* January-June profit is strongest ever six-month earnings
* Asian tech stocks boosted half-year returns
* Management worried about high concentration of tech stocks
* Fund says it holds $1.2 billion stake in SpaceX
* World's largest sovereign wealth fund with $2.3 trillion
assets
By Gwladys Fouche
ARENDAL, Norway, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Norway's $2.3 trillion
sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, posted a record
profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns ($184.3 billion) for
the first half of the year, lifted by technology stocks, it said
on Wednesday.
Investing the Norwegian state's revenues from oil and gas
production, the fund owns on average 1.5% of all listed
companies globally, making it the world's largest single
investor.
"The result is driven by good returns in the equity market,
particularly from Asian technology stocks," CEO Nicolai Tangen
said in a statement accompanying the half-year results.
The fund's first-half return beat a previous record of 1.5
trillion crowns set in the first six months of 2023, and
corresponded roughly in size to the full-year nominal gross
domestic product (GDP) of a nation such as Uzbekistan, a country
of around 39 million people, a Reuters comparison showed.
A CONCENTRATION OF CHIPS
Still, the fund's management has repeatedly warned that future
wars and economic depression could wipe out much of its
holdings.
Tangen on Wednesday said the top 10 companies in its portfolio
now represent 20% of the fund's value, with most of those firms
in the tech industry, raising the concentration risk associated
with its index-based investment strategy.
"It's chips, chips, chips, chips, chips ... we've never seen
such concentration before," Tangen said.
Any change to this strategy would have to come from Norway's
parliament, a process that normally takes years.
The fund late on Tuesday announced for the first time that it
held a 0.05% stake in Elon Musk's SpaceX worth $1.22
billion as of June 30, in an updated list of its holdings.
That stake was modest when compared with its other tech
holdings.
It held a 1.28% stake worth $62 billion in Nvidia ( NVDA ),
a 1.24% stake worth $52 billion in Apple ( AAPL ), a 1.17% stake
worth $50 billion in Alphabet, a 1.27% stake worth $35
billion in Microsoft ( MSFT ) and a 1.7% stake worth $34
billion in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ( TSM ), fund
data showed.
Overall the fund is invested in around 7,100 companies
globally. It also invests in bonds, property and renewable
projects.
SpaceX shares rallied sharply in the wake of its record-breaking
IPO in late June, then pulled back sharply as investors
questioned whether a lofty valuation of 77 times expected
revenue could be justified.