| Viking Capital’s Andreas Halvorsen; Photo: (Bloomberg) |
While many long-short equity funds are only up by single digits this year, a few of the so-called Tiger Cubs are up strongly for the year, thanks in part to their holdings in tech giant Apple. Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management and O. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors are among the Tiger cubs posting double-digit gains for the year. Apple’s stock surged for most of the year before starting to pull back significantly in the third quarter. The stock is well off its all-time high of $702.10 on September 19; it closed at $547.24 on Thursday after rebounding 1.57 percent that day.
Lone Pine’s long-short funds, including Lone Cypress, are up between 26 percent and 29 percent, net of the management fee but not the performance fee, for the year through November, according to investors. Lone Cascade, its long-only fund, is up around 28 percent to 29 percent. Tiger Global’s hedge fund, led by Coleman and Feroz Dewan, tacked on one percent in November to boost its full-year gain to about 23.5 percent. Meanwhile, Halvorsen’s Viking Global Equities fund is up 13.5 percent through November, while the Viking Long Fund is up 20.6 percent. (Earlier this year, we reported that Halvorsen told investors he was closing the Long Fund to new investors at the end of the year.)
Mandel, who served as managing director and consumer analyst at Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management from 1990 through 1997 before launching Lone Pine, is widely considered to be one of the industry’s best stock pickers. Greenwich, Connecticut-based Lone Pine currently manages around $23 billion.
Mandel is said to have earned sizable gains from a wide variety of stocks. Like many hedge fund managers this year, he scored big with Apple, especially earlier in the year. In the third quarter, he sold about 43 percent of his stake, ahead of the computer company’s subsequent selloff.
The retail expert has also rung up big gains from consumer stocks, including Gap and designer Michael Kors. Other gains came from a handful of Internet stocks, including Google, Priceline.com and Trip Advisor.
As for New York-based Tiger Global, at the end of the third quarter, the firm had cleared out its more than 3.3 million share stake in LinkedIn and its nearly 7.2 million-share position in Makemytrip, an online travel company in India and the United States.
On the other hand, the firm made a big new bet on Yahoo, scooping up 25 million shares, big enough to rank as the firm’s sixth largest holding. Apple and Yandex, the most popular Internet company in Russia and its largest search engine, remained the firm’s two largest holdings. Google, Liberty Global and Priceline.com remained among its top-five holdings.
On Thursday, the firm reported that it sold 1.3 million shares of TAL Education Group, an after-school tutoring services provider in China, from November 7 through December 4 for between $9 and $9.20 per share. It is not clear whether these shares were held in the hedge funds or private equity funds.
Like Lone Pine and Tiger Global, Greenwich, Connecticut-based Viking also counted Apple as one of its biggest holdings all year and even raised its stake slightly in the third quarter. Viking also lifted its stake in Newscorp by about 30 percent during the quarter, making it the firm’s largest position at the end of September, and boosted its stake in number three holding Visa. Shares of Newscorp are up about 36 percent year-to-date, while Visa is up 46 percent.
Among other Tiger Cubs, Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Fund was up 16.90 percent through November 23, reversing its 14.85 percent loss in 2011.
Robert Karr’s Joho Fund, which specializes in Japanese and other Asian investments, was up 6 percent or so through November 23. This is half the 12 percent return posted by the Nikkei 225—a widely followed index of Japanese stocks—but better than Korea’s Hang Seng Index, which is roughly flat this year.
