The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust is heading into a pivotal stretch this summer that could redefine its standing in both the public and private markets. On the surface, the trust is extending its 40-year-plus record of uninterrupted dividend growth, with a 4.3% increase for the financial year and a final payout of just under three pence per share due for shareholder approval at the Edinburgh AGM on 2 July. But the real drama is unfolding behind that placid dividend story.
The board is asking investors to scrap the current 30% cap on unlisted holdings, a limit the portfolio already exceeds by a wide margin – private assets now account for over 41% of the trust’s £13.82 billion in total net assets. Shareholders will also vote on a substantial share buyback programme. The moves signal management’s conviction that the biggest returns lie outside the public markets, even as the broader environment for private tech investments grows frostier.
The trust’s largest single holding, SpaceX, is the clearest example of that conviction. Worth roughly a fifth of the portfolio, the space company is set to join the Nasdaq-100 index in July, a milestone that J.P. Morgan estimates will force passive funds to plough around $4.3 billion into its stock. That structural demand arrives even as SpaceX’s 2025 annual results show a net loss of $4.94 billion, largely due to heavy spending on AI infrastructure and the Starship programme. Starlink, however, is already profitable: it posted an operating profit of $1.19 billion in the first quarter of 2026 on a 36% margin.
Wedbush Securities recently initiated coverage of SpaceX with an “Outperform” rating and a $190 price target, arguing that the company is evolving into a “major hyperscaler” comparable to the big cloud providers. The thesis rests on Starlink’s ability to route vast data volumes to billions of global users. Bond investors seem equally confident: SpaceX raised $25 billion in debt across maturities of five to 30 years, attracting orders of nearly $90 billion – more than triple the amount on offer.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Scottish Mortgage Investment?
Another private holding, the AI start-up Anthropic, is also nearing a public exit. The company is expected to file for an initial public offering as early as October 2026, and Scottish Mortgage’s stake is valued at approximately £400 million. Market observers have recently pegged Anthropic’s overall worth at around $965 billion, a figure that would provide a hefty boost to the trust’s net asset value when realised.
Yet the private market backdrop is far from unambiguously bullish. A Bain & Company study found that tech transaction volumes collapsed by 70% in early 2026, while software valuations dropped 8%. Strong US jobs data has pushed the probability of a December interest rate rise above 80%, prompting some rotation out of high-growth names. The trust’s own performance has been robust – the net asset value rose 27.4% in the last financial year and the share price has gained 24.26% year to date – but its reliance on unlisted assets introduces an illiquidity risk that few traditional investment trusts carry.
On the technical side, Scottish Mortgage shares closed at €17.26 on Wednesday, up 2.83%. The relative strength index sits at a neutral 56.2, suggesting room to run before becoming overbought. The next resistance is the 52-week high of €19.50, roughly 11% above current levels. Whether the July events – the SpaceX index inclusion, the AGM vote, and potentially the final dividend payment on 10 July – generate enough momentum to test that level remains to be seen.
In the meantime, institutional support is solidifying. Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management bought a multi-million-pound stake in June, and the trust’s dividend – despite costing nearly twice its £25.6 million net profit – is being partly funded from reserves, a clear signal that the board prioritises maintaining its “Dividend Hero” status. But as the vote on the private-asset cap approaches, investors are weighing whether that status can coexist with a portfolio that increasingly resembles a venture capital fund.
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