market folly

Today we've got two SEC filings to cover regarding Harbinger Capital Partners' stake in Solutia (SOA). But, both filings were essentially made for the same reason (just at different times). Firstly, Philip Falcone's hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners filed an amended 13D on their SOA position back on June 18th to reflect the selling they've done. At that time, they had a 14.1% stake in the company with 16,813,411 shares. But, more recently, they've also filed an SEC Form 4 which shows that Philip Falcone's hedge fund sold even more shares of Solutia on June 24th, 2009. In total, they sold 7,260,109 shares at a price of $4.80 and now only have 7,114,291 shares left in their remaining position. As you can see, Harbinger has sold nearly half of their SOA shares in the time that has elapsed from their amended 13D filing up until this recent Form 4 that was just filed. The moral of the story: Harbinger is selling SOA shares in a big way. In addition to selling SOA, we've noted that Harbinger also started a new position in Zapata (ZAP). We also recently covered Harbinger's entire portfolio here.

Harbinger has been quite busy over the past year as they have been re-tooling their portfolio and fighting off a massive decline in assets. They were ranked #1 in the top 10 asset losers, losing 60.8% on a year over year basis. As we've been covering on the blog, Harbinger has been decreasing their Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF) position, selling off some of their Calpine (CPN), and is seeing bidders for their NYT stake, among many other portfolio moves.

Harbinger's Offshore fund finished -22.7% for 2008. They were up 0.95% for January 2009, 4.64% for February, and +0.74% for March, leaving them at +4.06% year to date as of then. And, we also got word that Falcone would be returning to his roots in terms of investing style and would be opening a new fund.

Taken from Google Finance, Solutia is "a global manufacturer and marketer of a variety of chemical and engineered materials that are used in a range of consumer and industrial applications. The Company maintains a global infrastructure consisting of 25 manufacturing facilities, six technical centers and over 29 sales offices globally, including 14 facilities in the United States. The Company’s segments are Saflex, CPFilms and Technical Specialties."