Lindsell Train 13F (2026 Q1): A Broad Trim, Two Conviction Adds

The purest expression of buy-and-hold quality

Few managers practice patience as visibly as Lindsell Train. The London firm, run by Nick Train and Michael Lindsell, built its reputation on owning a tiny number of exceptional, brand-rich businesses and then doing almost nothing, turnover so low it can border on inactivity for years at a stretch. Its US 13F is a window onto that philosophy: just 27 positions worth about $3.14 billion in 2026Q1, dominated by durable franchises the firm believes can compound for decades. When a manager this concentrated and this patient does make changes, those changes are worth reading closely, because they do not happen often.

The top of the book reads like a list of businesses with pricing power and long histories. TKO Group, the sports-entertainment company behind UFC and WWE, is the largest holding at 15.75% of reported value, with Alphabet a near-equal second at 15.63%. Behind them sit Intuit, Disney, Thermo Fisher, FICO, Mondelez, PepsiCo, PayPal, and eBay. These are exactly the kind of entrenched, intangible-rich businesses, software, data, media, consumer brands, that the firm has favored for years.

A quarter of broad reduction

The headline this quarter is that reported US value fell about 20.5% from the prior quarter, and the share-count data shows this was not merely a price effect. Lindsell Train reduced most of its largest positions: PepsiCo by 29% of shares, Mondelez by 20%, Alphabet by 18%, TKO by 13%, and Thermo Fisher by 10%. When a famously low-turnover manager trims across the board like this, it usually reflects portfolio-level pressure, redemptions or reallocation, rather than a stock-by-stock change of heart, and Lindsell Train has been navigating a stretch of well-documented outflows. The breadth of the trimming is the signal: this is the book getting smaller, not the thesis changing.

But two names went the other way

What makes the quarter interesting is that amid the broad reduction, the firm added to two positions: Intuit, up 20% of shares, and FICO, up 15%. For a manager selling almost everything else, choosing to lean further into these two is a genuine conviction signal. Both are software-and-data businesses with deep moats, Intuit through its grip on tax and small-business accounting, FICO through its near-monopoly on consumer credit scoring. The pattern suggests a deliberate tilt: while raising cash by trimming consumer staples and media, the firm concentrated what remained toward its highest-conviction software and analytics franchises. Reading the adds against the sells is far more informative than the falling asset total alone.

How to read a manager who barely trades

Lindsell Train rewards a particular kind of attention. Because the firm holds so few names and turns them over so rarely, the composition of the book is a high-conviction statement in itself, these are businesses the managers expect to own for the very long term. And because changes are rare, the direction of any share-count move carries outsized meaning. This quarter, the message is twofold: a smaller book overall, driven by flows, but with the remaining capital nudged toward Intuit and FICO. That combination, reduction in size paired with concentration into the highest-quality data franchises, tells you more than the 20% drop in reported value ever could on its own.

You can review the full 27-position book, the quarter-over-quarter share changes, and the multi-year history on the Lindsell Train filer page.