PIF (Public Investment Fund) Managing Director Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan attends the Russian-Saudi Investment Forum held at the Ritz-Carlton Moscow Hotel.
Sergei Bobylev | TASS via Getty Images
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund or PIF, is an active player in U.S. public and private markets.
Unlike most U.S. funds, it isn’t required to break down its holdings in either of those markets. But among the documents disclosed in the recent PGA-LIV merger hearings was a previously unreported list of the sovereign wealth fund’s top public equity holdings, valued at some $35.5 billion. From that report, it appears that has made a clear series of bets on experiential offerings, ranging from gaming to in-person entertainment.
The list, which was updated as of March 31, shows a $8.9 billion stake in electric automaker Lucid, constituting about 25% of PIF’s equity holdings. PIF controls about 60% of Lucid’s outstanding shares at the time of publication.
PIF’s second largest stake, in Activision Blizzard, was valued at $3.3 billion and amounted to 9.1% of PIF’s public equity holdings. Shares in the game maker were up more than 10% in mid-day trading on Tuesday as a judge declined the Federal Trade Commission’s request for an injunction to stall Microsoft’s deal to acquire the company.
In descending order of size, PIF’s next largest corporate holdings were in Electronic Arts ($2.98 billion, or 8.4% of its portfolio), Uber ($2.3 billion, or 8.4%), Take Two Software ($1.36 billion, or 3.8%) and Live Nation ($880 million or 2.5%).
The PIF was variously under-and overweight in its tech exposure, relative to the Nasdaq. Its $691 million stake in Meta was about 1.9% of the fund’s total public market allocation, compared to the stock’s 2.87% weighting in the S&P.
Google accounts for 2.87% of the Nasdaq by weight, but made up a mere 1.2% of the PIF’s $35.51 billion public portfolio. The company was also notably overweight on other tech names, including bets on Booking Holdings, Take Two, Uber, and Zoom.
Saudi Arabia has enjoyed privileged access and outsize attention from venture capital and private equity firms, which are keen to activate the kingdom’s deep pockets as it diversifies away from oil-and-gas investments under the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Here’s the full list:
—CNBC’s John Rosevear contributed to this report.
