Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund reported a first-quarter profit of 1.21 trillion crowns ($110 billion) on Thursday, helped by robust returns on its investments in technology stocks.
The so-called Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fundsaid it was value 17.7 trillion crowns at the top of March.
She described the relative return in the primary three months of the 12 months as “good” for equity and glued income investments, but noted that “this was offset by weak results in real estate, resulting in a negative result overall.”
The return on the fund’s equity investments was 9.1% in the primary quarter, while the return on fixed income investments was -0.4% and investments in unlisted real estate returned -0.5%.
The Norwegian wealth fund said the return on its unlisted renewable energy infrastructure was -11.4%.
The fund’s return was 0.1 percentage points below that of the benchmark index.
The facade of the Norwegian Central Bank, also generally known as Norges Bank, in Oslo, Norway.
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Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, certainly one of the world’s largest investors, was created within the Nineteen Nineties to take a position the surplus revenue from the country’s oil and gas sector. To date, the fund has invested money in greater than 8,800 firms in over 70 countries worldwide.
Trond Grande, deputy CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said in an announcement that the fund’s equity investments “delivered a very strong return in the first quarter, particularly due to the technology sector.”
Asked by CNBC whether he was concerned about recent weakness in a few of the so-called Magnificent Seven U.S. tech giants, Grande said it appeared market participants were now reassessing their prospects for those firms.
The Magnificent Seven are Apple, Amazon, alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia And Tesla.
“We had the mag[nificent] 7 last year, and it’s become a bit more than that [a situation of] The returns of these seven names were mixed this quarter, with Nvidia still moving ahead on AI enthusiasm. And then you see even more weakness in other names like Tesla and Apple,” Grande told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Thursday.
“Obviously the market is taking a more nuanced look at these companies and their business models,” he added.
