QWI chairman remains silent on buying SpaceX or Anthropic stock

The chairman of QWI Investments Ltd refrained from disclosing whether the fund will buy shares in SpaceX or Anthropic, even as gains on AI-linked US stocks pushed the investment company back to a profit.

It comes as QWI made $200-million profit for its full year, compared to a $10.4-million loss a year earlier. Three-quarters of its annual profit occurred in the fourth quarter alone.

John Mahfood declined to discuss specific targets. The company’s investment committee makes those decisions, he said. SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq in June, and Anthropic filed on Monday for a Nasdaq listing.

“They have a whole lot of options in terms of what to invest in and where to invest,” Mahfood said. “And so they make those decisions based on the alternative attractions rather than talking about specific investments.”

QWI’s US portfolio already holds leading technology names, including Nvidia, Broadcom, Meta Platforms and Alphabet. It also holds drugmaker Eli Lilly.

AI stocks have outperformed the broader US market since 2022, though they have slipped this month as investors worry about heavy debt and losses at some companies. Anthropic reported a net loss of US$80.7 billion on revenue of US$16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, according to its filing. About US$72.4 billion of the loss came from an accounting charge tied to convertible notes, Fortune said.

QWI’s total assets reached a record $2.51 billion, and shareholders’ equity rose to $1.97 billion. Net asset value per share climbed to $1.44 from $1.29.

“The stock market has not really valued QWI close to its net asset value,” he said about QWI shares which trade at $0.80, nearly half their net asset value.

Mahfood said the results show that QWI’s balance of investing in Jamaica and US stocks has worked for the fund.

“The strategy over the last three or four years of changing from investing only in Jamaican equities to diversifying into the US market is working,” he told the Financial Gleaner.

Jamaican holdings also contributed, including TransJamaican Highway, Caribbean Cement, JMMB, and Scotia Group Jamaica Ltd. But Mahfood acknowledged that the local market’s thin trading makes it hard to buy and sell large positions. That’s because a fund may have to accept a lower price to exit a position, which eats into its gains.

“For a company like ours that is targeting the short- and medium-term returns, it’s hard to do it solely on investing in the Jamaican stock market because a lot of the stocks are narrowly traded,” he said. “In the US market, you’re more looking at investment returns based on information you have about the future of a company, and you can go in and come out very easily.”

Slightly more than half of the portfolio remains in Jamaican securities.

He is more upbeat on the Jamaica Stock Exchange’s Main Market than on the Junior Market. “Maybe only 10 per cent of these companies have a float,” he said of Junior Market firms. He expects the Main Market to stay “relatively buoyant” as investors redeploy cash from recent corporate deals and fundraising.

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com