- January-June profit is strongest ever six-month earnings
- Asian tech stocks boosted half-year returns
- Management worried about high concentration of tech stocks
- Fund says it holds $1.2 billion stake in SpaceX
- World's largest sovereign wealth fund with $2.3 trillion assets
ARENDAL, Norway, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Norway's $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, posted a record profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns ($184.3 billion) for the first half of the year, lifted by technology stocks, it said on Wednesday.
Investing the Norwegian state's revenues from oil and gas production, the fund owns on average 1.5% of all listed companies globally, making it the world's largest single investor.
"The result is driven by good returns in the equity market, particularly from Asian technology stocks," CEO Nicolai Tangen said in a statement accompanying the half-year results.
The fund's first-half return beat a previous record of 1.5 trillion crowns set in the first six months of 2023, and corresponded roughly in size to the full-year nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of a nation such as Uzbekistan, a country of around 39 million people, a Reuters comparison showed.
A CONCENTRATION OF CHIPS
Still, the fund's management has repeatedly warned that future wars and economic depression could wipe out much of its holdings.
Tangen on Wednesday said the top 10 companies in its portfolio now represent 20% of the fund's value, with most of those firms in the tech industry, raising the concentration risk associated with its index-based investment strategy.
"It's chips, chips, chips, chips, chips ... we've never seen such concentration before," Tangen said.
Any change to this strategy would have to come from Norway's parliament, a process that normally takes years.
The fund late on Tuesday announced for the first time that it held a 0.05% stake in Elon Musk's SpaceX worth $1.22 billion as of June 30, in an updated list of its holdings.
That stake was modest when compared with its other tech holdings.
It held a 1.28% stake worth $62 billion in Nvidia, a 1.24% stake worth $52 billion in Apple, a 1.17% stake worth $50 billion in Alphabet, a 1.27% stake worth $35 billion in Microsoft and a 1.7% stake worth $34 billion in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, fund data showed.
Overall the fund is invested in around 7,100 companies globally. It also invests in bonds, property and renewable projects.
SpaceX shares rallied sharply in the wake of its record-breaking IPO in late June, then pulled back sharply as investors questioned whether a lofty valuation of 77 times expected revenue could be justified.
Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Arendal; Editing by Terje Solsvik, Andrew Heavens and Keith Weir
Source: Reuters