Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital’s Top 10 Stock Picks

Published January 29, 2021 at 12:05 pm EST Updated September 7, 2026 at 1:22 pm EDT

In this article we presented Eagle Capital’s top 10 stock picks.

Eagle Capital is a New York based hedge fund that was founded by Beth and Ravenel Curry III in 1988. Right now, their son Boykin is in charge of the fund. Instead of employing a 2 and 20 fee structure, Eagle Capital charges 1% flat fee for relatively small clients, and 0.75% for bigger clients. The main reason behind this fee structure is that Eagle Capital is a long only fund. It holds around 30-40 securities focusing on the large-cap equities and it follows a bottom-up research approach. Its AUM was around $32 billion at the end of 2019. At the end of the third quarter of 2020 Eagle Capital’s 13F portfolio was nearly $28 billion.

The primary strategy of Eagle Capital is finding undervalued stocks with unrecognized growth potential and invest in long term prospects. In 2008, Eagle Capital’s net return was ‐35.6%, where S&P 500 was ‐37.0%, and Russell 1000 was ‐36.8%. In 2014, the returns of Eagle Capital, S&P 500, and Russell 1000 were 12.3%, 13.7%, and 13.5% respectively. In 2015, Eagle Capital and S&P 500 were the same (1.4%), and Russell 1000 was -3.8%. In 2016, the returns were 10.1%, 12.0%, and 17.3% respectively. It indicated a little bit lower, but next year in 2017, its net annual return was 23.1%, where S&P 500 was 21.8%, and Russell 1000 was 13.7%. It showed a good performance that year. In 2018, the returns were -5%, -4.4%, and -8.3% respectively. Keeping in mind that small-cap stocks have been underperforming large-cap stocks since 2015, Eagle Capital seems to generate a small amount of alpha after fees.

Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital

Boykin Curry IV had previously managed a portfolio at Kingdon Capital before coming to Eagle around the turn of the millennium. Boykin Curry IV, 45 years old, graduated from Yale University with a degree in Economics in 1988 and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Eagle Capital managed to beat the S&P 500 Index for 7 straight years between 2007 and 2013. We believe Eagle Capital is able to do that because it has a longer investment horizon than other funds and can hold its nose and buy unloved but cheap stocks.

Recently the company focuses on the Finance sector stocks. In the last quarter, it boosted its Wells Fargo (WFC) position by 60% accounting for 4.02% of the fund’s overall 13F portfolio. WFC shares has already gained 36.74% price since the last filling. It also increased its Aon PLC (AON) position by 19% to 5.68% of the overall 13F portfolio, and the stock gained more than 4.5% price since the last filling. According to the 13F report for Q3, 2020, its 29.6% of 13F portfolio is in the communication sector, 29.2% is in the finance sector, 15.6% is in the consumer discretionary sector, 13.5% is in technology, and 4.2% is in the health sector.

We track hedge funds like Eagle Capital to identify promising stock picks. This is the first step in our idea generation process. Once we identify a promising investment idea, we spend a week or two going through its quarterly and annual filings, earnings call transcripts, its competitors’ earnings call transcripts, etc. and determine whether the stock is attractive an investment as about 2 dozen stocks we identified and recommended in our monthly newsletter. This rigorous research approach helped us to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 88 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here).

Now, we are going to go through Eagle Capital’s top 10 holdings which account for 60.9% of its 13F portfolio.

10. UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH)

The largest U.S health insurance company’s price fell tremendously during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and reached $194.9 from $305.3 in a month. Currently UNH shares trade at $337.

The company recently has beat analysts’ expectations in its fourth-quarter 2020 report. Its revenue rose 7.5% generating an EPS of $2.52 versus analysts’ estimates of $2.40. Eagle Capital allocated nearly 4% of its overall 13F portfolio to United Health. Polen Capital talked about UNH in its 2020 Q3 investor letter:

“UnitedHealth Group is both the leading health insurance company in the U.S. and the largest primary care provider. It has been building an integrated healthcare model that provides medical care and health insurance to individuals and corporations and to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Insurance accounts for roughly half of the company’s profits, and medical care delivery and technology accounts for the other half.

We believe this integrated, data-driven model is the future of healthcare delivery in the U.S. and should lead to lower medical costs over time without sacrificing quality of care. UnitedHealth is moving to a practice of rewarding providers that demonstrate strong wellness and health outcomes and away from a “pay for consumption of medical care” model that treats people only when they are already sick and where costs are very high. By focusing on preventative care and wellness, medical utilization could decline, and costs should follow.

We expect UnitedHealth Group to be able to grow earnings per share at a low-to-mid-teens rate over time with low cyclicality. In addition, we see little chance of a government-run health system in the U.S. due to the massive cost, especially at a time when federal budget deficits are tremendously high, plus several other factors. As such, we believe scaled players with strong integrated models that are already being utilized to run large parts of government programs will likely continue to play a large role for many years to come.”

9. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC)

Eagle Capital allocated 4.02% of the overall 13F portfolio to Wells Fargo. WFC shares were trading around $53 at the start of 2020. Its stock fell sharply in March after it announced to pay $3 billion to resolve criminal probes related to its fraudulent sales practices. In the same month, the bank’s chairwoman Betsy Duke stepped down from her position amid heightened pressure from regulators over Wells Fargo’s stumbling attempts to fix the misleading consumer practices. Duke stepped down after leading the board for more than a year.

Wells Fargo shares traded flat for the most part of 2020, touching a low of $20.76 on October 29, a couple of weeks after reporting disappointing results for the third quarter. Overall, the stock lost about half its value during 2020.

The company was off to a decent start in 2021, with the stock trading higher for most of the days. However, Wells Fargo shares fell 7.80 percent on Friday after reporting fourth-quarter revenue below the consensus forecast. Q4 revenue came in at $17.93 billion, down 9.7 percent on a year-over-year basis, and below analysts’ average estimate of $18.12 billion. Nevertheless, Q4 earnings increased to $2.99 billion, or 64 cents per share, beating the consensus forecast of 59 cents per share. Meanwhile, the bank warned that asset sales and low interest rates will affect its revenue in the coming quarters. Wells Fargo ranked 24th among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

Argosy Investors talked about WFC in its 2020 Q4 investor letter:

“Most of us are familiar with Wells Fargo (WFC); they are one of the top 5 banks in the U.S. with nearly $2 trillion in assets. The last 5 years have not been good to Wells. They are on their 3rd CEO during that time, and the current one stays in New York City despite headquarters being in San Francisco. Wells Fargo opened millions of fake accounts for customers over several years, driven by an incentive system that compensated branches based on their account openings. This goes to show you the perverse power of incentives, if not properly balanced. To atone for their sins, Wells Fargo is operating under an asset cap which prevents the bank from growing and must demonstrate stronger risk management. Not that long ago, Wells Fargo was the most admired large bank on Wall Street, with the highest valuation and glowing reviews about its low cost of funds driving sustainably high returns on equity. Now, it has the lowest valuation on Wall Street and no one talks about the good old days with Wells.

I believe that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Wells Fargo’s business that cannot be fixed, and once they can return to normal operations without the fake account nonsense then I expect they will return to earning returns slightly lower than historical norms. If Wells Fargo uses 100% of its earnings to repurchase share over the next 3 years, Wells can retire 25% of its outstanding stock. By 2023, WFC could earn $6+ per share. At 10x earnings, a very low multiple given the rest of the stock market trades at 22x earnings, Wells Fargo could fetch $60 per share. WFC’s current share price is $33 and our cost basis is around $25 per share. If it takes 5 years for Wells to get out of the penalty box and trade at $60 per share, we can earn a 20% annual return on our investment, including dividends.”

8. Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAR)

Eagle Capital’s Marriott International, Inc. investment underperformed the market over the last 12 months. Despite selling 4% of its position in the September quarter, Eagle Capital still allocated 4.37% of its 13F portfolio to this pandemic casualty stock.

Marriott has 7,500 properties in 132 countries under 30 leading brands. Currently, the company announced that it is going to expand by nearly 100 hotels in the Asia-Pacific region in 2021. Last year it added 75 properties in the region. Though the company’s revenue and EPS decreased over the last two years, the expansion will support bringing the stock back to growth.

7. Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB)

Eagle Capital trimmed 6% of its Facebook Inc. position during the September quarter. The fund first bought Facebook stock in Q3 2018 at an average price of ~$165. Now the stock price is $265. Currently, FB stock is 5.54% of Eagle Capital’s 13F portfolio. Oakmark Funds commented on Facebook in its 2020 Q4 investor letter a few days ago:

“Facebook currently sells at approximately $273 per share or 26 times consensus 2021 earnings estimates of $10.47 per share. That might not seem excessive for such a high-quality company, but it certainly would not meet our value criteria if that was the whole story. But it’s not. For starters, Facebook is expected to have $29 per share of cash at the end of 2021, and, as we all know, cash currently earns almost nothing. Subtracting cash from the stock price, we are only paying $244 per share for the business or 23 times earnings.

There is more. Analysts believe that WhatsApp, a popular messaging service owned by Facebook, reports a GAAP loss, yet its subscribers have quadrupled since Facebook acquired the service in 2014. If WhatsApp‘s current subscriber base was valued at the same price-per-subscriber as in 2014, it would now be worth $31 per Facebook share. Using analyst forecasts for revenue several years out, that $31 per share seems reasonable as it roughly matches Facebook’s current price-to-sales multiple.

In addition to WhatsApp, Facebook has also made significant investments in augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR)—about $5 per share by our estimate—and we believe those investments are, at a minimum, worth what they cost. AR/VR generates little revenue today and it is likely losing at least $1.00 per share. So, when we factor in both WhatsApp and AR/VR, we should deduct another $36 from Facebook’s stock price and add to earnings the estimated $1.50 of losses they generate.

After these calculations are figured in, we are paying $208 for core Facebook/Instagram with consensus estimates of $12 in 2021—a P/E of only 17x. For a high growth, strong cash generator like Facebook, an adjusted P/E of less than the S&P 500 strikes us as a bargain. And, if you haven’t yet tried the new $299 Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality gaming system (by Facebook), you’re in for a treat.”

6. Aon Plc (AON)

The hedge fund increased its AON position by 19% in Q3 2020. The position in the insurance company accounted for 5.68% of Eagle Capital’s overall 13F portfolio. We recently featured AON in 10 best insurance stocks to buy article. Here is what we said:

“Aon offers insurance, financial risk-mitigation and pension services. The company was created in 1982 as a result of the merger of Ryan Insurance Group and Combined Insurance Company of America.

In the third quarter, Aon said its operating margin increased 340 basis points to 18.5%, while EPS jumped 27% in the quarter to reach $1.18. Tom Gayner’s Markel Gayner Asset Management is one of the 52 hedge funds having stakes in Aon as of the end of the third quarter. The fund owns 37,000 shares of the company, worth $7.63 million.”

5. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-B)

Despite reducing the position by 10.34% in the third quarter, Berkshire is still 5.86% of Eagle’s overall portfolio. Berkshire Hathaway is probably the #1 stock pick among traditional value investors. Nomadic Value talked about Berkshire in its 2020 Q2 investor letter:

“We added to Berkshire Hathaway. I won’t spend too much talking about this, but BRK is as attractively priced as it’s been in some time. The press’s and FinTwit’s fascination with “Warren’s lost it” is at a cyclical peak and is complete noise. However, the valid bear argument is that BRK is too big to compound at good rates going forward, and subsidiary company performance will be weak for the next couple of years with its high exposure to air traffic (Precision Cast Parts and previously held airline stocks) and holdings in “old economy” manufacturing and retail businesses. Also, short-term there’s an unknown consequence of insurance claim payouts and/or refunds13 . We wouldn’t completely disagree with these judgments, and the optics are certainly bad when BRK doesn’t buy back shares in a quarter with a substantial sell-down. However, with a long-term lens and given the management style of BRK (conservative talk and overperform), we will likely be quite satisfied in the future – whatever that looks like. Meanwhile, we’ve gotten into a range where 30%-50% of BRK is free. Are the actual growth prospects for Berkshire this dire? Berkshire is our largest position.”

4. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

Eagle Capital reduced its Amazon.com position by 30% which accounted for 6.8% of the 13F portfolio at the beginning of October. It is great to see Amazon among the holdings of a traditional value investor. Most investors consider stocks growing at 20+% rates “growth stocks”. We think these stocks can also be classified as value stocks if there is a high probability that these stocks keep growing at these rates for a very long time and their current stock price doesn’t account for this growth potential. Baron Opportunity Fund talked about Amazon in its 2020 Q3 letter:

“Amazon.com, Inc. is the world’s largest retailer and cloud services provider. Shares were up on strong second quarter revenue metrics – with paid unit growth accelerating to 57%, a startling figure for a company of this scale – as Amazon benefited from recent investments in logistics and distribution to meet increased COVID-19-related demand. Amazon has the unique ability to deliver all the necessities of life safely to your doorstep, including groceries. Amazon also reported a stunning beat in operating profit, with $5.8 billion of operating income, almost six times Wall Street’s expected figure. While e-commerce penetration is rising rapidly and Amazon continues to grow its addressable market by entering new verticals, we continue to view Amazon Web Services as the more material driver of the company given its leadership in the vast and growing cloud infrastructure market and potential to compete in application software in the years to come.”

RiverPark Advisors is also bullish on Amazon. Here is what they said in their 2020 Q3 investor letter:

“Amazon: AMZN shares were a top contributor as the company again announced impressive quarterly results. Driven by the effects of the pandemic, AMZN’s year-over-year revenue growth accelerated to 40% in the second quarter, up from 26% growth for the first quarter. North American retail sales grew 43% to $55 billion, International retail sales grew 38% to $23 billion, Amazon Web Services revenue grew 29% in 2Q to $11 billion, and Amazon’s Other category, mostly driven by ad sales, grew 41% to $4 billion. With the continued acceleration in ecommerce and cloud computing adoption, management forecasted continued robust revenue growth for its third quarter, implying upwards of 33% year-over-year growth.

For the trailing twelve months, Amazon’s free cash flow grew 27% to $32 billion or $62 per share (up from $47 in the first quarter). We believe that Amazon’s revenue can grow from its TTM $322 billion to more than $800 billion annually, with free cash flow exceeding $150 per share by the end of 2025.”

3. Comcast Corporation (CMCSA)

Comcast is the third largest stock in Eagle Capital’s 13F portfolio despite the fact that the fund selling 6% of position during Q3. Eagle Capital initiated its position in the stock in Q4 of 2015. The company recently received four Emmy® Awards for innovation, advertising delivery, and technological development from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). It also has made a multi-year deal with World Wrestling Entertainment for its Peacock streaming video service. Here is what Longleaf Partners said about the stock in its 2020 Q3 investor letter:

“Comcast (18%, 0.83%), the cable and entertainment company, added to the strong absolute results in the quarter. Cable delivered one of its best quarters of net subscriber additions ever and grew EBITDA 5.5%, while losses from closed small business customers have moderated during reopening from the COVID lockdown. Sky, the European TV and broadband business acquired in 2018, retained subscribers at a high rate despite the extended absence of live sports. CEO Brian Roberts stated that Sky remains on pace to double its EBITDA over the next several years. Comcast’s new Peacock streaming service and Universal theme parks are ramping up revenues gradually, presenting more opportunities for Comcast to improve earnings significantly over the next several years. Despite the double-digit returns in the quarter, the company remains discounted. We were encouraged by Roberts’s statement in the quarter that he was committed to repurchasing shares again in the near future.”

2. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)

Alphabet is the second largest position in Eagle Capital’s portfolio, accounting for 8.02% of its 13F portfolio. Alphabet is another value stock perceived as a growth stock by most investors. We believe its earnings multiples will inch higher and higher as more value investors realize the upside potential and flock into the stock. Here is what Wedgewood Partners said about Google in its 2020 Q4 letter:

“Alphabet’s core Google revenues grew +9% during the quarter, a meaningful acceleration from the -8% decline during the COVID-19-impacted second quarter. The Google unit also unexpectedly showed some modest expense leverage after several quarters of heavy reinvestment, driving double-digit earnings growth at Alphabet. We would not be surprised if that leverage is short-lived. However, Alphabet continues to meaningfully under-earn relative to its potential, and we welcome any effort that brings forward, or at least highlights, the Company’s pent-up earnings power. On the latter score, Alphabet announced it will be providing more detailed operating segment profit data in the coming year.”

Not every fund manager is bullish on Alphabet though. Nelson Roberts Investment Advisors reduced its position in GOOGL:

“We trimmed our position in Alphabet Inc. to a market weight as we noted elevated risks for the company. Aside from the increasing regulatory threats, we reduced our portfolio’s total exposure to the five largest stocks in the S&P due to concerns about market concentration. Alphabet also has large exposures to travel and leisure customers that have been impacted by the shutdowns due to COVID-19.”

1. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)

Microsoft is the largest holding of the Eagle Capital and also a long-running investment. Eagle Capital first owned the stock in Q1 2004. Currently, Eagle Capital holds 0.1628% ownership of the company, which is 9.29% of its overall portfolio.

Microsoft’s stock prices underperformed at the beginning of 2020 and dropped from $185 to $137 during the March crash. That was a buying opportunity as Microsoft shares currently trade at $234. Here is what Wedgewood Partners said about Microsoft recently:

“Microsoft continued to generate solid double-digit top-line, and operating earnings growth. The Company’s all-encompassing portfolio of “hybrid” cloud solutions is compelling for customers as IT organizations vacillate between on-premises and off-premises (and then likely on-premises again). For example, Microsoft 365 has added an array of features to make remote work easier, yet, as customer applications grow in compute intensity, those customers’ on-premises and edge computing topologies retain or grow in importance. Microsoft’s strategic pivot to be more customer-friendly and collaborative will sustain its growth and returns for several more years so we are happy with our position.”