This article discusses the top 8 stock picks of billionaire Nelson Peltz’s Trian Partners at the end of the second quarter. You can skip our detailed analysis of the fund, its history and recent performance if you are short on time and go directly to 4 Best Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Nelson Peltz.
Billionaire Nelson Peltz is among the very few notable hedge fund managers on Wall Street today who can claim to have made it big in the investment management business without taking a conventional path. Unlike most hedge fund managers, most of whom have an MBA or a CFA credential attached to their name or an undergraduate or master’s degree from a prestigious institution, Mr. Peltz dropped out of his undergraduate degree at Wharton to become a ski instructor in Oregon.
He soon left that profession and joined his father at A. Peltz & Sons, a frozen food and produce distribution business started by his grandfather in 1896. He built A. Peltz & Sons into a successful large-scale food distributor and took it public in 1973. Within a few years, he sold that business and used the proceeds to buy Triangle Industries Inc., which he again built into a Fortune 100 industrial company and sold in 1988. Since then, he has been actively buying and selling troubled companies, mainly in the consumer space, along with his long-time collaborator Peter May. In 2005, Mr. Peltz, along with Mr. May and Ed Garden, founded the activist hedge fund Trian Partners. Since its inception, Trian Fund Management has completed 35 deals, most of which involved the fund having an active stake in a company and asking its management to change its business or operating structure.
In a recent episode of “Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein,’’ Mr. Peltz was interviewed by The Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein. During that interview, Mr. Peltz was asked that earlier people who wanted to make changes at a company were called ‘raiders’, ‘activists’, and someone who is ‘no good to America,’ and if those views have changed now, to which he replied:
“Investors want their portfolios to perform. And they haven’t performed. What people don’t understand is that we are making their portfolios better. We are making mega-cap stocks. Nobody is going to buy P&G. Nobody is going to buy Unilever. There are only a few people who can have an impact on a company like that. Those stocks are probably in 50% of pension fund portfolios. That’s what we need to do.”
Trian Partners’ Portfolio
According to Trian Partners’ last filed Form ADV, the firm manages assets worth over $7.5 billion for 32 clients. Being an activist fund, Trian Partners has always run a concentrated portfolio, usually holding a stake in 10 companies or less. The second quarter of 2022 was no different. At the end of June, the fund held stakes in only 8 companies, with the aggregate value of those holdings amounting to $4.55 billion, according to its most recent 13F filing submitted with the SEC. Trian Partners’ top four stock picks – Sysco Corporation (NYSE:SYY), Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG), Invesco Ltd. (NYSE:IVZ), and Ferguson plc (NYSE:FERG) – alone accounted for over 70% of the aggregate value of its 13F portfolio.
Nelson Peltz of Trian Partners
Our Methodology
At Insider Monkey, we track the portfolios of 895 prominent hedge funds. Our research has shown that over the long term, the consensus stock picks of top-performing hedge funds beat the broader market returns by a wide margin. For this article, we selected the top 8 stock picks based on the most recent 13F filing submitted by Trian Partners with the SEC for the quarter ending June 30.
8 Best Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Nelson Peltz
8. The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG)
Trian Partners’ Stake Value: $785,000
Percentage of Trian Partners’ 13F Portfolio: 0.01%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 71
Trian Partners has had an interesting relationship with The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) over the past few years. The fund initiated a stake in the global consumer packaged goods major in November 2016, when the company’s stock had languished in the $60 to $80 range for close to a decade. Having initiated its stake, the fund proceeded to present the company with a plan to restructure its operations.
After those suggestions were not taken seriously by The Procter & Gamble Company’s (NYSE:PG) board, Trian Partners led a proxy fight, which it won, and as a result, Mr. Peltz got a seat on the company’s board. Mr. Peltz held on to his board seat until October 2021, following which he resigned, and Trian Partners sold almost all of its holdings in the company. Though the fund said it had sold its entire stake in the company in May 2022, the 13F filing shows that it still held a paltry 5,457 shares of The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) at the end of June.
On August 2, analysts at Barclays reiterated their ‘Overweight’ rating on the stock but lowered their price target on it to $154 from $157, representing a potential upside of 12.25% from the stock’s last closing price.
7. Mondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ)
Trian Partners’ Stake Value: $1,008,000
Percentage of Trian Partners’ 13F Portfolio: 0.02%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 48
Like it announced selling its holdings in The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG), Trian Partners also announced in May that it had sold its entire stake in Mondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ), but the recent regulatory filing shows that it held 16,239 shares of the confectionaries giant as of June 30. Trian Partners reported a stake in Mondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ) for the first time in its 13F filing for the first quarter of 2011. Mr. Peltz joined the company’s board in January 2014 and served as a board member until March 1, 2018, when he left his board seat due to other commitments and bequeathed it to Trian Partners’ other cofounder Mr. May.
Mondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ) has had a long history of consistently paying dividends to its shareholders and has increased its dividend every year for the last 8 years. On July 27, along with its second-quarter earnings release, the company announced a 10% hike in its quarterly dividend to $0.385, which translates into an annual dividend yield of 2.54% based on its current stock price.
6. General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)
Trian Partners’ Stake Value: $256,375,000
Percentage of Trian Partners’ 13F Portfolio: 5.63%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 49
Though Trian Partners upped its stake in General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) by a trivial amount of only 494 shares in Q2, other hedge funds covered by Insider Monkey showed much more confidence in the company during that period. These included billionaire Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, which increased its holdings by 267% to 4.325 million shares and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, which boosted its stake by 237% to 1.466 million shares. Trian Partners disclosed initiating a stake in the industrial giant during the second quarter of 2015. In addition, its founding partner Edward ‘Ed’ P. Garden has served as an independent director on the company’s board since October 2017.
General Electric Company’s (NYSE:GE) stock has never been able to fully recover from the massive slump it experienced beginning in early 2017 and still finds extreme resistance around the $100 level. On August 25, Hyliion Holdings (NYSE:HYLN), an EV company that designs and sells electrified powertrain solutions for the commercial vehicle industry, announced that it has agreed to purchase General Electric Company’s (NYSE:GE) new Karno hydrogen and fuel agnostic, capable generator. As part of the deal, the former will pay the latter $15 million in cash and around $22 million in common stock, which will give General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) almost 3% stake in the EV company.
5. The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN)
Trian Partners’ Stake Value: $478,293,000
Percentage of Trian Partners’ 13F Portfolio: 10.51%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 28
Trian Partners has a long history with The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN). The fund has held a stake in the company since 2005, the same year in which th fund was founded. In addition, Mr. Peltz has been a board member of the company since 2008; his son Matthew Peltz also joined the company’s board in 2015. Trian Partners and its associates own over 19% of The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN) and currently have three fund representatives -including Mr. Neslon Peltz and Mr. Matthew Peltz – on the company’s 11-member board.
In May, the fund revealed through a filing that it was exploring potential deals with The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN) to ‘enhance shareholders value’, which may include taking the company private, a merger or acquisition.
On August 11, a day after the company reported its fiscal 2022 second-quarter earnings, analysts at Barclays reiterated their ‘Overweight’ rating on the stock. They also upped their price target on it to $24 from $23, representing a potential upside of over 24% from the stock’s last trading price.
Click to continue reading and see 4 Best Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Nelson Peltz
Suggested articles:
- 10 Best Housing Stocks To Buy Now
- 10 Best Energy Stocks To Invest In
- 10 Best Quality Stocks To Buy Now
Disclosure: None. 8 Best Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Nelson Peltz is originally published on Insider Monkey.
