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<p><strong>Your capital is at risk. Past performance is not a guide to future returns.</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Connor Warren (CW): </strong>Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Connor Warren. I'm a member of Baillie Gifford's Financial Institutions Group, based here in sunny Denver, Colorado, and I'm excited to welcome you all to our International Concentrated Growth Teams Q2 investment update webinar.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I'm happy to be joined today by Paul Taylor, who is an investment specialist director on our International Concentrated Growth Team, or ICG for short, based out of the home office in Edinburgh, Scotland. How are you doing today, Paul?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Paul Taylor (PT): </strong>Very well, Connor. Lovely to [be] here and see everyone again.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW: </strong>Great to hear. Now, just to quickly level-set our agenda for today's discussion, we'll start by sharing some exciting news as it relates to Baillie Gifford and the ICG team in specific. We'll then provide a more high-level performance review of the past few months, and spend some time discussing how the prevailing market environment throughout the past quarter influenced our overall investment decision-making and market outlook – more specifically, by taking a look at notable transactions throughout the portfolio and broader portfolio positioning. Then, lastly, we'll spend a bit of time just reviewing the international opportunity set from our perspective before finishing up with a bit of Q&A.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As a reminder though, this is a live webinar. So please, as we progress through things today, feel free to drop in your questions and we'll do our best to address them as fully as we can.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now, one note of housekeeping just for compliance purposes: the information discussed in this webinar is at the strategy level and may differ from the end vehicle that you are invested in.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, with that, I'm pleased to share some exciting news with you all. As of the start of June, Baillie Gifford officially launched our active ETF suite, and we are now in market with four active ETFs, including the International Concentrated Growth Strategy, following the conversion of our mutual fund. For reference, ICG's new ticker is BGCG. Again, that's BGCG.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, Paul, recognizing that Q2 wasn't the strongest quarter for ICG as far as relative performance is concerned, could you start by maybe just walking us through how the team is thinking about recent performance, and maybe a bit more specific to the focus of our call today, what has and hasn't worked in the portfolio on an individual stock basis?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Yes, of course, happy to start there, Connor.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So yes, relative performance over the quarter was poor, and that really brings sort of a one-year number, which is pretty tough at the moment on relative terms. But the absolute performance of the Strategy has been reasonably solid.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In aggregate, we're seeing this disconnect between what the businesses are delivering operationally and what the market's currently willing to reward today. So, I'll start on a positive side. We have a very large and intentional exposure in the strategy to the international semiconductor supply chain. So you have the NVIDIA's, AWS's, the hyperscalers domestically in the US, but if you look at the supply chain behind them, that's predominantly in our international space.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I'm probably not telling anyone anything they don't already know. AI and demand for compute has driven some of these stocks super strongly this year, particularly over the quarter. So holdings like TSMC, ASML have performed really well for us. We've also had a potential bid approach for a holding called Delivery Hero from Uber. So that's again a positive contributor.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But none of that has been able to offset pressure we've been seeing elsewhere in the portfolio in some of our larger holdings, like MercadoLibre and Spotify, where the market is currently not willing to pay for investments that they're individually making now for the future growth that that's probably going to drive tomorrow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, yes, we're seeing this disconnect in some areas between what we see as businesses gearing themselves up for growth over the next 5, 10 years, but the market's not currently willing to reward that today. So, the portfolio has lagged, but the operational progress we're seeing in the businesses we own remains very, very encouraging.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> So with that theme of a patient approach to deploying our client's capital, one follow-up question for you here before we move on – and I know it's a bit tricky to answer because there's no clear one-size-fits-all solution – but how do you distinguish between just a temporary share price setback and the fundamental change or deterioration in the team's overarching investment thesis?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Sure. Over the long term, share prices are directly related to earnings growth and cash flow growth in the underlying businesses. However, over short periods, and particularly in what we're seeing at the moment, is a very narrative-driven, very narrow market. Momentum driven in a lot of respects. We've seen a little bit of reversal of that momentum in the very early Q3, but the second quarter in the first half was a very momentum-driven market.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Those two can deviate. So, again, coming back to why we own these businesses for the long term, it's the growth in earnings and cash flows, but that's currently widening this disconnect we're seeing between what the market's willing to reward today. What do we do about it? What do we do? We monitor and continue to re-underwrite the individual investment cases.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So we're looking at, “Are the management teams making what we think and agree are the right decisions for future value creation?”. In a lot of ways it comes back to Ben Graham and, “the market in the short run is a voting machine, but in the long run is a weighing machine”. When the market is voting against you, it can make your portfolio look pretty exposed and a little foolish in some ways, but over the long term, when weighing becomes important again, that gives us a lot of hope for the future.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> I like the Benjamin Graham reference. My first job out of college, one of the investment analysts actually walked over my first week at the firm and dropped The Intelligent Investor on my desk. And that was a great welcome to the industry moment for me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, thanks for answering that question and maybe getting a bit more specific on MercadoLibre and using them as a practical real-world example.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Can you talk us through, more in-depth, their recent share price performance and contrast that with the underlying health and growth of their business?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT:</strong> Yes, of course. So, most recent results we've got are their first quarter results. Revenues nearly 50 percent, so 49 percent revenue growth. Volumes in Brazil up 56 percent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They're taking, it's incredible, they're taking 60 cents of every incremental ecommerce dollar spent in Brazil. That's remarkable and well above what we would ever have thought they would be able to achieve in our wildest blue-sky investment case. So what they're achieving operationally is incredible. That's on the commerce side. They've also got FinTech opportunity. They issued around 2.7 million credit cards in the first quarter, with payment volumes growing 90 percent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So both of these pillars of the business are performing incredibly well. The stock is down 12 percent year-to-date, sorry 16 percent year-to-date, in the first half.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So what's the market currently looking at? The market is currently, and this slide you can see is a good example of what they've done in the past, and they're essentially repeating this playbook. This is a slide going back quite a long way for MercadoLibre, and you can see in that 2017-2019 period they started to invest heavily in the business. They actually took operating profit negative for a period. And we're not suggesting they're taking profit negative now, but this is just illustrative of what's happened historically.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was building out predominantly last-mile infrastructure in Brazil. So, the hard moat that they've built in Brazilian logistics. The market didn't like that at the time. But just look at what it allowed them to do in terms of driving revenue and profits once they started using that infrastructure to build out the ecommerce business in Brazil.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They're essentially doing the same thing now. Again, not taking quite as radical a move in terms of the operating margins of the business. But they're spending over $4bn repeating, essentially, this playbook in Mexico, building out that last-mile infrastructure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But they're also, I mentioned the credit card business earlier, when you start to issue cards, you take the potential losses up front, in your P&L. So, you've got a lot of these potential future losses already baked into your income statement, then goes [unclear] the balance sheet. But then they might actually materialize. So again, margin pressure today, future growth tomorrow. That's essentially what we're seeing and what we are supporting management as they make these investments through this period.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> It's a helpful example, and I do have one follow-on question. You might not want to talk to me after this webinar is done if I keep asking these follow-ups, but digging a bit deeper, how do you know that their current spending is truly a long-term productive investment in the business rather than just permanent margin erosion?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Yes, knowing something… we don't know. The future is uncertain. What we do know is that they've done this successfully before. The new CEO, he came into the CEO seat the first of January this year, but he's been in the business 10 years. We've known him for that entire period. And he was the guy who was instrumental behind the investment you're seeing in the chart today, so he used to run their commerce business. So, we've got a lot of faith in his judgment and his ability to replicate the playbook that we've seen in Brazil, across Mexico, and also across the fintech opportunity more broadly.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I'd frame this as, the market often will reward the harvest, but complains a lot about the planting. And that's essentially where we are today: the market doesn't like what's being done now for the potential future health of the business.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> Thanks, Paul. It seems like there's a consistent theme kind of underpinning everything you're saying around how important the investment team's conviction in these businesses’ management teams is when you're underwriting these names.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT:</strong> [unclear]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> Sorry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>No, we've been one of the largest investors in MercadoLibre for the last 15 years. And we are so excited about the future growth opportunities that they've got to capitalize on now. It's truly remarkable.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> Fantastic. Well, shifting gears just a bit, I noticed when I was looking through some of the updated data, that transaction activity, and portfolio turnover in specific, has been a bit more relevant recently. And we have a few slides that we can pull up, but can you just talk us through which new purchases the team is most excited about? And also, how these purchases were funded – was it a complete sale of an existing holding, a reduction, taking some gains off the table, things along those lines?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT:</strong> Yes, I mean, we've been a bit more active in the portfolio in the second quarter. I mean, what is a bit more active for us? We've, on a trailing 12-month basis, had portfolio turnovers around 25 percent. So, you know, long-term investing should not be mistaken for passivity.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We've added Lonza, CATL and SK Hynix. I can talk a little bit about the drivers behind each of those, but at a high level, each of them are offering exposure to what we think is a strong secular trend in the economy that should play out over 10, 20 years, potentially. And these businesses offer really nice exposure to increase in biological drug manufacturing in Lonza, CATL in batteries, and SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The funding, and the sort of stimulus side for this, has been making sure we right-size our international semi-supply chain bets, so TSMC contributing really strongly. We still have huge hopes for those businesses and the importance that they're going to play. But we don't want the portfolio to be completely dominated by the performance of those couple of stocks. So, it's making sure we try and keep the portfolio in the right balance, if you like.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lonza in particular, they are the leading outsource manufacturer of biologic drugs. So, if you're a AbbVie, or you're a Roche, or you're a Pfizer, and you do some of your manufacturing in-house, but you also want external capacity, Lonza is one of the global go-tos. It's a Swiss company. They've got around 7 percent market share at the moment. The market, we think, should grow around 10 percent over the next 10 years. We think they can take incremental share on top of that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And they're really staying at the forefront of… the key for them is where's the next technology coming from? Is it going to be, I don't want to get too technical, but antibody drug conjugates or cell-based therapies? So, it's really the cutting edge of where drug manufacturing's going that we're investing in. And also, really importantly, not taking binary bets. So, you have opportunities in healthcare where it's almost a one or a zero, depending on the outcome of one trial. Lonza serves the very broad, broad pharma market, so it's exposure to that trend without taking individual drug bets, essentially.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">CATL, a Chinese business, they are the leading manufacturer of batteries. So that's EVs, they produce one in ten electric vehicle batteries globally at the moment, and that is by far the most dominant manufacturer, I think the second place is about 16-15 percent. There's also this other opportunity that they've got in energy storage. We, as the world continues to electrify, being able to store energy in large industrial scale batteries is also going to be really important. So, there's a second leg to the opportunity there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And SK Hynix has, I suppose, really shot onto people's radars this year with the squeeze in high-bandwidth memory associated with AI digital demand for memory. The growth rates on this chart are probably wildly inaccurate. I mean, I think the only way you can frame it is it's going to be huge, we're just not entirely sure how huge that opportunity is going to be. Those numbers are from the start of the year and probably already need to be revised up materially.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I hope that gives you a flavor of what we've been buying and why we've been buying it for the portfolio.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW: </strong>That was helpful, Paul.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Speaking of CATL, if anyone hasn't heard the story from one of our emerging markets teams, investment managers around his recent onsite as part of our annual North American investor conference that we put on in Chicago a couple of months back. During his presentation, he shared with the room – there's a recording of it on our Insights page, I'm sure your relevant Baillie Gifford relationship manager would be happy to send it over – it's a bit of a shortened version, but it's a fantastic story of what can go wrong during a company onsite. But you'll have to ask him in the office as well, Paul, it's great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But on the SK Hynix side of things, we had a question come in on just where we're at in terms of the memory cycle. I know it's a difficult question to pinpoint exactly where we are, but are there any thoughts that you have there, or that the team might have, that you'd be willing to share?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Yes, it's a really interesting conundrum, if you like, because memory has been historically brutally cyclical. But we're in such an acute phase of what's a structural build-out. It's trying to work out where we are in the cycle, how big is the cycle.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think the conclusion we've come to is that it looks a lot like ASML did 20-plus years ago. And in every down cycle, ASML used to lose money. Now, their importance in the semis value chain has been elevated over the last 20 years. The quality, we'd call, of their business has improved materially. We think the same thing can happen, or is happening, at SK Hynix.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, it's historically been a very cyclical, very low PE kind of business. But the position they've built themselves into the market now, we think that they're going to continue to gain an incremental amount of the economics of AI, demand for digitization, so forth.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, the stock has moved radically over the last six months. We're not making a call on whether it's now come off 20 percent. We're making a call on, “Is this business going to be super important over the next five to 10 years?”, and we think the quality of the business is going to materially improve, hence the valuation that the market's willing to pay for it is also going to improve materially.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's still on like 10 times earnings or something, which is… If we're right about the quality of the business, ASML can trade on 35 times. That's the kind of thinking we've been going through in terms of holding Hynix.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> It might be oversimplifying it a bit, but it reminds me of the saying of “directionally correct versus precisely accurate”.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Yes, we'd rather be broadly right than precisely wrong.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> That's great, thanks Paul.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I apologize in advance if I butcher the pronunciation of this name, but I saw that the team recently added Exail to the portfolio. What attracted the team to the business, originally? And how are you all interpreting the recent proposal to acquire?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Yes, so we added Exail at the start of the year. They recently accepted a bid from a French industrials business called Thales. It's great, in a way. It's also incredibly frustrating, in a way.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I mean, we are obviously not the only buyers in this market and there's a large sophisticated industrial buyer who wants to get their hands on the whole of this business. We would rather they stayed independent and continue to develop products services and the value that they represent on their own, so we could have benefited rather than the acquirer benefiting. It's a small maritime drone business. We were looking to add a bit more defense exposure to the portfolio and this ticked a lot of boxes in terms of great innovative technology.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We think drone warfare, the way wars are now fought, is very different from the past. And that technology is being used in the Strait of Hormuz today, helping keep people out of harm's way and allowing to go and do mine sweeping and so forth remotely, rather than having people exposed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, it's great that our view has been validated by an industrial buyer, but it's frustrating it's going to be taken out of our hands before we could have really seen the benefit in the portfolio.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> Understood, thanks, Paul. Now, taking a slightly different view, let's kind of take a step back and look from a top-down perspective and answer the million-dollar question: What does the longer-term opportunity set look like today for international markets? And how, from your perspective, is the ICG portfolio positioned to take advantage of these trends? And last, but certainly not least, is this the moment that we start to see some sustained performance dispersion between international and emerging markets relative to domestic markets?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Oh goodness, that's a big question.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW: </strong>It's easy to answer.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT:</strong> What we're concentrated on is the quality of our portfolio and, you know, the portfolio versus our benchmark. I think the idea of international outperforming the US is a slightly different question. But what we're seeing looking at, you know, Shiller PEs, Cape Pes… The US has been a great place to invest over the last 15 years or so, but that has a habit of throne-swapping over long periods. But what we're really focused on is portfolio forward growth profile in terms of earnings and revenues.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You can see that on the left-hand side there. In terms of the quality of the portfolio, looking at gross margins, looking at free cash flow, the balance sheets on aggregate of the portfolio are very solid versus the market. And, also, the amount that the companies reinvest in their businesses, the R&D to sales ratio is also leading the market.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, these characteristics in aggregate, we think the portfolio is an optimistic expression of where we're finding great businesses in the international space – be that across added biologics, manufacturing, added batteries. We've got a lot of exposure to the semiconductor supply chain as well. Also some really good luxury businesses in there we haven't touched on today, those have also had a tough time over the last six months, but we think the long-term case for them really hasn't changed at all.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But I think, probably most importantly, on the right-hand side there, the valuation that we're being asked to pay for the portfolio versus the market today is at a discount. It's the lowest it's been for the last 10 years.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, for clients viewing, I appreciate the underperformance has not always been comfortable, but where we're seeing this – again, comes back to where I started, the divergence between what's happening in the businesses that we own in the portfolio and what the market's willing to pay for them today, that elastic band is getting stretched. Now, we don't know when it could snap back. When it does, these periods tend to prelude a period of strong performance, but we just can't put a date in the calendar and say when that's going to happen.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW:</strong> And maybe one day we'll bring the crystal ball to the office, but that seems like a reasonable answer in the short run.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But shifting our perspective just slightly and looking at it from the other side, from a risk management perspective, what are the biggest risks that the team is seeing right now? Or, for lack of a better term, what's keeping them up at night when they're looking at the portfolio?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT: </strong>Yes. Undetected deterioration in underlying investment cases is… I mean, if we get our stock-picking right, everything else follows in this portfolio. It's 29 stocks, some of the world's most exciting international growth businesses. But if we get our underwriting of some of these businesses wrong, that would be a material risk.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We're exceptionally close to all these businesses. We're not going to get 100 percent right over the long term, but we've got a pretty good track record of picking some exceptional winners.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think more broadly, it's hard not to talk about AI at the moment, but a broad threat would be an AI disruption to business models that we haven't necessarily thought through. Spotify is an example of where the market's currently, we think, been in a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality around the threat from AI to the business model.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We think they've got a better chance of actually improving their business through the adoption of artificial intelligence. They've got a 20-year data set of people's preferences. They capture, this number's extraordinary, 3.4 trillion, that's trillion, data points a day from the user base. They know what you want to listen to tomorrow before you do. So, being able to point improved algorithms and AI at that data should improve their listener experience, they get more listeners, that means they're more valuable to labels and advertisers – there’s this lovely sort of two-way market dynamic that they've got in that business.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yes, so I suppose those are the two. Getting our analysis wrong would be the first risk. But yes, I suppose the more broad AI potential impact on business models would be the second I'd call out.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW: </strong>This is more anecdotal, but I'm an avid Spotify user every single day, and I can confirm that their suggested music playlist and podcasts playlist are fantastic. Although, maybe take that with a grain of salt just because of the seat that I'm sitting in at the moment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We're coming up on time here, Paul. So maybe any last words or parting thoughts you'd like to leave with those that joined us today?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>PT:</strong> Let me just recap. Recent performance has been disappointing. But the businesses that we own continue to do and perform super-well in their markets. Taking share, delighting their customers, and investing for their future growth.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I think, again, coming back to Ben Graham again: “markets can be efficient over time, but they're not always punctual” would be how I'd sort of sum the current period up. We just need to remain patient and let the fundamentals of these businesses drive share prices over the long term.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>CW: </strong>Well, it seems like a great note to wrap up today's discussion on, Paul. Thank you again for joining us, and to all of you that dialed in, thank you for joining us today as well and thank you for your continued support.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I know there were some questions coming in, so if we didn't fully address your questions or get to them, we'll make sure that we pass them on to your relevant Baillie Gifford contact and they will follow up with you as soon as possible.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lastly, while today's discussion officially concludes our quarterly webinar series, recordings for each webinar will be both made available on the website, and also emailed to you directly if you had signed up for the session. Thank you all again, and I hope you all have a great day.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3 class="TABLEHEADER1212pt">International Concentrated Growth</h3>
<p><strong>Annual past performance to 30 June each year (%)</strong></p>
<table border="1" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; border-width: 0px; height: 74.6668px;">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 58.8261%;"> </td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.34783%;"><strong>2022</strong></td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;"><strong>2023</strong></td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;"><strong>2024</strong></td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;"><strong>2025</strong></td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;"><strong>2026</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 58.8261%;">International Concentrated Growth Composite (gross)</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.34783%;">-46.1</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">22.4</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">11.1</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">28.5</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">-5.1</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 58.8261%;">International Concentrated Growth Composite (net)</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.34783%;">-46.4</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">21.6</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">10.3</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">27.7</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">-5.7</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 58.8261%;">MSCI ACWI ex US Index</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.34783%;">-19.0</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">13.3</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">12.2</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">18.4</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; text-align: right; width: 8.21739%;">28.3</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> <strong>Annualised returns to 30 June 2026 (%)</strong></p>
<table border="1" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; border-width: 0px; height: 93.0001px;">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 37px;">
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 37px; width: 61.3043%;"> </td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 37px; width: 13.1739%; text-align: right;"><strong>1 year</strong></td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 37px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;"><strong>5 years</strong></td>
<td style="border-width: 1px 1px 2px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(204, 204, 204) rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: initial; padding: 10px; height: 37px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;"><strong>10 years</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 61.3043%;">International Concentrated Growth Composite (gross)</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 13.1739%; text-align: right;">-5.1</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;">-2.2</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;">14.4</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 61.3043%;">International Concentrated Growth Composite (net)</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 13.1739%; text-align: right;">-5.7</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;">-2.8</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;">13.6</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18.6667px;">
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.6667px; width: 61.3043%;">MSCI ACWI ex US Index</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 13.1739%; text-align: right;">28.3</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;">9.3</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 10px; height: 18.7879px; width: 12.7826%; text-align: right;">10.5</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><span class="source-text"><strong>Source:</strong> Revolution, MSCI. US dollars. Net returns have been calculated by reducing the gross return by the highest annual management fee for the composite. 1 year figures are not annualised.</span></p>
<p><strong>Past performance is not a guide to future returns.</strong></p>
<p><span class="source-text">Legal notice: MSCI makes no express or implied warranties or representations and shall have no liability whatsoever with respect to any MSCI data contained herein. The MSCI data may not be further redistributed or used as a basis for other indexes or any securities or financial products. This report is not approved, endorsed, reviewed or produced by MSCI. None of the MSCI data is intended to constitute investment advice or a recommendation to make (or refrain from making) any kind of investment decision and may not be relied on as such.</span></p>
<h3>Risk factors</h3>
<p>This communication was produced and approved in July 2026 and has not been updated subsequently. It represents views held at the time and may not reflect current thinking.</p>
<p>The views expressed should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. They reflect opinion and should not be taken as statements of fact nor should any reliance be placed on them when making investment decisions.</p>
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<p>All information is sourced from Baillie Gifford & Co and is current unless otherwise stated. </p>
<p>The images used in this communication are for illustrative purposes only.</p>
<h3>Important information</h3>
<p>Baillie Gifford & Co and Baillie Gifford & Co Limited are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Baillie Gifford & Co Limited is an Authorised Corporate Director of OEICs.</p>
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<p><span class="source-text">202715 10064481<br></span></p>





