The National Pension Service, South Korea’s largest institutional investor, has gained nearly 2 trillion won ($1.79 billion) worth of profits after selling a 1.2 percent stake in top-cap Samsung Electronics over the past year and a half, data showed Sunday.

According to DART, the Financial Supervisory Service’s electronic disclosure board, the NPS’ stake has dropped to 9.99 percent, now owning some 596 million shares, by trading the tech giant’s common shares 738 times from August 2019 to March this year.

It purchased Samsung Electronics’ shares 373 times worth 6.85 trillion won and sold the shares 365 times worth 8.78 trillion won in the cited period. As a result, the NPS logged an earning rate of 26.6 percent.

The pension operator has become a major shareholder of Samsung since August 2019, as it held a 10.01 percent stake or nearly 598 million shares in the leading chipmaker.

As it purchased a massive amount of the tech giant’s shares amid a sluggish market in March last year, the NPS’ shareholding in Samsung once soared up to 11.19 percent two months later. But it dumped most of its the shares in January and February.

Although the public pension fund’s stake in the chipmaker remained around 10 percent, it cashed in profits worth 1.93 trillion won following Samsung’s stock price surge from its bottom line. The figure excluded earnings from dividends and profit margins.

The NPS has a 5 percent or more stake in over 260 locally listed firms, with the value of that ownership worth 167.64 trillion won as of April 7. Around 30 percent of the total is made up of Samsung Electronics shares. 

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)