Investment manager Baillie Gifford hailed the outlook for internet companies including ecommerce platform Shopify and payments platform Stripe as it released the latest half-year results for its London-listed US growth trust.
The Edinburgh-based fund operator also praised the performance of Amazon for the trust it floated in March 2018 to invest in “exceptional growth companies in America”. The fund holds stakes in well-known names including social network Facebook, streaming television service Netflix, electric car maker Tesla and rocket developer SpaceX.
Baillie Gifford said: “We are moving from the exploration age into the deployment age where new markets and business models that were created in the past decade will grow and become the new normal. We will no longer talk about ‘internet-enabled’ businesses, no more than we talk about ‘electricity-enabled’ businesses.
“The technology is maturing, but the opportunity is only beginning. As technology becomes ubiquitous, so will innovation itself; innovation is the new normal.”
The return from the trust’s share price stood at 7.2% for the six months to 30 November, lagging the return from its net asset value of 7.5% and eclipsed by the total return from the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index in sterling terms at 12.3%. Baillie Gifford said: “We have a long-term approach and would ask shareholders to judge performance over periods of five years or more.”
Over the longer term, between its launch on 23 March 2018 and 30 November 2019, the share price returned 37.6% and its NAV returned 38.5%, compared with a total return of 37.3% in sterling terms from the S&P500 index.
