PIF Managing Director Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan at the Russia-Saudi Investment Forum at The Ritz-Carlton, Moscow.
Sergey Bobylev | TASS via Getty Images
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund, is an active participant in U.S. public and private markets.
Unlike most U.S. funds, it doesn’t need to break down its holdings in the two markets. But documents revealed at the recent PGA-LIV merger hearing included a previously unreported list of the largest public equity holdings by a sovereign wealth fund, worth about $35.5 billion. Judging from the report, PIF appears to be making a series of clear bets on experiential products, from gaming to live entertainment.
The list, updated as of March 31, shows the electric automaker holding a stake worth $8.9 billion wide awake, accounting for about 25% of PIF’s shareholding. As of this writing, PIF controls approximately 60% of Lucid’s outstanding shares.
PIF’s second largest stake Activision Blizzard, valued at $3.3 billion, or 9.1% of PIF’s public equity holding. Shares of the game maker rose more than 10 percent in midday trading Tuesday after a judge rejected a request by the Federal Trade Commission for an injunction blocking Microsoft’s bid to buy the company.
In descending order of size, the second largest company held by PIF is electronic arts ($2.98 billion, or 8.4% of its portfolio), uber ($2.3 billion, or 8.4%), Take-Two Interactive Software ($1.36 billion, or 3.8%) and field country ($880 million or 2.5%).
Compared with the Nasdaq index, PIF has an underweight or overweight technology stocks. Its $691 million stake in Meta represents about 1.9% of the fund’s total public market allocation, compared with the stock’s 2.87% weighting in the S&P index.
By weight, Google accounts for 2.87% of the Nasdaq, but only 1.2% of PIF’s $35.51 billion public portfolio.The firm also significantly increased its holdings in other tech stocks, including betting on Booking Holdingstake two, uber and soaring.
Saudi Arabia enjoys privileged access and a lot of attention from venture capital and private equity firms keen to activate the kingdom’s deep pockets as it realizes oil and gas investments under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of diversification.
Here’s the full list:
— CNBC’s John Rosevear contributed to this report.
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