Denmark’s biggest pension fund, PFA Pension, said its Danish equity portfolio has generated a 27% return so far this year, after it was able to magnify strong average gains on the domestic stockmarket in the six-month period by picking winners.
Tine Choi Danielsen, chief strategist at the DKK640bn (€85.8bn) Danish commercial pensions firm, said: “At PFA, we have a strong overweight to Denmark relative to country and market size.”
“Our customers have benefited from this in the first six months of the year, when our Danish shares have risen significantly, to the point where they now have returns of just over 27% to date,” she said, in a commentary on PFA’s website.
This, said Choi Danielsen, was significantly more than gains for both the European STOXX Europe 600 Index and the US S&P500 index, which had risen by 8.3% and 14.7% ,respectively, in the same period.
Copenhagen-based PFA said the gain it had made on the home market so far this year, which amounted to DKK3.4bn in absolute terms, was the firm’s highest half-year return from Danish shares in 14 years.
The C25 index of the most-traded shares in Denmark, has risen by 9.99% since the turn of the year, according to PFA.
However, behind the overall index gain lay huge differences in how individual stocks had performed over the six months, it said.
The pension provider posted a list of its five best performing domestic stocks in 2024 so far, which includes the shares of pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk – whose price has risen by 48.2% since the end of December 2023.
“We can see that we have hit the right Danish shares, when we compare our return with the rise in C25, it looks very positive for our customers,” Choi Danielsen said.
Also on the list is Danske Bank, whose shares are now up 19.5% on the year; IT firm Netcompany, which has gained 37.4% and Zealand Pharma, which is up by a steep 137.7% since the end of December.
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