KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 5): Khazanah Nasional Bhd said on Wednesday that 2025 would not be an “easy year” even as its investments and assets expanded in 2024.
Realisable asset value, which comprises market value of all equities, securities and cash held, rose 12% to RM151.3 billion. After deducting liabilities, net asset value was RM103.6 billion, up 22% from 2023.
On a rolling time-weighted rate of return basis, its investments portfolio produced 24.6% gain in 2024 — Khazanah's best-ever full-year return — versus 5.7% in 2023. Over six years, the annual return was 6.2% compared to 2.9% recorded at end-2023.
Higher-for-longer US interest rates and volatile trade policies suggest that 2025 “is not going to be an easy year,” managing director Datuk Amirul Feisal Wan Zahir told reporters at the sovereign wealth fund’s annual review press conference.
Still, Khazanah is banking on domestic investments, chief investment officer Datuk Hisham Hamdan said at the same briefing.
The fund “will constantly rebalance” its portfolio, and the plan is to keep the Malaysian portion “slightly over 60%” of its total portfolio, Hisham said. In 2024, close to 58% of Khazanah’s investments were located in Malaysia.
Operating profit was RM5.1 billion in 2024, the company said in a statement. In 2023, Khazanah booked a one-off RM1.8 billion gain from capital restructuring of Plus Malaysia Bhd which inflated the operating profit for the year to RM5.9 billion.
Gains from global public equities, steady investment income and favourable market conditions drove its profits in 2024. “Malaysia did very well last year” as opposed to the previous trend of strong developed markets in the prior few years, Hisham said.
The fund declared dividends of RM1 billion to the government, in line with projections published by the Ministry of Finance and unchanged from 2023.
Amirul maintained the four key areas of Khazanah's Malaysian portfolio strategy — connectivity, energy transition, digitalisation and catalytic or new growth areas.
Khazanah’ strategy is to drive value creation from Malaysia, maintain its diversification strategy, and strengthen global portfolio to ensure resilience against global mega trends, he said, stressing that the focus remains on longer-term productivity and innovation.
“Malaysia’s situation is favourable,” Amirul said, noting roughly balanced exports to its major trading partners China and US. “In the fight between the eagle and the dragon, we are a kancil, we’ll play it smart,” he added.