Generation Investment Management, London-based firm co-founded and co-chaired by former politician Al Gore, heavily bought shares of Alibaba Group Holding and cloud firm Salesforce CRM in the first quarter, as it exited a position in networking giant Cisco Systems CSCO and halved its investment in Microsoft MSFT. The trades were disclosed in a form it filed with the SEC.

The management company, which focuses on ESG investing and manages over $36 billion as of March, declined comment.

It bought an additional 629,639 Alibaba American depositary receipts, ending the first quarter with 4.4 million ADRs. As the S&P 500 dropped 5% in the first quarter, Alibaba ADRs dropped 8.4%, and so far in the second quarter, they have dropped 14%, vs an 8.2% slide in the S&P 500. Alibaba has been suffering under China’s COVID lockdowns, so Generation’s purchases may represent knowledge of the lockdowns imminently coming to an end.

Generation picked up 1.1 million additional Salesforce shares ending the first quarter with 1.8 million.

Salesforce stock dropped 16.5% in the first quarter; and so far in the second, shares have fallen 22%.

Generation sold all 8.8 million Cisco shares it owned at the end of the fourth quarter. Cisco was down 12% in the first quarter and has dropped 18% in the second.

Generation sold roughly half of its Microsoft holdings, 523,800 shares, leaving it with 547,622 shares. Microsoft fell 8.3% in the first quarter and 11% so far in the second.

Al Gore photo courtesy of Wikipedia.