Finsbury Growth & Income Trust plc Fund Data

In September, the NAV was -7.9% on a total return basis and the share price was -7.8% on a total return basis, while the index was -1.9%. Despite a challenging month, the Company's NAV and share price outperformed the index over Q3, up 3.7% and 4.2% respectively, compared to the FTSE All Share's 2.4%. The biggest positive contributor to returns over the quarter was Sage (+19%). At time of writing, the shares have started the fourth quarter strongly, too, and are now up over 30% from their lows in July. Sage is an important holding, so its fate as a business and a share price matters for our performance. In addition, Sage is also in the crosshairs of the current debate amongst global investors as to whether incumbent, business-critical software companies, like Sage, are winners or losers from developments in AI. The company itself is in no doubt. The chair told us earlier in 2026: "AI is an extraordinary tailwind for Sage". Nonetheless, the executives acknowledge the power and utility of, say, Anthropic and recognise Sage must continue to innovate in order to stay relevant with its existing and future customers. The share rally over the quarter shows investors are now more confident Sage will maintain that relevance. Part of this, we expect, results from the simultaneous share price gain in SAP, the enterprise software giant, which we added earlier this year to the Lindsell Train Global Equity Strategy. Over the summer, Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, was quoted as saying: "Software is entering its most powerful era. AI will change the user interface, but the need for continuously updated, governed systems only grows. AI agents don't replace enterprise software – they rely on it. The winners will be those who deliver value at the application layer; business outcomes grounded in deep domain expertise, integrated across functions and governed for deployment at scale." Essentially, he is arguing that SAP's customers both need and will likely rely on SAP to deliver the cost and time efficiencies that AI promises. SAP's domain expertise means that it will be able to offer efficiencies that would not be available to an LLM trained on publicly available data. Central to that proposition is access to data. Also over the summer, the analysts at Peel Hunt wrote a fascinating piece about the embedded advantages of incumbent enterprise software providers. They remarked: "AI trains on public data or proprietary data for sale. This likely amounts to less than 1% of the world's proprietary data held within businesses. This can only be accessed by trusted software operating inside a business, enabling AI capabilities without leaking value." These are powerful counters to those that argue AI will sweep away enterprise software providers. So far as Sage is concerned, it too argues that it has a crucial and valuable role as an orchestrator of AI for its millions of small and mid-sized customers, and that this role is made credible by the expertise Sage's in-house developed AI agents can bring to bear on the data generated within the company's product ecosystem. Over the summer, Sage reported its Copilot had delivered 75 million insights to customers over the year, while over the same period its Accounts Payable Agent had processed three times more invoices, which had saved customers an aggregate five million hours of work. And, crucially, so far as Sage's investment case is concerned, these initiatives resulted in an acceleration in its revenue growth rate to 11%, led by 14% in its biggest market, the US. Just on that point, RELX (+6%) was another portfolio holding to rally over the quarter and another of our holdings that has been pressurised in 2026 by worries about AI disruption. There is a lively and currently unresolvable debate about the vulnerability of RELX to AI, but probably a more important and useful indicator for investors is to look at what is actually happening in the divisions theoretically most exposed to the disruption. Everyone agrees that RELX's Legal data division is conceptually most vulnerable. But it also can't be denied that division has seen a marked acceleration in its revenue growth over the last two years, doubling to 10%. And doubling because of RELX's success in bringing AI-enhanced insights to its existing customers. The pick-ups in RELX's and Sage's growth rate are markers that support our proposition that incumbents and, most importantly, proprietary data owners, are better positioned to win from AI than their share prices currently suggest. Related to this debate, we also note that the actual biggest share price gain in the portfolio over the quarter was delivered by another company whose competitive advantage is very much bolstered by its own data assets. This was Clarkson, up 22%. Clarkson is the world's #1 shipping broker, and its business has been boosted this year by the extreme disruption in the global fleet, putting a premium on Clarkson's skills in broking solutions for desperate clients. The shares have done well in 2026, unaffected by the angst over AI disruption of data owners. However, the company is explicit that its success does depend on its aggregation of data on the maritime fleet and its ability to extract new insights from that data.

In September, the NAV was -7.9% on a total return basis and the share price was -7.8% on a total return basis, while the index was -1.9%. Despite a challenging month, the Company's NAV and share price outperformed the index over Q3, up 3.7% and 4.2% respectively, compared to the FTSE All Share's 2.4%. The biggest positive contributor to returns over the quarter was Sage (+19%). At time of writing, the shares have started the fourth quarter strongly, too, and are now up over 30% from their lows in July. Sage is an important holding, so its fate as a business and a share price matters for our performance. In addition, Sage is also in the crosshairs of the current debate amongst global investors as to whether incumbent, business-critical software companies, like Sage, are winners or losers from developments in AI. The company itself is in no doubt. The chair told us earlier in 2026: "AI is an extraordinary tailwind for Sage". Nonetheless, the executives acknowledge the power and utility of, say, Anthropic and recognise Sage must continue to innovate in order to stay relevant with its existing and future customers. The share rally over the quarter shows investors are now more confident Sage will maintain that relevance. Part of this, we expect, results from the simultaneous share price gain in SAP, the enterprise software giant, which we added earlier this year to the Lindsell Train Global Equity Strategy. Over the summer, Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, was quoted as saying: "Software is entering its most powerful era. AI will change the user interface, but the need for continuously updated, governed systems only grows. AI agents don't replace enterprise software – they rely on it. The winners will be those who deliver value at the application layer; business outcomes grounded in deep domain expertise, integrated across functions and governed for deployment at scale." Essentially, he is arguing that SAP's customers both need and will likely rely on SAP to deliver the cost and time efficiencies that AI promises. SAP's domain expertise means that it will be able to offer efficiencies that would not be available to an LLM trained on publicly available data. Central to that proposition is access to data. Also over the summer, the analysts at Peel Hunt wrote a fascinating piece about the embedded advantages of incumbent enterprise software providers. They remarked: "AI trains on public data or proprietary data for sale. This likely amounts to less than 1% of the world's proprietary data held within businesses. This can only be accessed by trusted software operating inside a business, enabling AI capabilities without leaking value." These are powerful counters to those that argue AI will sweep away enterprise software providers. So far as Sage is concerned, it too argues that it has a crucial and valuable role as an orchestrator of AI for its millions of small and mid-sized customers, and that this role is made credible by the expertise Sage's in-house developed AI agents can bring to bear on the data generated within the company's product ecosystem. Over the summer, Sage reported its Copilot had delivered 75 million insights to customers over the year, while over the same period its Accounts Payable Agent had processed three times more invoices, which had saved customers an aggregate five million hours of work. And, crucially, so far as Sage's investment case is concerned, these initiatives resulted in an acceleration in its revenue growth rate to 11%, led by 14% in its biggest market, the US. Just on that point, RELX (+6%) was another portfolio holding to rally over the quarter and another of our holdings that has been pressurised in 2026 by worries about AI disruption. There is a lively and currently unresolvable debate about the vulnerability of RELX to AI, but probably a more important and useful indicator for investors is to look at what is actually happening in the divisions theoretically most exposed to the disruption. Everyone agrees that RELX's Legal data division is conceptually most vulnerable. But it also can't be denied that division has seen a marked acceleration in its revenue growth over the last two years, doubling to 10%. And doubling because of RELX's success in bringing AI-enhanced insights to its existing customers. The pick-ups in RELX's and Sage's growth rate are markers that support our proposition that incumbents and, most importantly, proprietary data owners, are better positioned to win from AI than their share prices currently suggest. Related to this debate, we also note that the actual biggest share price gain in the portfolio over the quarter was delivered by another company whose competitive advantage is very much bolstered by its own data assets. This was Clarkson, up 22%. Clarkson is the world's #1 shipping broker, and its business has been boosted this year by the extreme disruption in the global fleet, putting a premium on Clarkson's skills in broking solutions for desperate clients. The shares have done well in 2026, unaffected by the angst over AI disruption of data owners. However, the company is explicit that its success does depend on its aggregation of data on the maritime fleet and its ability to extract new insights from that data.