Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital has recently filed its 13F report with the SEC for the June 30 period. Ainslie formed his hedge fund back in 1993 with the help of billionaire Sam Wyly. Ainslie, together with other former employees of Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management, are well-known and respected in the industry and have been bestowed the “tiger cubs” nickname. Ainslie typically employs a value investment approach to his stock picking, having the majority of his capital invested in technology stocks. It seems that his strategies work quite nicely, as the fund has posted average annual returns of about 11.2% since its inception. According to the latest filing, the disclosed public equity portfolio of the fund held $6.56 billion of equities, 24% of which were technology stocks. In this article we are going to review the top picks of Maverick Capital from its main area of expertise, the tech sector, and those stocks are Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR).
We don’t just track the latest moves of funds. We are, in fact, more interested in their 13F filings, which we use to determine the top 15 small-cap stocks held by the funds we track. We gather and share this information based on 16 years of research, with backtests for the period between 1999 and 2012 and forward testing for the last 2.5 years. The results of our analysis show that these 15 most popular small-cap picks have a great potential to outperform the market, beating the S&P 500 Total Return Index by nearly one percentage point per month in backtests. Moreover, since the beginning of forward testing in August 2012, the strategy worked brilliantly, outperforming the market every year and returning 118%, which is more than 60 percentage points higher than the returns of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (see more details).
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As of June 30, Maverick Capital held 621,569 Class C shares of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) valued at $323.53 million. One of the top stories surrounding the company over the last week is the reorganisation into a new holding company entity which will use the name Alphabet Inc., with Google essentially transformed into the search engine division of Alphabet. Larry Page, who founded Google together with Sergey Brin, shared in his blog that such a move is a potential cure to becoming too comfortable. It looks as if both Sergey and Larry got tired of constant criticism over the wasting of the company’s search and advertising profits on crazy ideas and projects. Therefore, they left the core business of Google to talented Sundar Pichai, simultaneously creating for themselves a huge playground for future discoveries. Investors reacted positively to the news, as shares shot up by 5.6% within hours of the announcement. After the first six months of the year, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management held 822,275 Class A shares of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) worth $456.12 million.
The next top tech pick of Ainslie is represented by his position in Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO), in which Maverick Capital slashed its holdings by 11%, leaving on the balance some 2.13 million shares worth $283.75 million. Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) is a $32.66 billion company engaged in the business of supplying the world with op-to-electrics components to integrate into electronic devices. These components are often known as semiconductors and have the ability to transport information, light, and data within devices and from one device to another. A couple of months ago the company agreed to buy Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM) for $37 billion. The most notable thing about the acquired company is the fact that it supplies the chips and technology for the flagship devices of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL). The purchase creates new opportunities for Avago to better compete with the giants of the industry like Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), while still being comparatively small and flexible enough to respond faster than them. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016, becoming the largest technology acquisition ever. Among the other prominent investors that we follow, Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management owns some 3.41 million shares of Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) valued at $453.20 million.
Finally, Lee Ainslie held about 9.69 million shares of Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR) worth $230.66 million. The $7.65 billion company is a technology solutions provider to the global travel and tourism industry. On a year-to-date basis the stock has skyrocketed by 40.6%, to some extent due to its strong operational performance in the second quarter. According to its latest earnings announcements, Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR) managed to beat both the top and bottom line estimates, posting EPS of $0.27, a $0.03 beat, and revenue of $707.1 million, which was above the expected revenue by $25.48 million. On August 6, Imperial Capital raised its target price for the company’s stock to $35 from $30, while giving it an “Outperform” rating. In the meantime, the shares are changing hands at around $28.50. Following up a 44.46% increase to its position, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group reported having around 2.12 million shares of Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR) valued at $50.34 million.
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