Billionaire Paul Singer’s Top Picks for 2016

Billionaire Paul Singer is one of the most revered hedge fund managers on Wall Street and makes the list of the top-20 most successful hedge fund managers in history, with Mr. Singer’s Elliott Management ranking as the ninth-most successful hedge fund vehicle in history as of the end of 2015. The New York-based trading firm was launched in 1977 with just $1 million in capital and currently has assets under management amounting to more than $27 billion. The billionaire investor is widely-known for his activist strategies, but he is also notorious for his investments in sovereign wealth debt. Data compiled by Insider Monkey shows that Elliott Management’s long positions in companies with a market capitalization above $1 billion generated a negative weighted average return of 8.4% in 2015, based on the size of each position at the beginning of each quarter. Given that Paul Singer, like other many activists in the industry, tends to act as an additional catalyst that can increase shareholder value, individual investors might find his equity portfolio particularly constructive and full of high-potential investment ideas. That being said, this article will discuss Elliott Management’s top five equity positions as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2015.

Our backtests that covered the period between 1999 and 2012, showed that following the 15 most popular small-caps among hedge funds can help a retail investor beat the market by an average of 95 basis points per month (see more details here).

#5 Citrix Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS)

– Shares Owned by Elliott (as of December 31): 6.71 Million

– Value of Elliott’s Holding (as of December 31): $507.35 Million

Paul Singer upped his stake in Citrix Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) by 835,544 shares during the final quarter of 2015, ending the year with 6.71 million shares. In June 2015, Mr. Singer sent a public letter to Citrix Systems, urging the software company to sell off non-core businesses, cut its portfolio of product offerings, buy back shares and undertake cost cutting efforts. The two parties agreed to cooperate, which resulted in Elliott receiving a seat on the company’s Board of Directors and appointing another mutually-elected independent Director. In November 2015, Citrix Systems announced plans to spinoff its “Go To” family of products into a separate company, which will enable the post-spinoff Citrix to focus its efforts on its strategic solutions that offer reliable delivery of applications and data. The company’s 2015 total net revenue reached $3.28 billion, up from $3.14 billion in 2014 and $2.92 billion in 2013. Citrix shares are up by 5% over the past 12 months and trade at an attractive forward P/E multiple of 12.97, which is below the ratio of 14.20 for the Information Technology industry. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management reported owning 1.86 million shares of Citrix Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) via its most recent 13F.

The following two pages has the top four picks of Elliott Management heading into 2016.