Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors is one of the best-known investors nowadays, and tracking his stock picks could provide us with great investment ideas. This is why we do that regularly, and we will, once again, using his last 13F filing – for the second quarter of 2014. The famed fund manager disclosed a diversified portfolio containing more than 85 long equity positions, with a market value of over $7.5 billion. In this article, in particular, we will look into the fund’s top new stakes in order to find out if any of them deserve further research and could be considered as potentially attractive investments.
Cooperman placed his biggest new bet on Navient Corp (NASDAQ:NAVI), a $7.2 billion market cap company engaged in originating, servicing and collecting education loans, which was recently spun off from SLM Corp (NASDAQ:SLM) – better known as Sallie Mae. Its stock started trading on the NASDAQ exchange around mid-April, and already pays out a $0.15 per share quarterly dividend – the next one is scheduled for September 26, 2014, to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 12, 2014.
Between April and June, Omega acquired 10.13 million shares of Navient Corp (NASDAQ:NAVI), worth roughly $179.5 million. This stake accounts for approximately 2.4% of the fund’s equity portfolio’s total value. Another fund that chipped into Navient Corp (NASDAQ:NAVI) is David E. Shaw’s D.E. Shaw. The New York based investment management firm acknowledged holding 11.55 million shares of the company, worth more than $204 million, by the end of the second quarter of the year.
Omega Advisors’ second largest new stock position was the one at KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR), an $18.2 billion market cap global investment company. The fund bought more than 5 million shares of the company over the quarter, and now owns over $123 million in its stock. KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR)’s stock currently trades at 9 times the company’s earnings, at only half its industry’s average valuation, while boasting industry leading returns on equity (22.4%) and net margins (87.3%). In addition, it pays out a dividend yield of 11.6%.
On the opposite sidewalk, KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR)’s largest hedge fund shareholder of record – amongst those that we track, John W. Rogers’ Ariel Investments, trimmed its exposure by 10% over the second quarter, disclosing ownership of 5.87 million shares.
Cooperman’s third stock pick for the quarter was none else than Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Over the second quarter of the year, the fund acquired 1.26 million shares of the company, worth $117 million. The position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) accounts for more than 1.5% of Omega’s total equity portfolio.
Other major hedge funds betting on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) are Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital Lp, which owns almost $5 billion in stock – or 52.76 million shares, and, once again, D.E. Shaw, with 11.88 million shares. Harris Associates and Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management also disclosed big stakes in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), worth approximately $1 billion each.
Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no position in any stocks or funds mentioned
