What the Tiger Cubs Are Investing in Now

Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest fans may well be Tiger Cubs. Facebook — along with Priceline.com and Liberty Global — is among the most widely held stocks among hedge funds with some sort of tie to Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management Corp.

Altogether, the average overlap of stock holdings among this group is 12.9 percent. That has actually declined somewhat for four consecutive quarters. Even so, the average overlap for all hedge funds, on average, works out to about 4 percent, confirming the widely held view that the Tiger Cubs and their offspring like to travel in packs.

These are some of the findings from a recent analysis by Novus, a New York research and analytics firm that provides data to institutional investors to help them improve their investment process. Novus crunched the year-end public filings of the equity holdings for no fewer than 48 Tiger-affiliated firms, including Tiger Cubs, Tiger Seeds, Tiger Grandcubs and Tiger Management itself. The firm does not include short positions or investments made in sovereign bonds, currencies, credit or other non-equity-related instruments in its analysis.

In any case, the Tiger den of hedge funds seems to have the strongest conviction for Facebook. The social media giant and Internet travel giant Priceline.com each count at least 21 funds altogether from this crowd as shareholders, or nearly half of the Tiger crowd. What’s more, 13 of the managers hold Facebook among their top ten holdings; seven of these count it among their top five positions, according to Novus.

This is especially significant given that most Tiger-related long-short managers run fairly concentrated portfolios, and their top ten holdings generally contain the stocks with the most conviction. In fact, Charles Anderson’s New York–based Fox Point Capital Management made Facebook its largest holding, accounting for 11 percent of its total assets disclosed in its 13F filing. Facebook is also the third-largest holding of O. Andreas Halvorsen’s Greenwich, Connecticut–based Viking Global Investors.

Priceline.com is also held by 21 different Tiger descendants. However, it is also among the top ten holdings in eight portfolios and among the top five in two portfolios. Those are the hedge funds managed by New York–based Tiger Global Management — headed by Charles (Chase) Coleman III and Feroz Dewan, which counts it as its largest holding — and Stephen Mandel Jr.’s Greenwich, Connecticut–based Lone Pine Capital, which has made Priceline.com its third-largest position. Those holdings have already paid off: Facebook’s stock is up nearly 30 percent this year, while Priceline.com is up more than 17 percent.

Cable giant Liberty Global’s A class of shares is the third-largest holding among Tiger descendants with 17 Tiger shareholders, led by Christopher Hansen’s San Francisco–based Valiant Capital Management and Fox Point. The C class is tied with three other stocks for the fourth-largest holding, with 14 Tiger investors. Five Tiger funds hold the A shares among their top ten holdings, and three hold the C shares among their top ten.

In addition to Liberty’s C class, 14 Tiger investors had positions in Google, 21st Century Fox and Charter Communications. Facebook and Google each counted seven hedge funds that held their stocks among their top five holdings — the most of any stock. In fact, Google and Gilead Sciences are tied for the top holding of Tiger Management.

Although Endo Health Solutions is tied with three other companies for ninth place, with 11 investors, Novus points out that it is a high-conviction name. It has the highest median allocation at nearly 6 percent. Altogether, seven managers have it in their top ten holdings and five managers in the top five. In fact, the stock accounts for more than 12 percent of the equity assets of New York–based Tiger Legatus Capital Management, headed by Jesse Ro, who previously worked at Viking.

Below are the 12 stocks that have the most Tiger-related funds among their shareholders.