Baillie Gifford & Co Doubles Down on Emerging-Market Profit Pools in 2026-Q1

The biggest incremental dollars went into places where consensus is still uncomfortable: emerging-market financials and energy, second-derivative AI beneficiaries, and physical-world automation.

• Credicorp (BAP) was nearly doubled, with shares up 90.5% and an estimated $439.8M added, turning a 0.95% position into the flagship EM bank bet. This is a direct wager that Peru-centric banking and payments will compound from a much lower base than US peers.
• MakeMyTrip (MMYT) saw a 191.2% jump in shares and about $367.6M of fresh capital, pushing it to 0.57% of the book. That is a strong call that Indian travel and online services are in the early innings despite cyclicality.
• Samsara (IOT) and AppLovin (APP) both absorbed large adds — roughly $312.6M and $212.4M respectively — signaling preference for AI-era infrastructure and monetization rails over owning only the hyperscale platforms.
• Petrobras (PBR) got a 50.5% share increase and roughly $309.5M more capital, an unusually blunt statement that state-linked EM energy still has a role in a growth book.
• Axon (AXON), Joby Aviation (JOBY), Reddit (RDDT), and Watsco (WSO) all saw sizable increases, pointing to a willingness to fund bleeding-edge aerospace, public-safety tech, and niche marketplaces even into macro and rate uncertainty.

Taken together, the buy list says Baillie Gifford is leaning into non-US, non-mega-cap compounding stories and the less glamorous infrastructure around AI and digital demand rather than doubling down on the already-rewarded winners.

The funding sources for this rotation are telling: Baillie Gifford is clipping exposure in the biggest winners and in more mature consumer internet, not abandoning growth but rebalancing where it thinks the next leg of returns comes from.

• Netflix (NFLX) was the clear ATM, with a 41.0% cut in shares and about $1.46B of exposure taken off, yet it still sits at 2.14% of the book. That looks like a disciplined harvest in a name trading as a quality compounder rather than a high-mispricing.
• Microsoft (MSFT) and NVIDIA (NVDA) were both trimmed — MSFT down 30.1% (roughly $617.0M freed), NVDA down 7.1% (around $544.0M). With huge gains vs average cost in each, these look like risk-budget and concentration management, not a thesis abandonment on AI.
• Core e-commerce and consumer names like MercadoLibre (MELI), Amazon (AMZN), and Coupang (CPNG) were all reduced, with Coupang particularly hard-hit at -17.4% in shares and about $480.8M out despite the position being underwater relative to cost. That suggests a cold reassessment of unit-economics and market structure rather than simple profit-taking.
• PDD, Shopify (SHOP), and Ryanair (RYAAY) also saw meaningful trims, alongside smaller reductions across health-care and tools such as Alnylam (ALNY), Royalty Pharma (RPRX), and SQM.

The pattern is consistent: recycle capital from scaled, well-understood internet platforms and mega-cap software into areas where dispersion and mispricing might be greater — even at the cost of near-term drawdowns in an already-tough quarter.

On the surface, sector weights barely moved. Underneath, the character of the risk changed.

Technology’s share of the book slipped just from 40.74% to 40.4%, but within that, Baillie Gifford cut safer, cash-generative names like Microsoft and trimmed big platform plays like Meta and Google’s non-voting class, while adding to earlier-stage software and services such as Samsara, AppLovin, Reddit, Atlassian (TEAM), and Duolingo (DUOL). This is a pivot from owning just the AI headline acts to owning the operational plumbing and software levered to that demand.

Consumer exposure dropped from 27.33% to 25.89%, with heavy trims in Netflix, Coupang, and Ryanair while selectively scaling MakeMyTrip, Sea (SE), and Watsco. That’s a rotation from mature global streaming and developed-market retail logistics toward EM travel and services with longer runways but bumpier paths.

Industrials climbed from 8.12% to 8.92% as the fund added to Axon, Rocket Lab (RKLB), Joby, Symbotic (SYM), Rivian (RIVN), and held Ferrari (RACE) and Tesla (TSLA) as smaller but still meaningful bets. Health care ticked up from 8.29% to 8.51%, largely through small adds to Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Dexcom (DXCM), Ensign Group (ENSG), and continued carries in biotech, positioning the book for structural health spending growth rather than binary drug outcomes.

Finance rose from 5.83% to 6.45% on the back of Credicorp and CoStar (CSGP), and energy from 0.76% to 1.18% via Petrobras, reinforcing the story: the manager is willing to carry more EM macro and regulatory risk for what they perceive as underpriced growth.

After a brutal -16.79% quarter, Baillie Gifford is not de-risking; it is re-risking away from consensus winners toward earlier-stage global growth while trimming the names that have already validated their narratives.

The increased stakes in Credicorp, MakeMyTrip, Petrobras, Samsara, AppLovin, Axon, and Joby suggest they expect the next three to five years of excess return to come from EM financial deepening, real-economy digitalization, and the capex cycle around automation and AI — not just from owning US mega-cap platforms. These are areas where volatility will be higher and drawdowns sharper, but where starting valuations and competitive dynamics may be more forgiving.

At the same time, they have not walked away from their secular themes. NVIDIA, Amazon, MercadoLibre, Spotify, Nu (NU), and Tesla still anchor the book, but with position sizes that free up bandwidth for experiments in Reddit, Rivian, Symbotic, Duolingo, and others that could grow into future core holdings.

For observers of Baillie Gifford, the message is clear: the growth playbook remains intact, but the center of gravity is moving further from US large-cap comfort into EM, infrastructure, and the physical-world edges of tech. Expect the ride to be bumpier — and the dispersion of outcomes across these new bets to matter far more to future 13F snapshots.