Is BlackRock's BIGZ Metamorphosis Into BTX A Buy Or A Sell Now?

March 03, 2025 12:22:26 pm

Source: SeekingAlpha

2025-03-03 12:22:26 ET

Summary

One of the more controversial equity CEFs over the last few years has been BlackRock's Innovation & Growth fund (BIGZ), which went public in March 2021.
From there, it's been mostly downhill for a fund that invested a good chunk of its portfolio in private equity technology companies, just before the Nasdaq-100 was about to fall -32.5% in 2022.
And private equity has never gotten off the mat since. There was hope that President Trump would help unthaw the IPO market with his focus on up-and-coming technologies like cryptocurrencies.
But so far, that dream has turned into a nightmare as Bitcoin dropped. So, with BIGZ under continued duress, BlackRock agreed to change the name and start over.
As of last week, BIGZ is now the BlackRock Technology and Private Equity Term Trust (BTX), a fund that will be half its size in June when a Tender Offer will cash out 50% of outstanding shares at 99.5% of NAV value.

The BlackRock Technology and Private Equity Term Trust ( BTX ) , $7.11 closing market price, has been under severe pressure recently, mostly due to a selloff in small to mid-cap technology stocks, but you can also point to the fallout in the cryptocurrency space, which dropped into a bear market just in February.

Though BTX doesn't really own crypto or Bitcoin, it does own private equity, which has been in a deep freeze ever since BTX went public as the BlackRock Innovation & Growth fund (BIGZ) in March 2021....