National Bank Of Canada Fi Doubles Down On AI And Healthcare In 2026-Q1

The biggest adds are not a spray of new ideas; they are a deliberate doubling down on a small set of secular winners. The largest capital deployment went into NVIDIA, with the fund lifting its stake by +48.2% and adding an estimated $2.26B — an aggressive size-up in a name already nearly doubled versus its own cost basis.

Similarly, Apple and Microsoft saw meaningful size increases, with estimated capital adds of $940.9M and $736.3M, respectively. That is a clear statement that, in this book, the AI upside is expected to accrue not only to GPU suppliers but also to the dominant operating system, cloud, and device platforms that can monetize AI at scale.

Beyond the megacaps, the conviction shift is notably toward the guts of the AI hardware chain.

• AMD: shares up +141.3%, an estimated $538.1M add, positioning it as the second-source GPU/CPU beneficiary.
• Micron and TSMC: sizeable adds in high-bandwidth memory and advanced foundry capacity, extending the bet from chips to the supply chain enabling AI workloads.
• Lam Research and Applied Materials: increased positions in semiconductor equipment as the capex flywheel of AI continues.

On the non-tech side, the most interesting move is in health care. UnitedHealth was increased by +63.4% (about $401.7M added), and a new $417.6M position in AstraZeneca appears, together lifting health care’s overall weight. That combination — a leading managed care operator plus a large-cap pharma innovator — looks like a deliberate balance to the high-cyclicality of AI hardware.

They also keep leaning into software names levered to digital commerce and data, rather than ad cycles. Shopify, Palantir, and Alphabet (both share classes) all saw solid increases, reinforcing a preference for recurring, infrastructure-like software economics over more volatile consumer engagement models.

If the buy tape is about concentrating into core AI and health care, the sell tape is about pruning where upside looks more fully realized or strategically less central. The most striking trim is Meta Platforms, cut by -28.7% and freeing up an estimated $685.7M despite the position essentially sitting at cost versus their average buy price.

That looks less like loss-cutting and more like a structural de-emphasis of ad-heavy, engagement-driven platforms relative to infrastructure and tools. Broadcom was also reduced by -19.0% (about $435.2M trimmed) even though it sits roughly 148.6% above their cost, suggesting disciplined profit-taking in a stretched multi-franchise semi name to reallocate toward higher-conviction AI pure plays like NVIDIA and AMD.

On the cyclicals side, the rotation out of energy is explicit.

• Canadian Natural Resources: shares slashed by -35.3%, roughly $316.8M of estimated value pulled out.
• Suncor and TC Energy: both reduced, with Suncor down -10.7% and TC Energy -7.6%, alongside a modest trim in Enbridge.

These are not token tweaks; they collectively take energy’s weight from 4.92% to 3.71%. In consumer and defensive growth, they trimmed Costco by -15.7% after a strong run and reduced NFLX, even as they added to Walmart and Home Depot. The message is clear: rotate from fully-valued, defensive or crowded consumer winners into names where incremental AI and productivity gains can move the earnings needle more materially.

Among Canadian financials, there’s a nuanced rebalancing rather than a wholesale exit. Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial, and Bank of Nova Scotia all saw small reductions, while TD, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Manulife, and Sun Life were topped up. That suggests a tightening toward perceived better-capitalized or more U.S.-levered franchises within a still-core but slightly downsized financials sleeve.

The sector chart tells a simple story: the portfolio is consciously re-gearing toward secular growth rails and away from resource and rate sensitivity. Technology, already dominant, climbed from 47.54% to 50.92%, driven by heavier allocations to semiconductors, systems software, and digital commerce platforms.

Health care stands out as the second clear gainer, with sector weight rising from 2.99% to 3.93%. That’s not just a passive drift; it’s driven by a big add in UnitedHealth and the new AstraZeneca stake, on top of existing Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson holdings. The result is a mini-portfolio of diversified health exposure covering GLP-1s, oncology, and health insurance cash flows.

The funding sources are predictable but important. Energy dropped from 4.92% to 3.71% as they pulled capital out of Canadian oil and gas producers and integrated names. Basic materials fell from 2.15% to 1.85% via trims in gold and streaming names like Agnico Eagle and Wheaton.

Finance, still nearly one-fifth of the book at 19.07%, inched down from 20.32%. Within that, we see a gradual rotation from Canadian incumbents (Royal Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, CIBC) into more globally scaled or U.S.-centric names (TD, JPMorgan, Bank of America) as well as life insurers.

Consumer discretionary is roughly flat in aggregate (7.98% to 7.7%), but under the surface they are swapping some premium defensives (Costco, Netflix) for mass-market retail and housing/renovation exposure via Walmart and Home Depot. Industrials, telecom, utilities, and real estate each drift slightly lower, largely reflecting trims in rails, pipelines, and Canadian telcos rather than a thematic zeroing-out.

Taken together, this is the playbook of a manager who believes the AI and digitization cycle is still in the middle innings, not the ninth. They are willing to let technology swell to over half the disclosed book, and they’re not hiding in diversified "tech exposure" via indices; they are concentrating in the names most leveraged to AI capex and large-scale software deployment.

The pattern of adds — especially in NVIDIA, AMD, Micron, TSMC, Lam Research, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Shopify — implies a view that the bottlenecks in compute, memory, and tooling will continue to command pricing power. They’re effectively long the entire AI value chain from chips to hyperscale platforms to commerce rails, while de-emphasizing more cyclically sensitive ad and consumer story stocks.

At the same time, the build-out in health care is a tell. With health care up to 3.93% of the portfolio and anchored by AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and UnitedHealth, the fund is installing a set of structurally growing, less rate-sensitive cash-flow streams that can offset volatility if AI multiples compress.

The slimming of energy, gold, and some Canadian banks signals reduced reliance on traditional reflation and commodity beta as a performance engine. Instead, the performance burden is being placed squarely on AI infrastructure, global platform software, and a curated set of health care compounders.

If this quarter is any guide, investors should expect National Bank Of Canada Fi to keep trading within those themes — trimming when valuations stretch, leaning harder when cycles wobble — rather than changing the themes themselves. The 3–5 year bet on this tape is clear: AI and healthcare innovation will outrun the drag from cyclicals and deliver the next leg of excess returns.