Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) represents the largest position in Miller Value Partners’ equity portfolio, the fund holding 119,750 shares worth $115.12 million. The eCommerce behemoth is one of Miller’s long-term holdings, his fund owning shares since 2007. In his interview a year ago, Miller said that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was poised to grow faster under the presidency of Donald Trump and that the company won’t face any issues from anti-trust regulators under the new government.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s stock has surged by nearly 60% since the beginning of the year, as the company continued to work on all cylinders in the eCommerce space and its cloud platform, Amazon Web Services, continues to soar. In the last two quarters, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) posted revenue growth of 25% and 33.7%, respectively, while AWS sales surged by 42% on the year in each quarter. The company did receive some criticism from the new White House administration as President Trump bashed it on Twitter a couple of times, but investors shrugged off those comments, as they understand very well that Trump’s problem is not with Amazon itself but with the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos and the newspaper he owns, Washington Post.
During the third quarter, the number of funds tracked by Insider Monkey long Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) inched up by one to 133, while the total value of their holdings remained relatively unchanged at $17.25 billion.
Miller also pointed out Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX) among the pharmaceutical stocks he liked last year, saying that the shares could double in the following two or three years. In Miller Value Partners’ 13F, Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX) is the largest healthcare holding and the fourth largest position overall, with the fund having reported a $98.63 million position that contains 6.88 million shares as of the end of September. Among the investors in our database, the company is not seeing much support, as there are just 29 funds long the stock, down by eight over the quarter. By comparison, there were 58 funds bullish on Valeant at the end of September 2016.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX) was involved in a scandal in 2015 and 2016, as the company was criticized on the Hill over its drug pricing policies, with a Deutsche Bank report estimating that the pharmaceutical giant raised prices on over 50 drugs in 2015 alone. Prior to that it was revealed that Valeant had been misstating its financial results and had serious accounting issues. However, Miller said that the company would survive the crisis and added that it should focus on its free casah flow, as well as dispose of some assets.
Since the beginning of the year, Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX)’s stock has gained 46%, but the price is still far from the $240 levels seen in 2015 before the scandal. Over the last year, the company reshuffled its management team, sold some of its divisions, including Sprout Pharma, iNova Pharma, and Obagi. However, Valeant also missed the expectations in its last financial reports and analysts, while appreciating the latest moves made by the company are still cautious about the stock.
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