(This post is part of our series on tracking hedge fund portfolios. If you're unfamiliar with tracking investments they disclose via SEC filings, check out our series preface on hedge fund filings.)
Next up is Andreas Halvorsen's hedge fund Viking Global. Viking employs bottom-up fundamental stockpicking, like most all other 'Tiger Cub' hedge funds. Halvorsen attended Williams College and received his MBA from Stanford and he has previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Julian Robertson's legendary hedge fund Tiger Management. In Alpha's 2008 hedge fund rankings, Viking was ranked #70 in the world. We recently got some insight as to Viking's rationale behind some of their positions in their first quarter letter.
The positions listed below were their long equity, note, and options holdings as of March 31st, 2010 as filed with the SEC. All holdings are common stock unless otherwise denoted:
Brand New Positions
Bank of America (BAC)
Baker Hughes (BHI)
Colgate Palmolive (CL)
Comcast (CMCSA)
PNC Financial (PNC)
Agrium (AGU)
Mednax (MD)
Frontline (FRO)
Psychiatric Solutions (PSYS)
United Technologies (UTX)
Lennar (LEN.B)
Family Dollar Stores (FDO)
NVR (NVR)
McKesson (MCK)
Intermune (ITMN)
Owens Corning (OC)
Increased Positions
Metlife (MET.B): Increased position by 926%
Universal Health (UHS): Increased by 658%
Sherwin Williams (SHW): Increased by 277%
Ingersoll Rand (IR): Increased by 160%
Smithfield Foods (SFD): Increased by 148.5%
Rockwell Collins (COL): Increased by 132.6%
Devon Energy (DVN): Increased by 130.8%
News Corp (NWSA): Increased by 124%
CME Group (CME): Increased by 120%
Google (GOOG): Increased by 106%
Tyco International (TYC): Increased by 99.5%
Pfizer (PFE): Increased by 70.5%
Hess (HES): Increased by 68.4%
Pall (PLL): Increased by 50.9%
Davita (DVA): Increased by 49.7%
Oracle (ORCL): Increased by 47.6%
Health Management (HMA): Increased by 34%
Halliburton): Increased by 31.6%
Visa (V): Increased by 21.4%
Invesco (IVZ): Increased by 16.2%
Reduced Positions
Capital One (COF): Reduced position size by 97.6%
Lincare (LNCR): Reduced by 54.4%
Beckman Coulter (BEC): Reduced by 85.2%
CVS Caremark (CVS): Reduced by 46.1%
Illumina (ILMN): Reduced by 44.8%
Autodesk (ADSK): Reduced by 38.9%
Disney (DIS): Reduced by 27.8%
Wellpoint (WLP): Reduced by 27.7%
Qwest Communication (Q): Reduced by 27%
JPMorgan Chase (JPM): Reduced by 27%
Virgin Media (VMED): Reduced by 26.4%
Biovail (BVF): Reduced by 25%
Cigna (CI): Reduced by 24.8%
Danaher (DHR): Reduced by 22.5%
Goodrich (GR): Reduced by 17.4%
Positions They Sold Out of Completely
Bank of America preferred (BAC-S)
Mastercard (MA)
CSX (CSX)
Aetna (AET)
AON (AON)
DirecTV (DTV)
NRG Energy (NRG)
Franklin Resources (BEN)
Citigroup (C)
Wells Fargo (WFC)
Qualcomm (QCOM)
Manulife Financial (MFC)
Host Hotel & Resort (HST)
Owen Illinois (OI)
Brocade Communications (BRCD)
Allegheny Energy (AYE)
Manitowoc (MTW)
Atlas Energy (ATLS)
Apollo Group (APOL)
Pharmaceutical Products (PPDI)
Top 15 Holdings (by percentage of assets reported on 13F filing)
1. Visa (V): 9.8%
2. Invesco (IVZ): 7.7%
3. Express Scripts (ESRX): 4.5%
4. Tyco (TYC): 4.4%
5. Bank of America (BAC): 4.3%
6. Metlife (MET.B): 4%
7. News Corp (NWSA): 3.2%
8. JPMorgan Chase (JPM): 2.9%
9. Goodrich (GR): 2.8%
10. Hewlett Packard (HPQ): 2.7%
11. Google (GOOG): 2.7%
12. Wellpoint (WLP): 2.4%
13. CME Group (CME): 2.4%
14. ACE (ACE): 2.4%
15. Sherwin Williams (SHW): 2.3%
Many of Viking's portfolio moves were previously telegraphed in their first quarter letter. In it, we saw that they dumped Mastercard (MA) and clearly now favor Visa (V) in the payment processing space. They maintain their very large position in Invesco as well. Their letter also revealed that they are quite bullish on shares of Express Scripts (ESRX) in the pharmacy benefit management space. At the end of the first quarter it was their third largest US equity long. We also see that they chopped their CVS Caremark (CVS) position nearly in half, a competitor to ESRX in the PBM space. As we detailed last week, Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital is bullish on CVS.
We take note of Viking's position in CME Group because a few other hedgies were adding shares in the first quarter. We just learned that John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital also has a sizable stake. Halvorsen's hedge fund also nearly doubled down on their Tyco (TYC) position and brought it up to their fourth largest holding. And while we're on the subject of positions they added to, take a look at Metlife B shares (MET.B) as Viking really added to their stake there. Lastly, we highlight they doubled down on their position in Google (GOOG) as well. We're starting to see lots of hedgies accumulating this technology & internet giant, so that might be worth looking into further considering GOOG is trading below levels where these hedge funds added to their position. Blue Ridge Capital has assembled a large GOOG stake as well.
In terms of positions they sold completely out of, we wanted to highlight Apollo Group (APOL) for a few reasons. Firstly, Viking had this as a 'core' position for a few quarters and so we note their exit. Secondly, we mention this because we're starting to see a divergence of opinion amongst Tiger Cub hedge funds regarding for-profit education stocks. David Stemerman's Conatus Capital had sold out of APOL and other educational plays back in the fourth quarter for a myriad of reasons.
Assets reported on the 13F filing were $9 billion this quarter. Data from the SEC is aggregated and sorted automatically by Alphaclone, our source for hedge fund tracking, replicating, and performance backtesting (Market Folly readers can receive a special free 30 day trial). Remember that these filings are not representative of the hedge fund's entire base of AUM.
This post is part of our daily hedge fund portfolio tracking series. We've already detailed activity from numerous managers so click the links below to be taken to the respective portfolio updates: Seth Klarman's Baupost Group, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, and Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, Eddie Lampert's RBS Partners, David Tepper's Appaloosa Management, Mohnish Pabrai's Investment Fund, John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital, Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital, and Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Capital Management. Be sure to check back daily for new hedge fund updates.
