CPP Investments posts 0.5% loss as bond yields rise

CP24 reported that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), which invests the plan’s money, lost 0.5% in its second quarter as higher bond yields hit its fixed-income investments. Bond prices fall when yields, the return a bond pays its buyer, rise. CEO John Graham said gains in public equities, private equity and real assets helped, but fixed-income losses more than offset them.

Yet its net assets, the total value of its holdings, rose to $866.2 billion on September 30 from $863.6 billion at the end of the previous quarter. Net transfers explain it: the pension plan passed $7.3 billion to the fund to invest, more than the $4.7 billion net loss.

Over the first half of its 2027 financial year, however, the fund’s net return was still 7.0%. For the long view, the Office of the Chief Actuary, which writes the plan’s actuarial reports, projects that assets of the base plan, one of two parts of the CPP since 2019, will grow from $651 billion at the end of 2024 to $2.9 trillion by 2050.

Sources: CP24 · BNN Bloomberg · Office of the Chief Actuary (OSFI) · CPP Investments