Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund‘s assets exceeded $1 trillion in 2024, but its net profit slumped 60% from a year earlier, it reported on Monday, hurt by high interest rates and inflation as well as impairments on some projects.
The Public Investment Fund‘s net profit fell to 25.8 billion riyals ($6.9 billion), it said in a statement, adding that impairments primarily related to changes to operational plans and increases in budgeted costs.
The PIF is steering Saudi Arabia’s ambitious economic agenda aimed at weaning the Gulf country’s economy off oil.
Under the plan, dubbed “Vision 2030”, the kingdom has poured hundreds of billions of dollars through the PIF into projects including NEOM, a massive urban and industrial development project nearly the size of Belgium to be built along the Red Sea coast.
“The prioritisation of some projects and the extension in the timelines of some giga projects could have been a factor for the impairments,” said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.
“The rising cost of projects has also been a key challenge, and a factor behind the recalibration of the investment programme,” she added.
Total assets under management rose 18% to 4.321 trillion riyals from 3.664 trillion riyals a year earlier, it said.
With a portfolio of investments ranging from date farms to multinational conglomerates, the PIF’s sources of income include dividends from key portfolio companies including oil giant Saudi Aramco 2223.SE and the country’s biggest lender Saudi National Bank 1180.SE.
It reported net profit of 64.4 billion riyals for 2023 in its consolidated statement on Monday.
However, its comprehensive income statement showed that the 138.1 billion riyals reported for 2023 in July last year had swung to a loss of 140 billion riyals this year. A comprehensive income statement includes items such as unrealised gains and losses as well as the change in value of some of a company’s assets.
It said cash remained steady at 316 billion riyals, while group loans and borrowing increased slightly to 570 billion riyals.
Reuters
