Schiehallion (MNTN), one of four Baillie Gifford managed investment companies with double-digit holdings in SpaceX, is considering a fund raising after its shares shot up 27% in the first quarter to stand 4% above net asset value (NAV) at 31 March.

Co-manager Robert Natzler said the £1.7bn private equity fund, which bills itself as a “future of the Nasdaq” portfolio for the number of technology companies it helps bring to the US market, said its board was considering how best to take advantage of investor demand for the shares that has made it one of this year’s best performers so far.

Shares in the dollar-based, closed-ended fund have re-rated from a steep 30% discount to NAV in December as investors have become excited about the prospect of three of its top 10 holdings floating this year. Its shares have soared 120% in the past 12 months.

In addition to SpaceX, where 12.8% of its assets are held following an uplift in the valuation by fund manager Baillie Gifford last week, Schiehallion’s top 14.8% holding is in Bending Spoon, the highly profitable and acquisitive Italian consumer brands platform which Natzler expects to float this year.

It also holds 3.3% in Anthropic, the $380bn artificial intelligence provider, whose Claude chatbox is viewed as a threat to traditional software companies and which is tipped to float in the fourth quarter. Around 31% of Schiehellion is held in these three currently private companies.

The board of Schiehallion, named after a famous conical shaped munro in Perthshire, is mulling whether to offer an issue of ordinary shares or to pursue a “C”-share issue, which it used five years ago to bring in UK wealth managers as investors following its listing in 2019 backed by North American pension funds.

An issue of ordinary shares would likely be investors’ preference even if it was priced slightly above NAV as it which would give investors access to the existing portfolio and the prospect of further valuation hikes if the three companies’ initial public offers (IPOs) proceed successfully.

A C-share would typically enable investors to buy new shares at £1 that would form a separate portfolio that would largely sit in cash until the fund managers deployed the money in their investment pipeline. It would not give them exposure to SpaceX at its current valuation with Bloomberg reporting at the weekend that the company was targeting an unprecedented $2trn (£1.5trn) valuation at an IPO planned for as early as June. Once fully invested, C-shares convert into ordinary shares.

Natzler, who runs the portfolio with Peter Singlehurst, Baillie Gifford’s head of private equity, was speaking to journalists last week as the company prepares to market itself to private investors for the first time. The company recently became a UK investment trust having previously been an offshore fund in Guernsey. In December it also moved from the specialist fund segment to the main market of the London Stock Exchange, enabling it to join the FTSE 250 last month. As a result, share-dealing platforms should no longer consider it a “complex” investment, making it easier for retail investors to buy.

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