Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting adds defence stocks to US portfolio

MELBOURNE, May 18 (Reuters) – Hancock Prospecting, owned by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has added ​defence, gold and rare-earths holdings ‌to its $3.3 billion U.S. portfolio this year, filings showed on Monday.

Hancock added CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab, L3Harris (LHX.N), opens new tab, Lockheed (LMT.N), opens new tab, ​Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), opens new tab and RTX (RTX.N), opens new tab as ​part of a $133 million portfolio shift towards ⁠defence firms and gold in March, ​according to a filing from May ​15.

The company also added major gold producer Newmont (NEM.N), opens new tab. Hancock Prospecting has also taken a 6.3% stake ​in Rare Earths Americas (REA.A), opens new tab in the ​current quarter, a separate filing from May 14 ‌showed.

Hancock ⁠boosted its position in copper producer Hudbay Minerals (HBM.TO), opens new tab by around 10% and sold all its holdings in Chilean lithium ​producer SQM (SQMA.SN), opens new tab, ​with which ⁠it is developing the Andover lithium project in Australia.

Its main ​holdings remain in tech exchange-traded ​fund ⁠Invesco’s QQQ Trust (QQQ.O), opens new tab and U.S. rare earths producer MP Materials (MP.N), opens new tab, which together made ⁠up ​47% of the portfolio’s ​weighting at the end of March, Reuters calculations show.