The facade of the Norwegian Central Bank, also known as Norges Bank, in Oslo, Norway.
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Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund reported first-quarter profit of 1.21 trillion crowns ($109.9 billion) on Thursday, supported by robust returns on its investments in technology stocks.
“Our equity investments had a very strong return in the first quarter, especially thanks to the technology sector,” said Trond Grande, deputy managing director of the fund.
The so-called Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, said it was worth 17.7 trillion crowns at the end of March.
He described the relative performance in the first three months of the year as “good” for stock and bond investments, but noted that “this was offset by weak results from the real estate sector, which led to an overall negative result.”
In the first quarter, the return on the fund’s equity investments was 9.1%, that on fixed income investments was -0.4% and that on investments in real estate not listed on the stock exchange was -0.5%.
The Norwegian asset fund said the return on its unlisted renewable energy infrastructure was -11.4%.
The fund’s return was 0.1 percentage points lower than that of the benchmark index.
One of the world’s largest investors, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund was established in the 1990s to invest surplus revenues 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.
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