From Buffett to Cohen, How Big Investors Are Betting
From WSJ,
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB – News) Inc. took a stake in MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA – News) in the first quarter, while Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital increased stakes in retail and consumer-services companies, according to a pair of regulatory filings on Monday.
Berkshire Hathaway, one of the world’s most closely followed investment vehicles, disclosed it held 216,000 MasterCard shares.
The holding, which comes as a new investment manager took over a chunk of the company’s $53.6 billion equity portfolio, is valued at about $60 million based on Monday’s closing share price.
Mr. Cohen, whose SAC Capital reported a 9.3% increase in securities holdings in the quarter ended March 31, increased a stake in consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY – News) to 2.3 million shares from 53,306 at the end of the previous quarter.
SAC also more than doubled its stake in BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. (NYSE: BJ – News) to 2.8 million shares from 1.1 million.
The disclosures are part of a quarterly filing requirement for investors who manage more than $100 million. The form, known as a 13F, must be filed within 45 days of the end of each quarter and many money managers wait until the last possible moment to submit their filings. The filings give the public its freshest possible glimpse into the portfolios of well-known money managers.
Berkshire said it had omitted some information on its holdings in the filing, an action some investment managers take when they are building a new position. Such “confidential treatment” prevents others from piggy-backing on their investment ideas.
The addition of MasterCard to the portfolio could be the work of Todd Combs, the former hedge-fund manager who was tapped by Mr. Buffett to manage a portfolio of about $2 billion to $3 billion at Berkshire. Mr. Combs, who was selected as the company prepares for the day the 80-year-old Mr. Buffett will no longer run Berkshire, favored financial stocks in his $400 million Castle Point hedge fund.
Berkshire also disclosed a reduced stake in oil producer ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP – News), trimming the holding less than 1% to about 29 million shares.
SAC also raised its stakes in insurers; Chubb Corp. (NYSE: CB – News) holdings were up to 2.3 million shares from 24,198, while XL Group PLC (NYSE: XL – News) holdings were at 4.4 million shares from 239,564.
Among other filers:
• Hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who made his name betting against subprime mortgages in 2007, turned bullish on gold and bank stocks in recent years, and the latest glimpse into Paulson & Co.’s portfolio suggests his outlook hasn’t changed much.
Mr. Paulson reported more than double the previous stake in Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX – News) and only minor adjustments to his stakes in AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU – News) ADRs and Kinross Gold (NYSE: KGC – News). His holdings in financial stocks include Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
• Appaloosa Management LP, a top-performing hedge-fund firm run by David Tepper, cut its bank-stock holdings during the first quarter after boosting his bets there in the fourth quarter of 2010. Mr. Tepper was a major investor in Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC – News) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C – News) in the spring of 2009, when a lot of investors feared the lenders might be nationalized. When the stocks rallied, he made big profits.
Mr. Tepper reduced positions in BB&T Corp. (NYSE: BBT – News), Capital One Financial Corp. Citigroup, Bank of America and Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB – News). Appaloosa also more than halved its position in Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC – News) in the first quarter, the filing showed.
Appaloosa reported total holdings fell 14% from the previous quarter to $4.21 billion on March 31.
• Billionaire Carl Icahn disclosed a new stake in Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN – News), in which he purchased more than 1 million shares for his Icahn Capital LP fund. He also purchased 186,154 shares in energy distribution company Southern Union Co. (NYSE: SUG – News)
As previously disclosed, Mr. Icahn increased his stake in Dynegy Inc. (NYSE: DYN – News), and in March had two of his nominated directors named to the board.
• Investor Nelson Peltz reported no new holdings through his Trian Partners investment funds in the first quarter after taking on a new stake in Kellogg Co. (NYSE: K – News) at the end of last year.
Trian had $9.4 billion invested, same as at the end of December. Like Berkshire, Trian also requested confidential treatment for some of its holdings.
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private philanthropy, ended the quarter with total stock holdings of $15.5 billion, a 2.6% increase since its last filing for the period ending in December.
The philanthropy, created by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT – News) co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, held stakes in the same 28 companies it reported last period, but it adjusted its holdings in just a few. It sold “B” shares in Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO – News) and increased its holdings of Coca-Cola Femsa SAB (NYSE: KOF – News) and Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL – News) The largest holding in the trust is 89 million B shares of Berkshire Hathaway with a value of $7.15 billion.
• Third Point LLC, run by hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, added consumer and energy names, including department store chain Big Lots Inc. (NYSE: BIG – News) and Tesoro Corp. (NYSE: TSO – News) The hedge-fund manager, who started accumulating both physical gold and gold-related holdings late last year, added to shares in exchange-traded SPDR Gold Trust ( GLD – News). His gold ETF stake was worth $31.5 million.
• George Soros’s hedge fund sharply cut its stake in the SPDR Gold Trust by almost 99% to 49,400 shares. The fund also cut its position in mining company NovaGold Resources Inc. (AMEX: NG – News)
Mr. Soros also cut positions in J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM – News) and Bank of America. Instead, he loaded up on shares of Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
• Greenlight Capital Inc., run by David Einhorn, built new positions in Best Buy, CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS – News), General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM – News) and Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO – News), among others.
During the quarter, Greenlight accumulated about six million shares of Best Buy, a position that was valued at about $192.8 million as of Monday’s closing price. It also added 3.5 million shares of CVS Caremark, 3.4 million shares of General Motors and 8.5 million shares of Yahoo.
Greenlight reported holdings valued at $5.2 billion as of March 31, a 6% sequential increase. At the end of the fourth quarter Greenlight reporting holdings valued at $4.9 billion.
• Activist investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP exited four names during the quarter, while increasing holdings in three others. The hedge-fund manager, whose long-only equities positions dropped 7% in value to $5.42 billion, exited Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NASDAQ: ADP – News), General Motors and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT – News) Pershing also said it had gotten rid of its holdings in Correction Corp. of America (NYSE: CXW – News) as of May 16.
Pershing Square raised its stakes in real-estate company Alexander & Baldwin Inc. (NYSE: ALEX – News), General Growth Properties Inc. (NYSE: GGP – News) and Kraft Food Inc. (NYSE: KFT – News)
• Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Holdings, which bet against subprime-backed mortgage bonds, reported it initiated new positions in Genon Energy Inc. (NYSE: GEN – News) and Bunge Ltd. (NYSE: BG – News), an agribusiness company. It also sold off more than a third of its stake in New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT – News)
Harbinger also increased its stake in its own publicly traded unit, Harbinger Group Inc. (NYSE: HRG – News), after selling one of its holdings, Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SPB – News) to the listed affiliate.
The value of Harbinger’s reported equity assets fell 34% from the previous quarter to $1.06 billion.
• FrontPoint Partners built positions in American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP – News) and MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET – News) as well as more than a dozen other companies. The Greenwich, Conn.-based firm reported stock holdings valued at $898 million as of March 31.
FrontPoint reported it held a position of about 266,000 shares of American Express, valued at about $13.3 million as of Monday’s closing price, and a stake of about 391,000 shares of MetLife, valued at about $17.2 million.
It also built new stakes in retailers Skechers USA Inc. (NYSE: SKX – News), OfficeMax Inc. (NYSE: OMX – News), Big Lots and BJ’s Wholesale Club.
—Steven D. Jones, Roger Cheng, Thomas Gryta, Amy Or, Brett Philbin, Corrie Driebusch and Brendan Conway contributed to this article.
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