(Bloomberg) -- Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, returned 382 billion kroner ($45.7 billion) in the first quarter after gains in its stock portfolio made up for bond losses.

The Oslo-based fund had an overall return of 4%, 24 basis points more than the benchmark set by the country’s finance ministry, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Equity investments gained 6.6%, fixed-income fell 3.2% while unlisted real estate returned 1.4%.

“The rise of the equity market was to a great extent driven by the finance and energy sector,” Deputy Chief Executive Officer Trond Grande said in the statement.

The fund’s total value stood at $1.32 trillion at the end of March. The appreciation of the krone, the best-performing G-10 currency this year, shaved 178 billion kroner off the fund’s overall value in the quarter. The government withdrew 83 billion kroner from the fund in the period.

Read: Norwegian Krone Best Performing G10 Currency This Year

Chief Executive Nicolai Tangen, a former hedge-fund manager who’s been running Norway’s giant sovereign investment vehicle since September, has started relying more on external asset managers to help squeeze out higher returns. The 54-year-old says he’s also keen to make sustainability a priority, and the fund has stepped up divestments based on risks tied to environmental, social and governance metrics.

Last year, the fund returned 10.9%, or $123 billion, its second-best result in over two decades. Tangen has already warned that will be difficult to replicate and said asset prices are benefiting from extreme stimulus that can’t continue for ever.

Created in the 1990s to invest Norway’s oil and gas revenues abroad, the fund delved into renewable infrastructure for the first time earlier this year, as it expands the list of asset classes it holds from stocks, bonds and real estate. Norway’s government also wants the fund to shed more than 2,000 companies as part of a proposal designed to ensure it’s not exposed to climate or social risks, particularly in emerging markets.

(Corrects to say “trillion” in fourth paragraph.)

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