Allianz Asset Management GmbH doubles down on AI and pharma in 2026-Q1

Allianz is not subtly bullish on AI; it is explicitly building around the stack. Nvidia sits at 4.82% of the portfolio and still gets a 10.0% share increase, even with a 186.8% gain vs average cost. That’s mirrored by fresh capital into Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (both share classes), Micron, Taiwan Semi, Applied Materials, and Lam’s peers, signaling confidence in both the chips and the tools that manufacture them.

The second big leg is large-cap pharma, where Allianz effectively installs a new growth/defensive core. A new $1.26B AstraZeneca stake at 1.46% of the book sits alongside increased positions in Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers, pushing health care’s overall weight higher. The fund is willing to average up here: Lilly is up 133.0% vs cost, yet shares are up 18.1%, and Bristol Myers’ weight rise suggests a view that its trough earnings and pipeline are mispriced.

On the consumer side, the rotation is toward value-for-money. While Amazon is trimmed, TJX and Ross Stores see aggressive adds: TJX shares are up 26.7% and Ross up 181.5%, making ROST one of the largest dollar adds. Allianz appears to prefer off-price and treasure-hunt retail to high-multiple e-commerce after a strong run.

The funding sources for this pivot are unambiguous: broad-market ETFs and profit-taking in earlier winners. The iShares S&P 500 position is slashed by 88.2%, freeing roughly $4.80B, while SPDR’s SPYM is simultaneously scaled up by 291.3% to $1.52B — a clear, internal expression of which flavor of index exposure they actually want. Overall, the unclassified ETF bucket falls from 13.19% to 5.88%, with active names taking the slack.

Outside ETFs, Allianz redeploys capital from prior home runs and more cyclical exposures. Venture Global LNG is cut by 29.1%, a $1.63B trim, and Lam Research is reduced by 20.9% despite a 256.6% gain vs average cost. Similar pattern in Gilead, Cisco, MO, Amazon, and Netflix: all are winners vs cost but see share-count reductions, consistent with classic risk management after a multi-year run.

Notably, some underperformers are allowed to shrink rather than being aggressively doubled down. Comcast and Verizon, both underwater vs cost, are trimmed, suggesting no desire to catch a falling knife in legacy telecom/media. In health care, Johnson & Johnson and Gilead are modestly cut to make room for higher-conviction pharma names.

The sector bar chart shows a clean, top-down story: more tech and pharma, less everything that looks like a blunt macro exposure. Technology climbs nearly 5 percentage points of the book, driven by incremental capital into AI platforms (Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet), hardware (Apple, TSMC, Micron), and equipment (Applied Materials). This is not a rotate-within-tech trade; it is a bigger gross bet that AI and compute scarcity remain the dominant equity theme.

Health care’s rise from 8.88% to 11.87% comes chiefly from AstraZeneca’s new 1.46% weight plus adds in Lilly and Bristol Myers, more than offsetting trims in Gilead and Johnson & Johnson. Utilities fall from 13.27% to 10.57% as Allianz scales back Venture Global and Cheniere, leaning less on regulated/infrastructure-like names for ballast. The broad ETF bucket shrinks dramatically, with SPYM partially offsetting a large cut in IVV but leaving more of the book in named equities.

Elsewhere, shifts are incremental but thematic. Consumer discretionary edges up to 7.53%, flipping from high-octane streaming and e-commerce toward off-price retail. Energy, financials, and industrials all tick higher at the margin via adds in TotalEnergies, Marathon, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed, and Cummins, signaling a preference for cyclical cash-flow generators that can live alongside a high-growth tech/pharma core.

Look through the noise of individual trades, and Allianz is building a barbell: concentrated exposure to AI and blockbuster pharma on one end, and a foundation of cash-generative defensives and value retailers on the other. The -7.7% quarter hasn’t pushed them to de-risk; if anything, they are leaning harder into the winners they believe still have multi-year runways.

Selling down IVV and trimming Venture Global, Netflix, Amazon, and legacy telecoms to buy AstraZeneca, Lilly, Bristol Myers, Nvidia, Applied Materials, and off-price retail is a clear expression that stock selection, not market beta, will drive the next leg of returns. The moderate build in energy, defense, and high-quality banks rounds out the picture: they want durable free cash flow and dividend support if rate or growth volatility resurfaces.

For observers, this 13F suggests Allianz expects AI infrastructure spend and innovative pharma to remain the primary sources of equity alpha, with consumer and cyclical exposures curated around value and resilience. Unless those theses crack, future filings are more likely to show continued consolidation into these themes than a rush back into generic index trackers or low-growth bond proxies.