Smart Money Profile

Terry Smith

Fundsmith

Primary Fund

$12.8B

13F Portfolio Value

Quality · Long-Term

Investment Style

Profile & Investment Philosophy

Terry Smith engaged in aggressive "de-risking" during Q1 2026, trimming almost every position in the Fundsmith portfolio. Despite the reductions, Marriott International, Stryker, and Visa remain core holdings. Smith's discipline to "do nothing" when market valuations are stretched led him to preserve capital and maintain a highly defensive stance in a period of high interest rates.

Track Record

Terry Smith launched Fundsmith Equity Fund in November 2010 with three rules that have not changed: only invest in good companies, do not overpay, do nothing. The fund has compounded at roughly 15.3% annualised since inception, modestly ahead of the MSCI World Index over the same period and well ahead of the typical UK-domiciled global equity fund. Fundsmith manages tens of billions across the flagship strategy and runs an Emerging Equities Trust and a Sustainable Equity vehicle. Unlike US-based hedge funds, Fundsmith does not file 13Fs — positioning is disclosed through the monthly factsheet, the annual letter and the annual shareholder meeting, which has become one of the most-watched events in European long-only investing.

Signature Trades

Microsoft — buying the cloud pivot

Fundsmith built a meaningful Microsoft position relatively early in the Satya Nadella era, when the market still viewed the company as a legacy Windows business rather than a hyperscale cloud platform. The thesis combined classic Fundsmith criteria — high return on capital, sticky enterprise revenue, balance-sheet quality — with a recognition that the cloud transition was structurally widening the moat. The position has been a major contributor to the fund's performance through the 2020s.

PepsiCo and Diageo — branded-consumer compounders

PepsiCo and Diageo are textbook Fundsmith holdings: global brand portfolios, decades-long distribution moats, pricing power through inflation cycles and high incremental returns on reinvestment. Smith has held both names for years as anchor positions, treating them as the canonical examples of his good-company definition. The trade is less about timing than about owning quality businesses for long enough that compounding does the work.

Unilever — the rare exit (April 2026)

Smith exited Unilever in April 2026 — a notable move given his explicit preference for doing nothing. He had been publicly critical of management for years, most famously over the GSK consumer-health bid in 2022 and the broader concern that the company had become obsessed with brand purpose at the expense of operational execution. The exit reinforces a core Fundsmith principle: even good companies can lose their good-company status, and when the thesis breaks you sell — but you do not flip-flop along the way.

Current Strategy (2026)

Fundsmith currently holds around 27 positions — at the upper end of Smith's preferred range of 20 to 30 names — with Marriott International disclosed at the top of the portfolio according to the most recent factsheet. The Unilever exit in April 2026 freed up capital that has been redeployed into existing high-conviction holdings rather than fanned out across new names. The book continues to be tilted toward high-return-on-capital businesses in technology, consumer health, branded consumer and select industrials, with no exposure to banks, commodities, real estate or utilities — sectors Smith has long argued cannot meet the good-company test. Turnover remains characteristically low; positions are measured in years, sometimes decades, and the do-nothing principle continues to do most of the heavy lifting.

BMI

BMI Counter-Take

Terry Smith is the most disciplined application of quality investing available to the European retail investor — and we mean that as the highest compliment. The three rules are deceptively simple, but the discipline of actually applying them is what 99% of managers fail at. The valid critique is that Fundsmith has lagged the MSCI World in recent years as the index has narrowed around the Magnificent Seven, several of which Smith deemed too richly valued. If you believe quality compounds over a full cycle, that is a feature, not a bug. If you measure success in three-year rolling windows, you will be tempted to switch — and you will probably switch at exactly the wrong moment.

Current Portfolio

LATEST 13F 2026-04-30

Latest SEC Form 13F filing. Total portfolio value: $12.8B. Holdings: 27 positions.

Security	Shares	Δ vs Prev	Value ($)	Portfolio %
Marriott International	—	—	—	—
L'Oréal	—	—	—	—
Alphabet	—	—	—	—
Visa	—	—	—	—
Stryker	—	—	—	—
Waters	—	—	—	—
Meta Platforms	—	—	—	—
Philip Morris International	—	—	—	—
Idexx Laboratories	—	—	—	—
Automatic Data Processing	—	—	—	—

SOURCE: SEC Form 13F (2026-04-30). BMI Smart Money Tracker.

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