A Look At Billionaire Julian Robertson’s Top Dividend Picks

#3 Blackstone Group LP (NYSE:BX)

– Shares Held By Tiger Management (as of September 30): 640,400

– Value of The Holding (as of September 30): $16.35 Million

After reducing its stake in Blackstone Group LP (NYSE:BX) by 11% during the second quarter, Tiger Management further lowered its holding in the asset manager by 2% during the third quarter. Blackstone Group LP (NYSE:BX) lost a considerable amount of its market capitalization in the last 7 months of 2015. While its stock has mostly been range-bound this year, it is currently trading down by almost 10% year-to-date. Based on the dividend it has paid in the last four quarters, Blackstone Group’s 12-month yield currently stands at 6.26%. On November 21, Reuters reported that the asset management firm is in talks with Chinese insurance company Anbang to sell residential property assets worth $2.3 billion that it owns in Japan. If the deal goes through, it would be the largest property transaction in Japan since property prices peaked in 2007.

#2 Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY)

– Shares Held By Tiger Management (as of September 30): 400,800

– Value of The Holding (as of September 30): $21.61 Million

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) was a new entrant in Tiger Management’s equity portfolio during the third quarter. Shares of the biopharmaceutical company suffered a big drop in August after it announced that its drug Opdivo had failed to reach the endpoint of a phase III study in which it was tested for treating advanced non-small cell lung cancer. That drop was followed by another big decline in October when Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) revealed that results from a phase III study on Opdivo, CheckMate-026, in treatment-naive patients with PD-L1-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) failed to demonstrate an improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) compared to platinum-based doublet chemotherapy. Owing largely to those two declines, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s stock is currently trading down by more than 17% for 2016. The company currently pays a quarterly dividend of $0.38 per share, which translates into an annual dividend yield of 2.67%.

#1 Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

– Shares Held By Tiger Management (as of September 30): 458,300

– Value of The Holding (as of September 30): $26.4 Million

Tiger Management initiated its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) during the second quarter and boosted it by 14% during the third quarter, making the company its third-largest equity holdings in terms of value at the end of September. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s stock has had a strong rally since the start of the second-half of 2016 and is currently trading up by 9% year-to-date. Despite that appreciation in the stock, it still sports a decent forward yield of 2.58%, which is one of the highest among large-cap tech companies. A large part of the gains that the stock has registered this year have come after it announced in June that it would be acquiring LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) for $26.2 billion. According to Reuters, Microsoft is on the verge of getting approval for this deal from EU antitrust regulators, though it will come with some conditions attached. The company has already received approval for the deal from regulators in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and South Africa, without any conditions. On November 17, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. upgraded Microsoft’s stock to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ and also upped their price target on it to $68 from $60.

Disclosure: None