Norway's giant sovereign wealth fund on Thursday reported a first-quarter profit of 1.21 trillion crowns ($109.9 billion), backed by strong returns from its investments in technology stocks.
The so-called Government Pension Fund Global, the world's largest sovereign fund, stated at the end of March that it was worth 17.7 trillion crowns.
He described the relative performance during the first three months of the year as “good” for equity and fixed income investments, but noted that “this was offset by weak results from the real estate sector, leading to a negative result overall.”
The return on the fund's equity investments in the first quarter was 9.1%, while the return on fixed income investments stood at -0.4% and investments in unlisted real estate gained -0.5%.
Norway's wealth fund said the performance of its unlisted renewable energy infrastructure was -11.4%.
The fund's performance was 0.1 percentage points lower than the benchmark index.
The facade of the central bank of Norway, also known as Norges Bank, in Oslo, Norway.
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Norway's sovereign wealth fund, one of the world's largest investors, was created in the 1990s to invest surplus revenue from the country's oil and gas sector. To date, the fund has invested money in more than 8,800 companies in more than 70 countries around the world.
Trond Grande, deputy chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, said in a statement that the fund's equity investments had a “very strong performance in the first quarter, particularly driven by the technology sector.”
When asked by CNBC if he was concerned about the recent weakness of some of the so-called “Magnificent 7” American tech giants, Grande said it seemed like market participants were now reassessing their outlook for these companies.
The “Magnificent 7” includes Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Goal, microsoft, NVIDIA and tesla.
“We had the Mag[nificent] 7 last year, and it has become a little more than [a situation of] Scattered returns for those seven names this quarter, with Nvidia still making headway on AI hype. And then you see more weakness in other names like Tesla and Apple,” Grande told CNBC's “Street Signs Europe” on Thursday.
“So, obviously, the market is taking a more nuanced look at these companies and their business models,” he added.
