PineStone Q1 2026: $14.2B Canadian Book in 10 Quality Compounders

PineStone Asset Management Inc. is a Quebec-based active equity manager that filed a Q1 2026 Form 13F-HR reporting $14.23 billion in US-listed equity assets across 500 positions. The top 10 absorbs $9.59 billion or 67.4% of AUM in a tightly curated list of quality-compounder names: Taiwan Semiconductor at 12.56%, Alphabet at 10.46%, Microsoft at 7.46%, Moody's at 7.21%, Mastercard at 6.36%, AutoZone at 6.10%, CME Group at 5.39%, TJX Companies at 4.39%, Sherwin-Williams at 3.75%, MSCI at 3.70%. Nvidia is not in the top 10. Apple is not in the top 10. Amazon is not in the top 10. PineStone is running a deliberate quality-and-moat book that filters out the popular AI-platform leadership cohort.

This is a distinctive Canadian-domiciled active equity 13F at scale. PineStone's parent (Fiera Capital) is one of the larger publicly listed Canadian asset managers, but the PineStone subsidiary runs a separately mandated concentrated growth-and-quality book. The Q1 2026 13F shows the philosophy intact: durable moats, pricing power, recurring revenue, capital-light economics. The combined effect is a 13F that looks unlike any US-domiciled mega-cap growth book — heavily concentrated, deliberately selective inside mega-cap tech, and weighted toward financial-and-information-services platforms.

The book at a glance

$14.23 billion total reported AUM. 500 long positions. WhaleScore 80.00 — placing PineStone in the elite smart-money tier. Top 10 concentration: 67.4%. Top 5 concentration: 44.1%. The book is meaningfully more concentrated than typical $14 billion active equity funds.

The top 10 reads as a moat anthology

Each of PineStone's top 10 names shares a common structural property — durable competitive moat, multi-year free-cash-flow visibility, and capital-light operating leverage. Position-by-position:

• Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) at 12.56% — Foreign ADR, no S&P 500 index weight. Pure active call on the global foundry leadership at the leading-edge node. The largest pure-play semiconductor manufacturer outside of China's domestic ecosystem.
• Alphabet (GOOGL) at 10.46% — Roughly 2.3x the GOOGL S&P 500 index weight. PineStone's largest US-domiciled tech position is search-and-cloud platform durability, not Nvidia.
• Microsoft (MSFT) at 7.46% — Slightly above S&P weight of ~7.2%. Cloud and productivity-suite platform.
• Moody's (MCO) at 7.21% — Credit-rating duopolist with S&P Global. Pricing power on regulatory-mandated services. Index weight ~0.20%, so PineStone runs roughly 36x overweight.
• Mastercard (MA) at 6.36% — Payments-network duopolist with Visa. Index weight ~0.55%, so 11x overweight.
• AutoZone (AZO) at 6.10% — Aftermarket auto-parts retail. Buyback machine. Index weight ~0.20%, so 30x overweight.
• CME Group (CME) at 5.39% — Futures and options exchange. Index weight ~0.20%, so 27x overweight.
• TJX Companies (TJX) at 4.39% — Off-price retail (Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods). Index weight ~0.36%, so 12x overweight.
• Sherwin-Williams (SHW) at 3.75% — Architectural paint. Index weight ~0.22%, so 17x overweight.
• MSCI Inc. (MSCI) at 3.70% — Index-licensing and ESG-data services. Index weight ~0.12%, so 30x overweight.

Pattern recognition: most names in the top 10 are tax-and-toll-style businesses (credit ratings, payments rails, index licensing, derivative-exchange clearing, paint pricing power, auto-parts retail). The combined weight of 'financial-and-information-services platforms' (MCO + MA + CME + MSCI) is 22.66% — more than any single Magnificent 7 name.

What's absent

The exclusions are as informative as the inclusions:

1. Nvidia (NVDA) — absent from top 10. S&P 500 index weight ~6.5%. PineStone has near-zero top-tier exposure to the dominant AI-platform name.
2. Apple (AAPL) — absent from top 10. S&P weight ~6.1%. The largest stock by index weight is structurally underweighted at PineStone.
3. Amazon (AMZN) — absent from top 10. S&P weight ~3.9%. PineStone holds AMZN in the tail at much smaller weights.
4. Tesla (TSLA) — absent. Consistent with the value-quality factor exclusion most active managers apply.
5. Meta (META) — absent from top 10. PineStone has held META historically; current top 10 absence reflects either trim or relative position-size compression.

The deliberate non-participation in the AI-platform leadership rally is the most distinctive feature of the PineStone book versus US peer active growth managers.

The top 10 vs the rest

Top 10 at 67.4% versus 32.6% across the remaining 490 positions. The tail averages roughly $9 million per position. The book is structurally a 10-position concentrated bet with a long diversification tail rather than a 500-name broad allocation.

The Canadian-domiciled mandate context

PineStone files only a US 13F because its US-equity holdings exceed the $100 million threshold. Total PineStone AUM (across global equity, fixed-income, and other mandates at Fiera) is meaningfully larger than the $14.23 billion 13F. The 13F captures the US-equity slice of a broader institutional book mandated to deliver quality-and-compounder exposure for Canadian institutional clients (pension funds, endowments, family offices).

The Quebec-based domicile is uncommon at this scale; PineStone is one of the larger Canadian active equity managers in the US 13F universe.

AUM trajectory

PineStone's reported US 13F AUM has scaled steadily through 2024-2026. The 500-position floor has been stable; AUM growth has been driven by position appreciation plus moderate institutional inflows.

What this 13F tells institutional readers

1. The structural moat thesis is the central conviction. Top 10 absent NVDA, AAPL, AMZN — PineStone has explicitly chosen to underweight the AI-platform leadership cohort in favor of tax-and-toll information-services platforms.
2. The 22.66% combined financial-services-platform weight is unusual. Combining MCO + MA + CME + MSCI into a top-tier conviction block is a rare and explicit bet on financial-and-information services as durable compounders.
3. The Canadian-mandate context matters. Quality-and-compounder exposure is a more common Canadian institutional preference than US-equivalents, which often demand AI-platform participation.

What to track

1. PineStone's Q2 2026 13F (due August 14, 2026). Watch whether Moody's at 7.21% holds or compresses — that is the most distinctive single position. Track via the institutional signals feed.
2. Whether NVDA enters the top 10. A change would be a major philosophical shift.
3. TSM position evolution. 12.56% portfolio in a foreign ADR with geopolitical risk is the single largest concentration; geopolitical events could force size adjustment.

PineStone Asset Management's Q1 2026 13F is one of the cleanest expressions of concentrated quality-and-compounder investing at scale in the US 13F universe. For a primer on filtering durable-moat thesis from popular-momentum allocation in active 13Fs, see our explainer hub.

Source: SEC Form 13F-HR filed by PineStone Asset Management Inc. (CIK 0001904893) for the period ending 2026-03-31; available via EDGAR — PineStone filer index.