Manufacturers Life Insurance Company rotates from megacap AI to health and income

The most aggressive move this quarter is internalization. John Hancock ETFs are no longer a side dish; they’re becoming core allocation tools, displacing both single-name risk and third-party index funds.

• JHCR: Explodes to 1.90% of the book, with shares up +12123.0% and value up by about $2.19B. This looks like a deliberate shift of capital into a flagship in-house vehicle.
• JHLN: Shares up +288.9%, adding roughly $445.2M, turning it into another meaningful building block.
• JHEM: Shares up +18.3%, adding about $101.0M, reinforcing the theme of outsourcing more exposure to John Hancock-branded wrappers.

On the stock-picking side, they are sharpening exposure rather than abandoning tech. Broadcom’s stake is up +21.2%, adding about $287.5M, and Meta is up +17.0%, adding roughly $250.3M. Salesforce gets a big +31.3% bump worth about $151.2M. This is a clear bet that software and semis with visible cashflows will outlast the first-wave AI hype.

Health care is the other bright spot for fresh capital. They initiated AstraZeneca at about $745.2M, a full-sized new position, and lifted Abbott by +67.4% for an extra $211.4M. UnitedHealth and Eli Lilly were also topped up, reinforcing a thesis around drug innovation and managed care as structural earnings compounds rather than tactical trades.

The funding sources are blunt: take chips off the most crowded winners, and compress some long-held cyclicals and financials. None of these trims look like panic; they look like a plan to rebalance after a powerful multi-year run.

• Nvidia: Shares down -8.2%, freeing roughly $298.4M. For a 2.89% position, this is a sizing call, not a repudiation.
• Apple: Shares cut -9.1%, releasing about $290.2M despite a gain of 447.5% versus average cost. That’s classic profit harvesting.
• Alphabet (both share classes): Both lines are trimmed (Google C down -7.7%), monetizing huge embedded gains north of 600.0% on the GOOG sleeve.

They also ease off consumer and industrial beta. Amazon is down -4.4% (about $153.6M out), Tesla -7.8%, Walmart -12.0%, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City -22.6% (roughly $186.1M freed). That looks like a view that the easy part of the US consumer and North American freight cycle is behind us.

In energy, they are rotating rather than exiting. Suncor is cut -13.4% (about $147.8M out), Cheniere -11.5% (about $136.4M), and Canadian Natural Resources -7.5%. The adds to Cenovus offset some of that, suggesting a preference for more levered, growthier E&Ps over legacy integrateds and midstream once valuations richen.

Financials, too, are a moderate source of cash. They trimmed Canadian banks like CIBC (-8.7%), TD (-0.5%), and US franchises like JPMorgan (-3.0%), while still adding +15.2% to KKR. The message: less balance-sheet duration risk, more fee-heavy alternatives.

Sector-wise, this isn’t a wholesale factor flip, but the edges matter. Technology’s weight slips from 39.45% to 37.54%, even as they double down on specific names like Broadcom, Meta, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Shopify. The net effect is better diversified tech, not more of it.

Unclassified holdings — largely ETFs and Berkshire — jump from 9.31% to 13.38%. That’s a big, structural shift toward packaged exposure and internal products, at the expense of both individual names and third-party index trackers like SPY, BND, and VEA, all of which were trimmed.

Health care quietly gains share from 10.19% to 11.05%. The upgrade is qualitative as well as quantitative: AstraZeneca, Abbott, Lilly, UnitedHealth, and smaller exposure to defensive stalwarts like J&J and AbbVie together build a diversified basket across obesity, oncology, medtech, and managed care.

Cyclicals are being gently dialed down. Finance falls from 11.05% to 10.57%, consumer discretionary from 9.88% to 8.89%, energy from 7.87% to 7.05%, and industrials from 4.76% to 3.97%. Yet within those cuts, they consciously maintain or add to what they see as long-cycle winners: Enbridge holds a 0.50% weight, Cenovus is lifted +13.6%, and waste-services name Waste Connections gets a big +48.7% add to about $604.6M — a classic compounder in a defensively growing niche.

Viewed as a whole, the book now looks like an insurer preparing for a bumpier, more policy-driven market regime. They haven’t abandoned AI, cloud, or US growth — Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, and Amazon are still core — but they’ve stopped letting those names dictate their fate.

Instead, the portfolio is being rewired around three pillars: defensive secular growers in health care, risk-managed exposure to tech, and in-house multi-asset ETFs that smooth idiosyncratic noise. The adds to gold miners (Agnico Eagle, Barrick), oil producers like Cenovus, and waste infrastructure hint at a view that real assets and oligopolistic local services will earn their keep if inflation proves sticky.

For future quarters, expect fewer blockbuster single-name swings and more movement at the ETF and sector sleeve level. If markets keep rewarding narrow AI winners, they’ll lag the froth but preserve solvency-friendly downside protection; if leadership broadens to health care, quality cyclicals, and cashflow-rich tech, this repositioning could turn a painful -10.03% quarter into a necessary reset rather than the start of a drawdown. Either way, the message is clear: they’re trading some upside optionality for resilience and internal fee capture.