Alaska Permanent Fund hits $91.9 billion with a 12.4% return

The Alaska Permanent Fund was worth $91.9 billion at the end of June, according to the annual report the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. released Monday to mark the fund's 50th year.

The fund earned a 12.42% return in the fiscal year that ended June 30. That's below the fund's best year, fiscal 2021, when it returned nearly 30%. Its statutory net income, the measure of earnings under state law that counts gains the fund has actually realized, reached a record $8.2 billion, a dollar figure that reflects the fund's size and the timing of when it sells investments.

The fund now supplies about two-thirds of the state's unrestricted general fund revenue, the corporation has told the House Finance Committee.

Since 2018, the state has drawn a fixed percentage of the fund's value each year, now 5% of a five-year average, to pay for both dividends and state services. Those draws totaled $26.2 billion through this past fiscal year.

The money for those draws comes from the fund's earnings reserve account, which held $18.1 billion at the end of June. Unlike the fund's principal, which the constitution protects, the earnings reserve can be spent by the Legislature. The corporation has set aside $4 billion from it for this year's draw and $4.1 billion for next year's.

The fund's trustees want to change that. The report says the board supports a constitutional amendment that would merge the two accounts into a single protected endowment with a rules-based annual draw. That would put about 95% of the fund's assets under constitutional protection.

Any amendment would need approval from two-thirds of both the House and Senate, followed by a statewide vote.