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<p><strong>Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. This information and other information about the Funds can be found in the prospectus and summary prospectus. For a prospectus and summary prospectus, please visit our website at bailliegifford.com/usmutualfunds Please carefully read the Fund's prospectus and related documents before investing. Securities are offered through Baillie Gifford Funds Services LLC, an affiliate of Baillie Gifford Overseas Ltd and a member of FINRA.</strong></p>
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<p><strong>Tell us about the company.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Beatrice Faleri:</strong> You tap your phone, hear that familiar beep, and just like that, your shopping's paid for. Feels easy, right? </p>
<p>But what's really happening is a whole world of complex tech kicking into gear. In just milliseconds, your payment request has gone through a maze of codes, security checks, and system handshakes.</p>
<p>Dutch entrepreneur Pieter van der Does took one look at this messy, fragmented system and thought, there has to be a better way. His solution? Adyen: a single, unified platform, providing fewer fees, higher approval rates, and happier shoppers.</p>
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<p><strong>What makes this stock special?</strong></p>
<p>Adyen is the only full-stack, vertically integrated digital payment company in the world. Think of it as a motorway. While rivals are a patchwork of slip roads and roundabouts, Adyen laid one smooth stretch of tarmac. That technical clarity avoids bumps in the road, like payment authorisation wrongly failing.</p>
<p>The company earns the same flat markup on every transaction, so the only way it makes more money is if its customers sell more products. That alignment is why more than four-fifths of Adyen's growth come from existing customers. </p>
<p>Its founders still own a double-digit stake and reinvest roughly half of gross profits back into product every year. The result? Since listing in 2018, the company has increased its net revenues by roughly 26 per cent and margins have reached over 50 per cent.</p>
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<p><strong>What could the future hold?</strong></p>
<p>Adyen's runway is long. Non-cash payments grow around 10 per cent annually worldwide, yet Adyen captures under 1 per cent of that volume. So even a small uptick in share could translate into outsized revenue gains. </p>
<p>Its unified commerce, which brings together online and offline payments, is only just taking hold. Global brands like Nike, H&M and Burberry already rely on Adyen. Rolling out that same capability to tens of thousands of mid-sized retailers could multiply revenues without any extra complexity on Adyen’s side.</p>
<p>The explosion of local payment rails from Brazil's PIX, India's UPI, China's Myriad wallets, played directly to a platform that can switch on as many payment methods as merchants need with one line of code. </p>
<p>Adyen is also layering new services on top of processing, from issuing virtual cards to providing short-term loans and even handling treasury. </p>
<p>Each extra service deepens its grip and lifts revenue per customer. The mission is to drastically simplify payments, and Adyen is only getting started.</p>
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<h3>Risk factors</h3>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Funds are distributed by Baillie Gifford Funds Services LLC. Baillie Gifford Funds Services LLC is registered as a broker-dealer with the SEC, a member of FINRA and is an affiliate of Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited. All information is sourced from Baillie Gifford & Co unless otherwise stated.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As with all mutual funds, the value of an investment in the Fund could decline, so you could lose money. International investing involves special risks, which include changes in currency rates, foreign taxation and differences in auditing standards and securities regulations, political uncertainty and greater volatility. These risks are even greater when investing in emerging markets. Security prices in emerging markets can be significantly more volatile than in the more developed nations of the world, reflecting the greater uncertainties of investing in less established markets and economies. Currency risk includes the risk that the foreign currencies in which a Fund’s investments are traded, in which a Fund receives income, or in which a Fund has taken a position, will decline in value relative to the U.S. dollar. Hedging against a decline in the value of currency does not eliminate fluctuations in the prices of portfolio securities or prevent losses if the prices of such securities decline. In addition, hedging a foreign currency can have a negative effect on performance if the U.S. dollar declines in value relative to that currency, or if the currency hedging is otherwise ineffective.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For more information about these and other risks of an investment in the Funds, see "Principal Investment Risks" and "Additional Investment Strategies" in the prospectus. There can be no assurance that the Funds will achieve their investment objectives.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This communication was produced and approved in February 2026 and has not been updated subsequently. It represents views held at the time of writing and may not reflect current thinking.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This communication contains information on investments which does not constitute independent research. Accordingly, it is not subject to the protections afforded to independent research and Baillie Gifford and its staff may have dealt in the investments concerned.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As at February 2026, Baillie Gifford held Adyen. A full list of holdings is available on request and is subject to change.</p>
