By Hadeel Al Sayegh
DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought shares in Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Zoom Video and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) as part of a wider pick of U.S. stocks, bringing the market value of the sovereign wealth fund's investment portfolio to about $40.8 billion at the end of the second quarter.
The PIF acquired 213,000 class A shares in Alphabet, 4.7 million class A shares in Zoom and 1.8 million shares in Microsoft, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed.
It also acquired shares in JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) and BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), buying 3.9 million shares and 741,693 shares respectively.
The fund bought 6.3 million shares in Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), and added other stocks including Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD), Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), Home Depot (NYSE:HD), Costco (NASDAQ:COST), Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX), Datadog (NASDAQ:DDOG) and NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE).
The PIF, which manages $620 billion in assets, is at the centre of Saudi Arabia’s plans to transform the economy by creating new sectors and diversifying revenues away from oil.
The PIF is pursuing a two-pronged strategy, building an international portfolio of investments while also investing locally in projects that will help to reduce Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil.
(The story corrects lead to show $40.8 bln is portfolio's market value, not Q2 investments.)