Stanford endowment records 4.4% gain

Stanford Management Co. returned a net 4.4% for the year ended June 30, said an Oct. 12 news release from Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

The management company, which manages $40.9 billion in merged investment pools that include the university's endowment, Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, did not provide benchmark information, but said the fiscal-year return trailed the median 6.9% fiscal-year return for U.S. colleges and universities, according to Cambridge Associates data.

For the five and 10 years ended June 30, the merged investment pools returned an annualized net 9.5% and 9.4%, respectively.

The merged investment pool had returned a net -4.2% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022.

For the most recent fiscal year, strong performance in most asset classes contributed to the improvement of the overall return from the year before, said Robert Wallace, CEO of Stanford Management Co., in the news release.

However, that strong performance was "partially offset by losses in our venture capital and growth equity portfolios, continuing a correction that began in 2022," said Wallace. "Viewed over multiple years, our disciplined and diversified investment approach has delivered attractive returns with moderate volatility."

For the most recent fiscal year, the endowment's return exceeded the median return of 3.9% for the 19 endowments whose latest fiscal-year returns have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Oct. 13.

Specific returns by asset class were not provided. The merged pool's asset allocation as of July 1 was 38% private equity, 19% absolute return, 16% international equity, 10% real assets, 9% fixed income and cash, and 8% domestic equity.