Billionaire Andreas Halvorsen’s Four Big Winning Bets

In Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Viking initiated a stake of 2.28 million shares during the second quarter, according to its 13F filing for that period, and the long position in the e-commerce giant contributed 0.5% to its return. Amazon’s stock surged by over 17% between July and August as the company posted solid financial results and growth in its Amazon Web Services segment. With a new holiday season ahead, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) will be an even more attractive bet, although most of this anticipation has probably been priced into the stock already. Fisher Asset Management held 2.50 million shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of September.

First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC) contributed 0.2% to Viking Long Fund’s returns in the third quarter, although the company was still private at the time. The company went public around two weeks ago, and its stock lost over 2% in the first five days of trading, sparking talks regarding the current IPO environment. The stock is up by only 0.5% since the IPO, but large investors have high hopes for the company. Omega, during the aforementioned conference call, said that First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC) represented its second-largest holding, amassing 3.8% of its assets as of October 16, while billionaire Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group reported a stake containing 9.56 million shares of First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC) right after the IPO.

AstraZeneca plc (ADR) (NYSE:AZN)‘s stock inched up by 1.2% during the third quarter and Viking said the long stake in the company contributed 0.1% to the returns of Viking Long Fund. In its latest 13F filing, Viking Global did not disclose holding shares of AstraZeneca plc (ADR) (NYSE:AZN) and the overall sentiment for the stock among the funds we track was not very positive, as only 20 reported holding shares of the company, which accounted for around 0.60% of its outstanding stock, though this isn’t uncommon for ADR’s, which tend to be more lightly owned by the firms we track. Among the investors who do have a stake is Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, which held the largest position, containing 3.93 million shares at the end of June.

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