The soaring valuation of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket and satellite business has given a boost to one of the most popular investment trusts on the London stock market.
RIT Capital Partners, which first invested directly in SpaceX in 2024, reported on Tuesday that the value of its stake in the American company had risen to £102.3 million by the end of last year, making it the eighth-biggest holding of the Rothschild-backed vehicle.
The size of RIT’s position, which had been worth £31.4 million only six months earlier, has increased as the FTSE 250 investment trust has added to its stake and as the rocket company’s valuation has risen.
A share sale by SpaceX in December put a price tag of about $800 billion on the business, up from $400 billion in July. Its valuation has since jumped again to $1.25 trillion after it bought Musk’s xAI start-up last month in a deal that makes it the world’s most valuable private business.
An initial public offering of SpaceX, which takes astronauts to and from the International Space Station and is also behind the Starlink satellite internet service, is now hotly anticipated by investors. A listing could happen as soon as this year and might value SpaceX at $1.5 trillion, which in turn could make Musk, who is already the world’s richest man, the first trillionaire.
Maggie Fanari, 45, who runs J Rothschild Capital Management, which manages RIT, described SpaceX as “the most innovative company of our time”. It is one of several bets the trust has made on unlisted businesses, including a move last year to invest in Anthropic, a leading developer of artificial intelligence. RIT’s Anthropic stake was valued at £7.4 million as of the end of December.
Founded by the late Lord Rothschild in 1971, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1988 and counts the Rothschild family as its biggest shareholder. It is one of the largest trusts on the market, with net assets of about £4 billion and investments spanning quoted equities and private investments. However, like many other London-listed trusts, its shares trade at a wide gap to its net asset value. At RIT the discount is about 27 per cent.
Annual results from the trust on Tuesday showed it delivered a 13.5 per cent net asset value return last year, up from 9.4 per cent in 2024, and a total return to shareholders of 16.9 per cent.
Investors around the world have been diversifying away from the US in recent months amid concerns about some of President Trump’s policies, including tariffs. RIT said that the geographic allocation of its quoted equities portfolio had “shifted significantly, with marked increases in European and Asian markets, leaving us less exposed to North America”.
Shares in RIT shares were down 30p, or 1.4 per cent, at £21.50 by Tuesday’s close.