Uncovering Trusts – Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT): Unique low-cost access to exceptional growth companies across public and private markets

In this episode, our director of content for investment companies, Milosz Papst, talks about Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT), the UK’s largest investment trust and one of the most widely recognised names in the AIC Global sector. He introduces the trust and its managers’ philosophy of identifying and holding the world’s most exceptional growth companies, before discussing SMT’s distinctive private company exposure – including the April 2026 shareholder vote to expand the investment limit – and key portfolio holdings such as ByteDance, Mercado Libre and SpaceX, which now represents around 19% of total assets following a March 2026 revaluation. Milosz also covers recent portfolio activity, with five new positions initiated in Anthropic, AppLovin, CATL, Figma and RedNote.

Milosz then turns to SMT’s strong long-term performance record, with NAV total returns ranking first among the nine funds in the AIC Global sector over the last one, three and 10 years, and annual NAV total returns of 18.3% over the last decade. He concludes by outlining the trust’s other notable features, including its 43-year record of consecutive annual dividend increases (placing it among the AIC’s dividend heroes), its recent return to trading at a small premium to NAV, the board’s active share repurchase programme, its use of gearing, and an ongoing charges ratio of 0.31% – the lowest in the AIC Global sector.

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About Uncovering Trusts: Uncovering Trusts is a podcast run by Edison analysts, which is released every two weeks. Subscribe to hear analyst interviews on how investment trusts maximise returns while managing risks for investors.