Market watchers are taking notice. Salt Lake City-based Ensign Peak is now ranked among some of the largest U.S. institutional investors and hedge funds, and it draws regular updates over its trades. In just two years, the portfolio has expanded to 2,199 different holdings, SEC disclosures reveal, for a mix heavy in blue chip stocks and consumer favorites along with billion-dollar stakes in technology titans such as Apple, Microsoft and Google.
Beyond shares in well-known stocks, as one might expect from investment managers for a fiscally conservative worldwide faith, analysis shows that Ensign Peak as a whole is widely diversified across industries, risk levels and company sizes, akin to the benchmark Standard & Poor’s market index.Ensign Peak’s shares in five technology stocks — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — were valued at $5.5 billion at the end of 2019 but reached $10.
Those gains have been driven partly by record performances of tech firms such as Amazon during the health crisis, but it’s also been partly by design. Apple has been Ensign Peak’s largest holding since late 2019, when it represented $1.5 billion of the total portfolio. Managers quadrupled the fund’s stake in the California company in spring 2020, expanding from 4.9 million shares to 19.2 million shares. They have pared that position by about 3 million shares since.
The Apple stake was worth $2.9 billion at year’s end, slightly ahead of its second largest holding, Microsoft, valued at $2.8 billion.The church has said Ensign Peak’s managers do not invest in industries that faithful Latter-day Saints consider objectionable, including alcohol, tobacco, coffee and gambling. Interestingly, though, of 30 large stocks that compose the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Ensign Peak has never invested in Coca-Cola.
Keep paying that tithing.
Why doesn’t the church open its investment services to members? We’d love our savings to outperform the market as well..
100 billion in unused tithing,billions in pharmaceutical stocks particularly opioids and anti depressants.Using the power of eminent domain to steal downtown Slc to operate for profit businesses.The lds church is one of the most well organized criminal organizations in the world.