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Standard Life Private Equity Trust

We held the view throughout 2020 that private equity funds like Standard Life Private Equity (SLPE) were being unfairly penalised by the market with wide discounts to net asset value (NAV). This was especially true once it became clearer, from the middle of 2020 onwards, that distributions were likely to be good, and relatively few underlying companies required liquidity support.
Since November, European-listed private equity has been outperforming broader global listed equities. However, until recently, this had limited impact on the discounts of funds such as SLPE, whose discount is broadly in line with the wider peer group average of 12.8% (see page 22). We think this discount narrowing was justified and should continue (see page 19). Over 40% of SLPE’s underlying exposure is to healthcare and technology, where rampant exit activity has been fuelling much-better-than-expected distributions. SLPE expects a busy rest of 2021, with the pipeline looking particularly good in primary investments in new funds and co-investments.