This is the 4th Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund portfolio tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the Hedge Fund 13F filings preface.
Andreas Halvorsen is one of the many 'Tiger Cub' fund managers we cover here on the blog. 'Tiger Cubs' are the progeny of legendary investor and hedge fund manager Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. Many of the critical members of Tiger started their own funds, and Halvorsen is no different. We've already covered one other 'Tiger Cub' portfolios in our hedge fund tracking series: Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital. Although both Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global and Stephen Mandel Jr. of Lone Pine Capital both learned the tricks of the trade under Robertson in their time at Tiger Management, both have taken what they've learned and added their own spice to the value oriented, yet growth at a reasonable price (G.A.R.P.) tolerable investment style. Viking employs a fundamental strategy, using a bottom-up process to pick stocks. Viking Global's Equities III fund was +1% for December and finished the year -1.14% as we noted in our hedge fund 2008 performance numbers. You can view their month by month performance breakdown here.
Halvorsen attended Williams College and received his MBA from Stanford, while his work history includes stays at Morgan Stanley and Tiger. In Alpha's latest hedge fund rankings, Viking was ranked #70 in the world. You can view Viking's most recent year end investor letter, as well as their Q3 2008 investor letter here in .pdf format.
The following were their long equity, note, and options holdings as of December 31st, 2008 as filed with the SEC. We have not detailed the changes to every single position in this update, but we have covered all the major moves. All holdings are common stock unless otherwise denoted.
Some New Positions (Brand new positions that they initiated in the last quarter):
Alcon (ACL)
Axis Capital Holdings (AXS)
Bank of America (BAC)
BCE (BCE)
Illumina (ILMN)
ITT Education (ESI)
JP Morgan Chase (JPM)
Mastercard (MA)
McKesson (MCK)
ModusLink (MLNK)
NRG Energy (NRG)
Renaissance Re (RNR)
Sherwin Williams (SHW)
Vulcan Materials (VMC)
Some Increased Positions (A few positions they already owned but added shares to)
Priceline (PCLN): Increased position by 28.6%
Verisign (VRSN): Increased position by 18.4%
Invesco (IVZ): Increased position by 2.6%
Some Reduced Positions (Some positions they sold some shares of - note not all sales listed)
First Horizon (FHN): Reduced position by 32%
Kroger (KR): Reduced position by 30%
Aon (AOC): Reduced position by 25.5%
Qualcomm (QCOM): Reduced position by 22%
Apollo Group (APOL): Reduced position by 21.9%
Davita (DVA): Reduced position by 10.6%
St Jude (STJ): Reduced position by 7.9%
Removed Positions (Positions they sold out of completely)
Idearc (IDAR)
Monster Worldwide (MWW)
RH Donnelley (RHDC)
Associated Bancorp (ASBC)
Federated Mogul (FDML)
Och Ziff (OZM)
Arkansas Best (ABFS)
Fair Isaac (FIC)
Sina (SINA)
Alexander & Baldwin (AXB)
Jefferies (JEF)
Susquehanna (SUSQ)
Glacier Bancorp (GBCI)
Charles River Labs (CRL)
Whitney Holdings (WTNY)
The Stanley Works (SWK)
National Financial Partners (NFP)
Avalonbay Communities (AVB)
Transocean (RIG)
Herbalife (HLF)
National City (NCC)
Thor (THO)
Humana (HUM)
Expedia (EXPE)
Franklin Resources (BEN)
Autodesk (ADSK)
Coach (COH)
Blackrock (BLK)
Harley Davidson (HOG)
Beckman Coulter (BEC)
Keycorp (KEY)
Alliance Data (ADS)
Quest Diagnostic (DGX)
Mettler Toledo (MTD)
Visa (V)
Tidewater (TDW)
Ace (ACE)
Top 20 Holdings (by % of portfolio)
- Apollo Group (APOL): 18.58% of portfolio
- BCE (BCE): 11.21% of portfolio
- Invesco (IVZ): 7.68% of portfolio
- ITT Educational (ESI): 6.45% of portfolio
- Bank of America (BAC): 6.32% of portfolio
- Qualcomm (QCOM): 5.95% of portfolio
- Davita (DVA): 5.76% of portfolio
- Priceline (PCLN): 4.9% of portfolio
- NRG Energy (NRG): 4.53% of portfolio
- Mastercard (MA): 3.94% of portfolio
- MSCI (MXB): 3.38% of portfolio
- JP Morgan Chase (JPM): 2.9% of portfolio
- Verisign (VRSN): 2.63% of portfolio
- First Horizon (FHN): 2.15% of portfolio
- McKesson (MCK): 2.1% of portfolio
- Sherwin Williams (SHW): 2.1% of portfolio
- Illumina (ILMN): 1.7% of portfolio
- Aon (AOC): 1.63% of portfolio
- Kroger (KR): 1.57% of portfolio
- Macrovision (MVSN): 1.4% of portfolio
Viking changed up their portfolio a substantial amount over the last quarter. Take the bottom half of their portfolio from the previous filing, and chop it off. That's essentially what happened if you examine their filings quarter to quarter. And, they came in and replaced that void with a whole new slew of companies. Interesting to see them also basically swap out of Visa in favor of Mastercard. Assets from the collective long US equity, options, and note holdings were $3.5 billion last quarter and were again around $3.5 billion this quarter. This is just one of many funds in our hedge fund portfolio tracking series in which we're tracking 35+ prominent funds. We've already covered Paulson & Co (John Paulson), Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, George Soros, and Bill Ackman's Pershing Square. Look for our continual updates each day over the next few weeks.
