We recently noted that Tiger Management Corp.’s Accelerator Fund is experiencing mixed results these days. But one of the emerging stars among its six seeded hedge funds is Tiger Eye Capital.
The New York hedge fund firm headed by Benjamin Gambill was up 4.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, a period during which two firms contained in Tiger Accelerator, a fund of hedge funds, posted double-digit losses.
A look at Tiger Eye’s monthly exposure and performance report in March, obtained by Alpha, provides a rare glimpse into an otherwise low-profile firm, one among several dozen that have emerged from Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management Corp.
When Gambill launched Tiger Eye in April 2009 with seeding from Robertson, the fund was known for specializing in natural resources, financials and industrials, a much different focus than many of the Tiger descendants, which have gravitated to the turbocharged and sometimes more volatile Internet, technology, media and telecommunications industries.
Today, Tiger Eye Capital said it manages about $1.6 billion, according to the March report. However, it had reported that it managed $2 billion at the beginning of the year in its ADV filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In any case, the firm has never suffered a losing year, although in April 2009 — a month or two into the current six-years-plus bull market — is certainly good timing. Gambill has posted double-digit gains in three of his five full years as well as in the initial nine-month year when he launched.
In 2013 he enjoyed his best year, posting a 38.1 percent net gain. According to an earlier document obtained by Alpha, Tiger Eye’s long portfolio in the first 11 months of 2013 was up 49 percent gross. That year, technology-media-telecom accounted for 29 percent or so of the firm’s net exposure, while real estate and lodging ran a distant second at 13 percent.
So much for the natural resources, financials and industrials focus.
Last year Tiger Eye was up 4.2 percent. Since inception, it has compounded at 15.1 percent, nearly double the 8.3 percent return reported by the HFRI Equity Hedge index.
At the end of the first quarter, its biggest net exposure was to technology-media-telecom, accounting for 23 percentage points of the firm’s 54.4 percent net exposure. This was followed — to a lesser extent — by health care (11.4 percent net) and industrials (10.4 percent). Most of this exposure is to U.S. and European stocks.
Although Tiger Eye does not identify specific positions in its report, it does disclose that two of its top five holdings are among the tech, media or telecom sectors. The other three are health care, materials and consumer issues.
Tiger Eye has also fared pretty well with its shorts, kicking in a half percentage point to its 5.5 percent gross return in the first quarter.
Of course, it does not identify specific shorts, only that they are represented by two different materials stocks, a tech-media-telecom stock, and one each from the energy and industrials sectors.
We’ll keep our own eye on this fund to see whether it remains in the black.
