Key points
- Scottish Mortgage sold its Tesla stake in April
- SpaceX fell to 11.1% of Scottish Mortgage's assets
- What Scottish Mortgage bought during the six months
- Whether Baillie Gifford still holds Tesla
Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT), the London-listed fund that backed Tesla (TSLA) in 2013 and SpaceX (SPCX) in 2018, has sold its entire Tesla stake and reduced its SpaceX holding.
SpaceX accounted for 11.1% of the fund's assets on November 4, down from 15% on September 30, according to its half-year report. The managers said they sold SpaceX shares as lock-ups allowed because the position had grown too large.
The Tesla sale came in April, CNBC reported, months before the November 3 midterm elections. The SpaceX figure predates the declines of about 11% and 9% in Tesla and SpaceX shares, respectively, on November 5. The fund's report doesn't mention the election.
Why did Scottish Mortgage sell SpaceX?
The fund says the position had grown too large. "We reduced the holding as lock-ups allowed, not because our enthusiasm dimmed but because it had grown to more than a quarter of the portfolio, unusually large even by our standards," the managers wrote.
A lock-up stops early investors from selling for a set period after an IPO. SpaceX listed on June 12, and up to 911.5 million shares became eligible to trade on August 6. CNBC reported that the fund has sold as those limits lifted in stages.
SpaceX was still the fund's largest holding on September 30, ahead of TSMC (TSM) at 6.5%. It was also the biggest contributor to the fund's results. The fund's net asset value per share, including dividends, rose 31.5% in the six months through September, and SpaceX contributed 8.0 percentage points. The FTSE All-World Index returned 16%. Over five years, the fund still trails that index, 27.8% to 79.3%.
How much SpaceX did the fund sell?
The report doesn't give a share count, and part of the drop from 15% to 11.1% came from the stock price. SpaceX closed at $150.86 on September 30 and $135.92 on November 4.
By our calculations, the holding fell from about 24.6 million shares to about 19.3 million. That would be an estimated reduction of about 5 million shares in five weeks, or a bit more than a fifth of the stake.
Our estimate uses the fund's reported £2.80 billion SpaceX value, its November 4 net asset value, its latest share count, and the exchange rate on each date. The fund measures the 11.1% against total assets before deducting borrowings, so we added £984 million of borrowings to net asset value. We assumed that figure hasn't changed since September 30. Had the fund sold nothing, we estimate SpaceX would have been about 14% of assets.
Why did it sell Tesla?
The managers said the share price already reflected much of what Tesla promised. "Since we first invested in 2013, it has returned 13 times the capital invested, but we felt the share price had come to reflect much of its promise in autonomy and robotics," they wrote.
The report doesn't give a sale price. Tesla closed between $343.25 and $400.62 during April, and it closed at $358.22 on November 6.
SpaceX proceeds helped repay loans
The report says SpaceX proceeds helped repay loans, but it doesn't account for all of the money. Net borrowing fell to 4.3% of the fund's net assets from 11%, which the fund credited to rising holdings and to loan repayments "funded in part by proceeds from reductions in the SpaceX holding." Bank borrowings were fully repaid, and total borrowings fell to £984 million ($1.32B) from £1.61 billion ($2.16B). The fund also spent about £1.06 billion ($1.43B) buying back 72.9 million of its own shares.
The managers also listed what they bought during the six months. Nvidia (NVDA) grew to £1.15 billion ($1.55B), or 6.2% of assets, from £490 million ($659M) on March 31. That change includes the stock's own gain. New holdings included SK Hynix, chip equipment makers KLA (KLAC) and DISCO, power generator Vistra (VST), and natural gas producer EQT (EQT).
The fund added to Anthropic (ANT) in May, and that stake was worth £744 million ($1.00B), or 4% of assets, on September 30. The fund also sold out of Netflix (NFLX) and trimmed TSMC, ASML (ASML), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META).
Is Baillie Gifford out of Tesla?
Baillie Gifford still reported a Tesla holding as of June 30. It manages Scottish Mortgage and money for other clients. A 13F is a quarterly list of certain securities managed by the firm across its clients, so these totals cover the whole firm, not just this fund.
The firm's 13F for June 30 listed 730,641 Tesla shares worth $307.3 million, down from 1,302,148 shares on March 31. The same filing listed 51,397,806 SpaceX shares worth $8.78 billion.
The next 13F will show any reportable Tesla and SpaceX positions held at September 30, and it's due by November 16.
Pound figures are converted at $1.3456, the Yahoo Finance rate on November 6, 2026.
