Allison Transmission Holdings Inc (NYSE:ALSN) & Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW) are witnessing heavy buying from two different hedge funds that are adamant on increasing their stakes in the companies. As the latest filings with Securities and Exchange Commission show, Jeff Ubben’s ValueAct Partners increased its stake in Allison Transmission Holdings Inc (NYSE:ALSN) on October 7, 8 and 9, by 275,000 shares at an average price of $27.75 per share, and Ahmet Okumus’ Okumus Fund Management bought 1,35,792 shares of Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW) on October 1, 8 and 9, at an average price of $18.86 per share. Following these transactions, ValueAct Partners now owns over 18.85 million shares of Allison Transmission Holdings Inc (NYSE:ALSN) and Okumus Fund Management owns a total of over 7.3 million shares in Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW).
ValueAct started building a stake in Allison Transmission Holdings Inc (NYSE:ALSN) in the last quarter of 2013. It bought over 18.025 million shares in that quarter and held on to it till the end of September 2014. Beginning October 1, the fund again started purchasing the stock of the company, buying 550,000 shares on October 1 at an average price of $28.31 per share. Though ValueAct hasn’t revealed any plans of going activist on Allison Transmission Holdings Inc (NYSE:ALSN), the Street is speculating if this sudden continuous increase in stake is actually a sign of that.
Allison Transmission Holdings Inc (NYSE:ALSN) has been doing quite well on the financial front as well. The company reported an EPS of $0.31 per share in the second quarter of 2014, compared to an EPS of $0.26 in the same period last year; its revenues were also up 4% year-on-year to $535 million. Apart from ValueAct, David Shaw’s firm, D.E. Shaw, and Jeffrey Gates’ Gates Capital Management are also bullish on the company. D.E. Shaw increased its stake by 28% to over 9.6 million shares and Gates Capital Management increased its stake by 48% to over 6.35 million shares during the second quarter of 2014.
Okumus Fund Management started buying shares of Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW) in the third quarter of 2014 and continues to do so. On September 30 too, the fund bought 76,266 shares at an average price of $19.99 per share. Okumus now owns over 13.9% of all the common stock of the company. Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW) has been facing pressure ever since the entry of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in the domain registration business was announced, it is currently down almost 40% year on year. However, the company has been strengthening its financials in the same period. It brought its net loss to $304,000 for the first half of 2014, compared to $56.25 million in the same period of 2013.
Craig C. Albert’s Sheffield Asset Management is another large shareholder of Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW), which as of June 30, 2014 owns over 2.1 million shares. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management is also bullish on Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WWWW), during second quarter of 2014 it increased its stake by 1411% to over 306,000 shares.
Disclosure: None
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