Norway's central bank, Norges Bank, is pictured here on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023 in Oslo, Norway.
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Norway's giant sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday its first-half profit reached 1.48 trillion kroner ($138 billion), driven mainly by strong gains from investments in technology stocks.
The world's largest sovereign wealth fund, the so-called Government Pension Fund Global, said its value reached 17.75 trillion kroner at the end of June.
The fund's overall six-month return was 8.6%, 0.04 percentage points below the return of the benchmark index.
Nikolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said on Wednesday that equity investments had delivered “very strong” returns in the first half of the year.
“The results were mainly driven by technology stocks due to increased demand for new solutions in artificial intelligence,” Tangen noted.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund said its equity portfolio returned 12.5 percent in the first half of the year, while its bond and unlisted property portfolios suffered small losses.
The fund reported a negative 17.7% return on its unlisted renewable energy infrastructure portfolio in the first half of the year. The firm said rising capital costs had adversely affected the value of its investments in the January-June period.
Speaking at a press conference, NBIM's Tangen said that looking ahead, the stock market is not expected to rise as much as in previous years, according to Reuters.
Tangen was quoted as saying that a lot of uncertainty and a “completely different geopolitical situation” were increasing risks to global stock markets.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, one of the world's largest investors, was set up in the 1990s to invest surplus revenues from the country's oil and gas sector. To date, the fund has put capital into more than 8,700 companies in over 70 countries around the world.
