Scottish Mortgage: A Japanese Bet, a Premium Issuance, and a Swift Buyback — All Ahead of a Crucial AGM
09.06.2026 - 16:47:18 | boerse-global.de
Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management has quietly become a major shareholder in Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, hoovering up just over 33.6 million shares and breaching the 3% threshold in early June. The move by the Japanese asset manager comes at a moment when the trust itself is aggressively fine-tuning its capital structure — issuing new equity at a premium one day, then buying back stock at a discount just days later.
The two-step capital dance is a textbook signal of how Scottish Mortgage’s management navigates the gap between net asset value and market price. On 1 June, the trust issued 2.35 million shares from treasury at 1,516.50 pence each, followed by another 3.85 million shares the next day at 1,545.42 pence. Both transactions were done at a premium to NAV, netting the trust roughly £95 million in fresh cash. That marks a deliberate shift from the aggressive buyback programme of recent years.
Yet only a week later, on 8 June, Scottish Mortgage reversed course, buying back 800,000 of its own shares at 1,436.86 pence — a price just below the fair-value NAV of 1,473.58 pence and close to the par-value NAV of 1,442.36 pence. The buyback leaves the trust with around 366 million shares in treasury and roughly 1.12 billion shares in circulation.
The pattern is familiar for investment trusts: issue when the share price trades above NAV, repurchase when it sinks below. Over the financial year to March 2026, Scottish Mortgage bought back 122.9 million shares for £1.31 billion. In the two-year period prior, it repurchased 307.7 million shares for about £3 billion — representing roughly 22% of the then-free float. The average discount to NAV has narrowed marginally from 9.7% to 9.6% over the period, and briefly flipped into premium territory after the fiscal year-end.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Scottish Mortgage Investment?
Behind the capital arbitrage lies a portfolio with two massive IPO catalysts. SpaceX now accounts for 21% of the fund’s assets, worth some £3.5 billion. The rocket company filed a preliminary prospectus with US regulators in late May. Scottish Mortgage values SpaceX internally at $1.25 trillion — a conservative estimate relative to press reports, based strictly on verifiable transactions. Meanwhile, Anthropic, the developer of the AI model Claude, has also filed confidential IPO documents. The company hit a $965 billion valuation in its last funding round, and Scottish Mortgage holds 2.6% of its equity.
The trust's management wants more room for such unlisted bets. At the annual general meeting on 2 July in Edinburgh, shareholders will vote on removing the current 30% cap on private-market investments. A positive vote would give manager Tom Slater and his team greater flexibility to increase exposure to pre-IPO companies like SpaceX and Anthropic.
Mitsubishi UFJ’s timing suggests confidence in that strategy. The Japanese group’s stake-building, coming just before the AGM, is seen by market observers as a clear institutional vote of support for the trust’s long-term direction.
On the price front, the shares have cooled after a strong run. At €17.07 on the German exchange, the stock has dropped 6.34% over the past seven days, though it still shows a year-to-date gain of 22%. The 52-week high of €19.50, hit on 25 May, now sits about 12% above the current level. The relative strength index stands at 47.1 — neutral territory — while annualised 30-day volatility hovers near 35%, underscoring the trust’s inherent swinginess as a growth-focused vehicle.
Whether the 8 June buyback marks the start of a new repurchase wave or an isolated adjustment will become clearer with the next daily NAV releases. For now, Scottish Mortgage is playing both sides of the premium-discount game, courting a major Asian investor, and positioning itself for what could be the biggest IPO year in its history.
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