $750 billion, fueled by Starlink's soaring profits.

The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has delivered a blistering 27.4% return in 2026, but the real fireworks may be yet to come. At the heart of this rally lies a single bet: SpaceX, the Elon Musk-led rocket and satellite company, which is poised to go public on 12 June under the ticker SPCX. And there is a yawning gap in how the trust values that stake versus what the market may be willing to pay.

Scottish Mortgage first invested in SpaceX between 2018 and 2021, ploughing in between £150m and £200m. That position is now worth roughly $4bn — a 19-fold return on cost. But the trust's own books value SpaceX's whole enterprise at $1.25tn, based on its first-quarter 2026 estimates. Bloomberg data, meanwhile, suggests the IPO could fetch a valuation of more than $2tn, with Ark Investment Management putting the figure at $1.75tn and NYU's Aswath Damodaran pegging fair value at around $1tn. The difference between the trust's carrying valuation and the upper end of market expectations amounts to roughly $750bn — a potential windfall that would force Scottish Mortgage to substantially revalue its holding.

That revaluation would be a powerful catalyst for a trust already flying high. Its shares have gained 28.6% year to date, recently trading at €17.86, down 0.9% on the day but still just 5% below the 52-week high of €18.85. The relative strength index of 40.6 hints at a pause, yet the longer-term trajectory is unmistakable: over the past 12 months, Scottish Mortgage has soared 66%, compared with the FTSE 100's 5% advance. The divergence is almost entirely explained by its private-market holdings, SpaceX first among them.

The engine behind SpaceX's valuation surge is Starlink, the satellite-internet arm. In the first quarter of 2026, Starlink generated $3.26bn in revenue — 69% of SpaceX's total — and an operating profit of $1.19bn. For the full year 2025, SpaceX reported roughly $20bn in sales. Starlink's profitability and growth are the key reasons analysts expect the IPO to command a premium to the trust's current book value.

Meanwhile, Scottish Mortgage is taking steps to manage its share price discount. Since April, the board has been buying back up to 14.99% of outstanding shares to narrow the gap to net asset value, which stood at £13.7bn as of March 2025. The ex-dividend date falls on 11 June, one day before the SpaceX listing. The trust's portfolio remains heavily skewed toward North America (54.5%) and technology (30%), a concentration that amplifies both upside and downside — as evidenced by the Finsbury Growth & Income Trust, which slid 14% over six months amid pressure on tech names like Relx and the London Stock Exchange Group.

When SpaceX does list, index providers S&P, Nasdaq and FTSE are expected to fast-track inclusion within 15 days, thanks to recent rule changes. That could trigger a wave of passive buying. Scottish Mortgage's management has already signalled it intends to keep its SpaceX position "very large" even after the float, using the IPO as an opportunity to rebalance the portfolio without exiting a bet that has already minted billions in paper profits. For investors, the real question is how much of that $750bn valuation gap has already been priced into the trust's shares — and how much is still to come.