A National Pension Service office in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. (image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s state pension fund is estimated to have chalked up massive profits from its holdings of shares in electric vehicle leader Tesla Motors Inc. with the share price rising at an explosive pace in recent years.
The National Pension Service (NPS) made its first disclosure that it owned US$7.92 million worth of Tesla shares as of the end of the third quarter of 2014, according to its Form 13F which is submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Form 13F is a quarterly report that is required to be filed by all institutional investment managers with at least $100 million in assets under management.
Based on this disclosure, it’s estimated that the NPS started buying Tesla stock earlier than this date.
At the end of the third quarter of 2014, Tesla stock traded at $48.54 per share based on corrected valuation.
If applying the stock split in August 2020 and the share price of $813.32 on Friday (local time), the NPS’s holding of Tesla stock recorded a yield rate of 8,278 percent over the past six and a half years.
According to data from the NPS’s investment in foreign stocks that its Investment Management started disclosing in 2016, the NPS owned 182.4 billion won (US$165 million) worth of Tesla stock as of the end of 2016.
Considering that Tesla’s market capitalization was then estimated at about $34.4 billion, the amount of shares that the NPS held in Tesla was relatively high.
If the NPS’s share ownership of Tesla stock has remained unchanged at 0.42 percent since late 2019, the value of its investment in Tesla shares is now estimated at around 3.6 trillion won (US$3.26 billion).
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
