market folly

In a 13G filed with the SEC, Stephen Mandel's hedge fund Lone Pine Capital has disclosed a 5.6% ownership stake in Vistaprint (VPRT). The filing was made due to activity on July 21st, 2009 and they now own 2,365,511 shares. This is up massively from the last position they disclosed in VPRT as of March 31st, 2009 when they previously owned 258,100 shares. So, somewhere between April and July, Lone Pine has significantly increased their VPRT holdings.

Stephen Mandel's hedge fund has been quite busy over the past few months and we've covered all their moves. At the end of June, Lone Pine filed a 13G on Smithfield Foods (SFD). In terms of other big bets Lone Pine has made recently, we saw that Mandel likes Strayer Education. He presented this choice at the 2009 Ira Sohn Conference where numerous hedge fund managers each presented an investment idea. You can check out the rest of Lone Pine's portfolio here.

His $7 Billion fund has returned over 25% annually since its inception in 1997, but had a rough year in 2008. The term 'Lone Pine' comes from Mandel's days at Dartmouth College, where the school has a historical lone pine tree. He is well versed in the ways of finding undervalued companies and he typically likes to sniff out solid companies with good management that are trading below their intrinsic value. In Alpha's 2009 hedge fund rankings list, Lone Pine was ranked 21st.

Taken from Google Finance, Vistaprint is "an online provider of coordinated portfolios of customized marketing products and services to small businesses worldwide. The Company offers a spectrum of products and services ranging from business cards, brochures and post cards to apparel, invitations and announcements, holiday cards, calendars, creative design services, copywriting services, direct mail services, promotional gifts, signage and Website design, and hosting services."

Check back at MarketFolly.com tomorrow because we will be running a special piece that details some of Lone Pine's holdings in foreign markets.