Light Street Capital Management shook up its portfolio in a big way in the fourth quarter.
And who can blame them? The Tiger Grandcub led by Glen Kacher suffered a 54 percent loss in 2022, after losing 26 percent in 2021.
According to Light Street’s fourth-quarter 13F filing, made public Tuesday, the tech-driven long-short fund established four new large positions that immediately ranked among the firm’s nine largest common stock longs at year-end. In fact, the four positions combined now account for more than a quarter of Light Street’s U.S. common stock long portfolio.
At the same time, the firm liquidated two top-10 positions and five of its 13 largest longs as of the end of the third quarter, according to the filing. This is the fund’s most aggressive turnover of its largest holdings in more than a year, according to an analysis of its earlier quarterly 13F filings.
Light Street declined to comment.
So far, the firm’s fourth-quarter wheeling and dealing has paid off. Its long-short fund was up 8 percent in January, in what was a very strong month for the stock market in general, especially the big, well-known tech, internet, and consumer stocks favored by the Tiger crowd.
Of course, this is just one month. Light Street still has a long way to go before it can return to its high-water mark.
In the fourth quarter, the hedge fund firm established a large new position in chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, which became Light Street’s second-largest long, accounting for more than 8 percent of the firm’s U.S. long assets. It also established a sizable stake in streaming giant Netflix, which became the fourth-largest long; software giant Intuit, now its seventh-largest long, and chipmaker Nvidia, now ranked ninth.
Sure enough, AMD was up 16 percent in January, Netflix rose 20 percent, Intuit climbed more than 8 percent, and Nvidia surged more than 33 percent. Nvidia has also more than doubled from its October low, while the other three stocks are also up sharply over roughly the same period.
During the fourth quarter, Light Street also fully unloaded two stocks that had ranked among its top-10 positions at the end of the prior quarter: Electric vehicle maker Tesla, and GoodRx Holdings, the company that enables consumers to compare prices for prescription drugs.
Light Street also liquidated sizable stakes in specialty chemicals maker Albemarle Corp., digital identity company ForgeRock, and mobile technology company AppLovin Corp.
In addition, the firm sharply reduced its stakes in several other top holdings, especially cloud giant Datadog, previously its second-largest long; software company Splunk; Accel Entertainment, which makes gaming devices and other terminals; and digital intelligence company Celebrite.
There was one stock that Light Street didn’t touch: Development software company Gitlab, which became Light Street’s largest U.S. long at the end of the third quarter and remains its largest long, accounting for 9 percent of the firm’s U.S. portfolio.
