On the surface, you might not think there was too much to get excited about with Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (LSE: SMT) shares. The name certainly doesn’t give many clues. And it’s hard to see why this trust – created in Edinburgh before the First World War to take advantage of rubber farms in Malaya – would get anyone’s pulse racing. And yet…
This FTSE 100 stock has been the talk of the town this year. The company has added billions in market capitalisation. The share price is up 141% since 2023 and has been one of the best British stocks to have owned over the period too. I think it’s fair to say that Scottish Mortgage is one of the most talked about (and bought!) Footsie stocks of 2026. The big question – why?
Huge boost
Despite its somewhat staid name, Scottish Mortgage is on the forefront of the 21st century. It invests in a plethora of exciting tech companies, and part of the recent success has been the rise and rise of artificial intelligence (Nvidia is one notable name in the portfolio).
But the big story of late (the one lighting a fire under that share price) is undoubtedly SpaceX. The American ‘space industry’ company that runs Starlink is set to IPO on 12 June. The target $1.75trn valuation has been a huge boost to Scottish Mortgage, which opened a position years ago and has watched the stake balloon to around 20% of the total portfolio.
This is of particular interest to investors who can get exposure to this growing industry with Scottish Mortgage. With SpaceX being private, there is no way to directly invest until the public offering.
Most intriguingly, SpaceX has just released earnings information for the first time…
Is it a buy?
This is where we arrive at the ‘risks’ part of the analysis. Investing in a fund of bleeding-edge technology companies sounds all well and good until you take a peek at the earnings reports.
SpaceX made revenue of $19bn last year, giving it an eye-watering price-to-sales ratio of nearly 100 based on that target valuation. That’s a valuation on sales and not on earnings, by the way. While the Starlink part of the company is profitable, lots of that cash is being funnelled to speculative artificial intelligence projects under xAI. The company as a whole is not currently making any money.
One part of the firm’s IPO prospectus shows how far-fetched this company’s ambitions might be. There is a compensation package (for a certain Elon Musk) that will only be hit if he establishes a permanent colony on Mars with at least 1m inhabitants. Bold stuff.
On the whole? Scottish Mortgage tends to go in for these kind of high-risk, high-reward investments. I think the fund could be worth considering for an investor who understands the risk profile.
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John Fieldsend owns shares in Scottish Mortgage and Nvidia.
