Billionaire David Einhorn’s Top Dividend Stocks

Having generated annualized returns of 19.5% since its inception in 1996 till 2013, David Einhorn‘s Greenlight Capital was considered one of the best long/short equity hedge fund on the Street. However, that was three years ago. The fund managed to end 2014 with a net gain of 8.7%, but was down a whopping 20.2% in 2015. This staggering loss not only drove down the fund’s net annualized return to 16.5% since its inception, but also put a major dent to its reputation.

To recover from such a massive drawdown, the fund has made some notable changes in its portfolio this year, which includes betting on stocks with respectable annual dividend yields. Taking that into account, this post, we will take a look at five major holdings of Greenlight Capital that sport a high dividend yield currently and will discuss how those stocks have performed lately.

We track hedge funds and prominent investors because our research has shown that historically their stock picks delivered superior risk-adjusted returns. This is especially true in the small-cap space. The 15 most popular small-cap stocks delivered a monthly alpha of 80 basis points in our backtests that covered the period between 1999 and 2012 (see the details here).

#5 Lamar Advertising Co (NASDAQ:LAMR)

– Shares Owned by Greenlight Capital (as of June 30): 148,072

– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $9.82 million

– Annual Dividend / Yield : $3.24/5.03%

Greenlight Capital initiated a stake in Lamar Advertising Co (NASDAQ:LAMR) during the first quarter and kept it unchanged during the second quarter. Despite the company reporting better-than-expected numbers for its second quarter last month, Lamar Advertising Co (NASDAQ:LAMR)’s stock took a beating after the earnings release. That slump along with the decline the stock has since then has eroded the gains that it had registered earlier in the year and it now trades nearly flat for 2016. While analysts had expected Lamar Advertising Co to report EPS of $0.83 on revenue of $384.09 for the second quarter, the company declared EPS of $0.84 on revenue of $387.50 million. On September 12, analysts at Loop Capital initiated their coverage on the stock with a ‘Buy’ rating. The popularity of the company among funds covered by us saw an increase during the second quarter with its ownership among them rising by three to 21 and the aggregate value of their holdings in it increasing by $7 million to $249.42 million.

#4 CNX Coal Resources LP (NYSE:CNXC)

– Shares Owned by Greenlight Capital (as of June 30): 5.48 Million

– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $50.82 million

– Annual Dividend / Yield : $2.04/15.41%

CNX Coal Resources LP (NYSE:CNXC) was another stock in which Greenlight Capital didn’t make any changes to its stake during the second quarter. Shares of the thermal coal producer have appreciated by over 50%, so far this year, however, the stock still sports a lucrative dividend yield of over 15%. The stock is currently trading at a price-to-book multiple of 1.9, which is more than the double the average price-to book multiple of 0.9 at which its peers are currently trading. For its fiscal 2016 third quarter, analysts are expecting the company to report EPS of $0.29 on revenue of $59.28 million. For the same quarter last year, CNX Coal Resources LP had posted EPS of $0.62 on revenue of $65.15 million. At the end of second quarter, there were six funds in our database that had long positions in the stock with the aggregate value of their holdings accounting for 27.30% of the company’s float.