An Investment Return of 8,278%
The National Pension Service of South Korea announced on Feb. 14 that it owned US$7.92 million of Tesla shares as of the end of the third quarter of 2014.
At that time, the stock price was US$48.54. Given that Tesla split its stock five-for-one in August last year and the price was US$813.32 on Feb. 13 this year, the 78-month return of the NPS amounts to 8,278 percent.
As of the end of 2016, when Tesla’s market cap was US$34.4 billion, the NPS owned 182.4 billion won of Tesla shares. At that time, Tesla was the 76th-largest foreign stock asset of the NPS. For reference, GM was the 74th-largest and its market cap was US$52.7 billion at that time. As of the end of 2016, the NPS owned 927.7 billion won of Microsoft shares, 901 billion won of Apple shares and 678.6 billion won of Amazon shares as its three largest foreign stock assets.
The NPS increased its shareholdings in the companies and the stock prices continued to rise for years. As a result, its appraised values in Microsoft, Apple and Amazon reached 3,330.4 billion won, 3,140.6 billion won and 1,991.3 billion won at the end of 2019, respectively.
Until 2019 since its establishment in 1998, the NPS showed an average annual investment return of 10.08 percent in foreign stock markets. In that period, its average annual return in the domestic stock market was 5.59 percent.