Polar Capital Technology Trust PLC · LSE:PCT
Polar Capital Technology Trust — Shareholder Meeting (September 2025)
40 slides from Polar Capital Technology Trust's shareholder meeting presentation, Sep 10, 2025
Slide 1: Welcome to the Annual General Meeting
Polar Capital Technology Trust plc Welcome to the Annual General Meeting 10 September 2025 polarcapitaltechnologytrust.co.uk This is a marketing communication This presentation is for use with non-US investors only.
Slide 2: Results As At 30 April 2025
Results As At 30 April 2025 Year ended As at Change 30/04/2024 30/04/2025 Net assets £3,804,533,000 £3,804,889,000 +0.01% NAV per ordinary share 315.41p 325.20p +3.1% Price per ordinary share 292.00p 288.50p -1.2% Benchmark change - - +5.1% Ordinary shares in issue* 1,206,215,690 1,170,007,019 -3.0%
Slide 3: Results As At 31 July 2025
Results As At 31 July 2025 Year ended As at As at Change 30/04/2024 30/04/2025 31/07/25 Net assets £3,804,533,000 £3,804,889,000 +0.01% £5,105,644,166 NAV per ordinary share 315.41p 325.20p +3.1% 442.66p Price per ordinary share 292.00p 288.50p -1.2% 402.00p Benchmark change - - +5.1% Ordinary share
Slide 4: Long-Term Performance
Long-Term Performance Discrete Annual Performance (%) Financial 31.07.24 31.07.23 29.07.22 30.07.21 31.07.20 YTD 31.07.25 31.07.24 31.07.23 29.07.22 30.07.21 Ordinary Share Price (TR) +39.3% +30.3% +33.3% +8.2% -12.1% +24.8% NAV per share +36.1% +30.2% +28.4% +14.1% -11.7% +27.2% Benchmark1 +27.1% +
Slide 5: Full Year Review
Full Year Review Dow Jones World Technology vs FTSE World Total Return • Global equities (FTSE World +5.2% in Sterling terms) delivered since April 2024 modest gains during the Trust’s fiscal year following a strong FY24, although this belied significant geopolitical and market volatility. 20% Econo
Slide 6: Full Year Review
Full Year Review • AI dominant investment theme: Reasoning models (o1), adoption (ChatGPT weekly active users >500m+), hyperscaler capex revisions, new highs in Feb ‘25 • Significant volatility: DeepSeek shock, tariffs, (NASDAQ put options acted as intended), MSFT capex angst, NVIDIA rack level asse
Slide 7: Technology Valuations
Technology Valuations Absolute sector valuation price to earnings (P/E) Relative sector valuation price to earnings (P/E) Past performance does not guarantee future returns. Source: Ned Davis, 29 August 2025. Copyright 2018 Ned Davis Research, Inc. Further distribution prohibited without prior permi
Slide 8: Polar Capital Technology Team
Polar Capital Technology Team Global Technology Polar Capital Artificial Intelligence Fund Technology Trust (LSE listed) Fund Polar Capital Technology US$8.5bn US$6.7bn US$1.3bn Trust – launched in Portfolio managers December 1996 One of the largest technology investment teams in Europe – cUS$16.5bn
Slide 9: What Differentiates Us?
What Differentiates Us? We look for technology Global, multi-cap portfolio companies exposed to 90-110 stocks, with a growth-centric structural, secular trends, investment style applying or enabling AI which Exceptional long-term track record have long-term growth potential Annualised return of 13.8
Slide 10: Investment Approach
Investment Approach 4,000+ universe Dynamic definition of technology Thematic overview Real-world changes in user behaviour S-Curve inflections What we look for Secular themes/pure-plays Last-generation winners What we avoid Public venture capital Growth bias – rev/earnings/cash flow Valuation Price
Slide 11: Investment Approach
Investment Approach LEARN INVEST AVOID Sales (blue) ‘Hype cycle phase’ ‘Demand inflection/non-linear change’ ‘Incumbency’ . Natural monopolies 5G eCommerce Smartphones Software as a Service Traditional AI/ML Hype (light blue) Autonomous Driving Cloud computing Quantum (PaaS/IaaS) Computing Metaverse
Slide 12: Blueprint For Technology Disruption
Blueprint For Technology Disruption Technology feature Impact/lessons Our approach to AI Technology S-Curve Underestimated opportunity Massive new markets Continuous re-evaluation of Incumbent’s dilemma opportunity set Winner takes most/ Can’t afford to Volume explosion concentrated returns miss win
Slide 13: Discontinuous Technological Progress
Discontinuous Technological Progress Generative AI clearly meets the criteria Discontinuous technological breakthroughs: The nature of discontinuous progress1 Discontinuous Extremely rare Technology Progress Perhaps 10 such moments in human history Radical innovation Fundamentally changes how indust
Slide 14: Discontinuous Technology Progress: Skyscrapers
Discontinuous Technology Progress: Skyscrapers Building height 400m 25x taller buildings Otis Safety Elevator in 46 years 300m Bessemer Steel 200m 100m ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY 16th Century 1885 1894 1908 1913 1931 Mud Houses Home Manhattan Life Singer Woolworth Empire Yemen Insurance Insurance Building
Slide 15: Discontinuous Technology Progress: Artificial Intelligence
Discontinuous Technology Progress: Artificial Intelligence GPT-4? Parameter count of Significant Machine Learning Systems 1.0e +12 Transformer Model Language Vision Games 1.0e +10 1.0e +8 1.0e +6 1.0e +4 1.0e +2 1956 1990 1994 1998 2002 2011 2016 2022 Dartmouth IBM AlphaGo AlphaFold conference Watso
Slide 16: AI Opportunity: Labour Arbitrage
AI Opportunity: Labour Arbitrage Labour = 40-80% of companies spend (vs only 3-6% on IT1) • As a GPT, AI will have “profound economic consequences reshaping industries, creating new markets and altering the competitive landscape” 1 • Knowledge work represents c34% of the global labour force/c$20trn
Slide 17: Rapid AI Adoption
Rapid AI Adoption Rapid diffusion, as predicted Adoption of GenAI vs. other technologies8 • Existing AI building blocks: 7bn smartphones, data, cloud • Prior GPTs experienced shorter implementation lag e.g., steam (c80 years), electricity (c40), ICT (c20 years)1 Explosive recent progress • 2 years s
Slide 18: AI Model Progress: Early Evidence Of 'Superhuman' AI
AI Model Progress: Early Evidence Of ‘Superhuman’ AI Benchmarks smashed OpenAI o3 breakthrough on ARC-AGI benchmarks…at a cost8 • o1: 83% in the International Mathematics Olympiad, compared to 13% achieved by GPT-4o1, surpassed PhD physics experts and achieved “superhuman performance in… diagnostic
Slide 19: Model Progress: DeepSeek R1 Makes Waves
Model Progress: DeepSeek R1 Makes Waves R1 reasoning model shocked the market: AI inference costs have rapidly declined due to innovation, • Impressive performance closed the gap - questions US AI leadership and DeepSeek follows this trend3 • Highlights different approaches to AI - challenges sustai
Slide 20: Hyperscaler Capex Remains Strong
Hyperscaler Capex Remains Strong • 2m advertisers using GenAI ad creative tools, AI-driven product Hyperscaler AI/Cloud Capex; Y/Y Growth1 improvement drove time spent on video by 20% and improved conversions by 5% on IGe Hyperscaler Capex Est. '23-’27 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 ($bn) CAGR • FY25E Cap
Slide 21: Hyperscaler Capex Remains Strong
Hyperscaler Capex Remains Strong • 2m advertisers using GenAI ad creative tools, AI-driven product US railroad capex as % of GDP1 improvement drove time spent on video by 20% and improved conversions by 5% on IGe 3.5 Gross Railroad Capital Formation (% of GDP) • FY25E Capex revised $66-72bn (+1% rev
Slide 22: AI Infrastructure: A New Compute Stack
AI Infrastructure: A New Compute Stack CPUs are the building blocks of the old infrastructure US$ content per server $1,740 PCB $360 $680 CCL $160 $850 ABF Substrate $35 25x NAND DRAM $800 $800 $1,000 $19,000 BoM Power Semi $600 $60 UPLIFT $200,000 GPU $4,635 $530 Chasis $351 $8,726 Network Interfac
Slide 23: AI Infrastructure: A New Compute Stack
AI Infrastructure: A New Compute Stack Foundries 3nm/2nm, new transistor architectures Semiconductor Capital Equipment Advanced tools and packaging Networking – Ethernet/Infiniband 400G/800G/1.6T, co-packaged optics Substrates Larger finer substrates with move to chiplet Printed Circuit Boards Highe
Slide 24: Hyperscaler Capex: The 'ROI Question'
Hyperscaler Capex: The ‘ROI Question’ AI investments are defensive and offensive Defensive AI Agent vs Traditional Search Usage Instance2 • Risk to existing business: ChatGPT vs Google Search, Deep Research vs knowledge worker software tools Offensive • New AI revenue lines: MSFT $13bn AI revenue ru
Slide 25: Hyperscalers: The Shift To 'Two-Way' Debates
Hyperscalers: The Shift To ‘Two-Way’ Debates AI is both an opportunity and a threat AI Agent vs Traditional Search Usage Instance1 + Structural advantages in AI compute (TPUs), AI talent, data, distribution, ‒ AI competitive with core search, capex up + Azure AI cloud growth, #1 trusted enterprise A
Slide 26: Disruption Happens Early
Disruption Happens Early In 2015, cloud represented ~9% of workloads but captured ALL Intel vs SOX Semiconductor Index2 incremental growth1 1600 Cloud inflection Avoiding losers critically important 31/12/2015 1400 • Companies face risk of obsolescence 1200 1000 % returns – Benefitting innovators AM
Slide 27: Disruption Happens Early
Disruption Happens Early AI represents an existential threat to many incumbents ChatGPT launch (Nov 2022) OpenAI Sora launch (Feb 2024) “We saw a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT. We now believe it's having “Some investors seem to believe that AI and the Sora product specifically pos
Slide 28: Terminal Value Questioned As AI Improves
Terminal Value Questioned As AI Improves AI performance on Ph.D.-level science questions 120% 100% 80% GPT-5 high 60% o1-mini (high) 40% Claude 3 Opus GPT-4o GPT-4 20% 0% Source: Polar Capital,, Epoch AI and Bloomberg August 2025. It should not be assumed that recommendations made in future will be
Slide 29: Disruption Happens Early: Software
Disruption Happens Early: Software Decelerating growth; imperfect conduit for AI Signs of SaaS saturation Median revenue growth rate of public SaaS companies6 60% 52% 52% • Customer count growth slowed to 6% from 18% in 20211 50% 43% 40% • Price increases: “Absorbing some or all of budget growth” (c
Slide 30: Disruption Happens Early: Agentic AI
Disruption Happens Early: Agentic AI A profound new technology brings new ways of working An AI agent plans, makes decisions and completes tasks to Agentic AI: A new disruptive phase in software’s evolution2 achieve a specific goal without human intervention 2016-2012 2012-2015 2025 – AI Implication
Slide 31: Agentic AI: Non-Human Scaling
Agentic AI: Non-Human Scaling Expanding the boundaries of what AI can achieve The shift from assistants to agents could be dramatic1 Industrial Revolution → mechanisation → overcome physical constraints Information Revolution → digitisation → overcome informational and geographic constraints Agentic
Slide 32: Rapid AI Scaling: Shortening Timeline to AGI
Rapid AI Scaling: Shortening Timeline to AGI Early evidence of ‘superhuman’ AI GPT4o capabilities “the continuation of a decade of breakneck Training compute of notable AI models1 progress in deep learning”1 • Leading models today “running out of benchmarks”1 AI is scaling much faster than Moore’s L
Slide 33: Market Outlook: Volatility/Opportunity
Market Outlook: Volatility/Opportunity Volatility is endemic to all new technology cycles NASDAQ 100 (1995-1998) - pre ‘99 melt up • Innovation curve is at its steepest 2000 • Scale of the opportunity hard to define 1800 • Pace of innovation impossible to predict 1600 Volatility creates opportunity
Slide 34: PCT: AI Portfolio Exposure
PCT: AI Portfolio Exposure Indicative percentage of portfolio exposed to Artificial Intelligence (100% stock weights) With AI poised to become the next general purpose technology 4.9% (GPT), we have added an ‘AI 6.3% lens’ to our investment process AI Enabler – Cloud Computing through which we view
Slide 35: PCT Positioning
PCT Positioning Geographic exposure (%) Top 15 positions Sector exposure 80 71.3% NVIDIA 10.9% Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment 29.7% 70 60 Microsoft 8.2% Software 12.5% 50 Meta Platforms 6.2% Interactive Media & Services 11.6% 40 Alphabet 6.2% Electronic Equipment, Instruments & Components
Slide 36: PCT Positioning
PCT Positioning Largest overweights Largest underweights PCT relative market cap exposure vs benchmark1 Advanced Micro Devices Adobe Systems 20% Amazon Alphabet Amphenol Corp Analog Devices 15% Arista Networks Apple 10% Carvana Applied Materials Celestica ASML Holding 5% Cloudflare Cisco Systems 0%
Slide 37: Portfolio Structure – Active Positions And Valuation
Portfolio Structure – Active Positions And Valuation A diversified portfolio, capturing secular growth potential of key themes Fund Index Active Fund Index Active Valuation Snapshot Technology Index Difference (5 August 2025)1 Trust1 Top 1001 Cloudflare 1.94% 0.24% 1.70% Apple** 4.55% 12.61% -8.06%
Slide 38: Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts • A more challenging market backdrop than earlier anticipated McCormick’s Reaper (1831) • Remain hopeful this macroeconomic episode is contained (recalibration, not reset) • (Some) volatility expected during new technology cycles • Less certain AI investment narrative appears at odds
Slide 39: Important Information
Important Information Polar Capital, 16 Palace Street, London SW1E 5JD Important Information This is a marketing communication. Please refer to the Polar Capital Technology Trust plc offer document and to the KID before making any final investment decisions. This document is provided for the sole us
Slide 40: Important Information Cont.
Important Information Cont. Polar Capital, 16 Palace Street, London SW1E 5JD Benchmarks: The following benchmark index is used: Dow Jones Global Technology Index (Total Return). This benchmark is generally considered to be representative of the Technology Equity universe. This benchmark is a broad-
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