Market

The Nordic stock markets performed very strongly in 2019. In the second half of 2018 the markets priced in a strong probability that we would see a global recession in 2019, and this led to big falls in stock markets. Ultimately the world’s economy softened in 2019, but there was no recession, and leading indicators started to turn positive. The capital markets responded positively to this over the course of the year, with share prices increasing significantly. Global interest rates are now also significantly lower than 18 months ago, and this has helped price-earnings multiples to increase and helped make interest-rate sensitive sectors such as real estate and healthcare the best performing sectors in 2019, while the financial sector was the weakest performing sector.

Return

Ferd Invest’s portfolio produced a return of 10.3% in 2019, which is a weaker return than that of the Nordic stock markets.

The investments that made the biggest positive contribution to Ferd Invest’s return were Dometic, Essity, Elkem and Valmet. The companies that made the biggest negative contribution were Norwegian, Aker Solutions and ISS.

Over the last five years, Ferd Invest’s portfolio of shares has produced an absolute return of 33%.

Portfolio

The market value of Ferd Invest’s portfolio at 31 December 2019 was NOK 3.4 billion. The portfolio’s investments are divided between the three Scandinavian stock markets, as well as the Finnish stock market. The largest investments at the close of 2019 were Novo Nordisk, Lerøy, Essity and Hexagon.

Organisation

At the end of 2019 the Ferd Invest team consisted of Marius Therkelsen and Joakim Gjersøe, both of whom joined Ferd in 2019.