Billionaire Julian Robertson is one of the greatest investors in the world, although many might argue that his best achievement is not what he has done while running Tiger Management, but what he has done since closing the fund some 18 years ago. Julian Robertson played a key role in the launch and growth of many successful hedge funds. These hedge funds were founded and are run by an elite group of investors that had worked under Robertson and are commonly known as Tiger Cubs. Many prominent names in the hedge fund industry, such as Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, Lee Ainslee’s Maverick Capital, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management and Chase Coleman’ Tiger Global Management are just some of the few Tiger Cubs. As Tiger Cubs grew since 2000, they spanned a new generation of investors, referred to as Tiger Grand Cub. One of the most successful Grand Cubs is Tiger Pacific Capital, an Asia-focused fund managed by Run Ye, Junji Takegami and Hoyon Hwang.
Run Ye, Junji Takegami and Hoyon Hwang launched Tiger Pacific Capital in 2012 after having worked at Tiger Asia Management, a New York-based fund that was shut down the same year on the back of a regulatory probe in Hong Kong. Julian Robertson invested in Tiger Pacific Capital.
In a statement announcing the partnership between Tiger Management and Tiger Pacific Capital, Julian Robertson was quoted as saying that “Asia is the best area of the world to practice hedge fund business. There are great companies at the initial phase of their growth, and, on the other side, companies with huge over-valuations or even possible frauds.”
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Well, it looks like Tiger Pacific Capital managed to tap into the opportunities presented on the Asian market, or at least it looks so from the performance of their stock picks. At Insider Monkey, we calculate a fund’s returns by taking into account the weighted average return of its stock picks in companies with a market cap of over $1.0 billion. This helps us to identify the best funds’ whose stock picks we can imitate under our small-cap strategy (read more details here). According to our calculations, Tiger Pacific Capital’s stock picks returned nearly 15% during the fourth quarter and it ended 2017 almost 89% in the green, which makes it the best performing fund of the year among over 600 funds in our database.
Follow Run Ye, Junji Takegami, And Hoyon Hwang's Tiger Pacific Capital
As of the end of 2017, Tiger Pacific Capital has an equity portfolio worth $186.59 million and it has regulatory assets under management worth $633 million, according to its latest Form ADV (filed in August). The fund’s equity portfolio is relatively small, containing just 13 positions, the top two of which, Noah Holdings Limited (ADR) (NYSE:NOAH) and SINA Corp (NASDAQ:SINA) amass nearly half of the value. Noah Holdings Limited (ADR) (NYSE:NOAH) and SINA Corp (NASDAQ:SINA) are mostly responsible for Tiger Pacific Capital’s returns last year, as both stocks gained 111% and 60%, respectively during 2017.
On the next page, we are going to discuss in more detail two stocks in which Tiger Pacific Capital more than doubled its position during the last three months of 2017, and two stocks that it added to its portfolio.
