Can Kopernik Global Investors’ Top Energy Stock Picks Help It Bag Profits?

David Iben’s Kopernik Global Investors has a public equity portfolio valued at $399.18 million as per its recent 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Iben is a former employee of Jeffery Vinik’s Vinik Asset Management and the investment manager has employed several other employees of Vinik Asset Management at his own fund. The fund manager has a concentrated portfolio, with his primary investments being in the basic materials and energy sectors, while his top ten stock holdings account for 84.14% of his public portfolio. Iben has his largest bets on Cameco Corporation (USA) (NYSE:CCJ), Barrick Gold Corporation (USA) (NYSE:ABX), and Peabody Energy Corporation (NYSE:BTU), while his top three energy investments are in Cameco Corporation (USA) (NYSE:CCJ), Peabody Energy Corporation (NYSE:BTU),  and Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP). It’s these stocks we’ll look at in this article.

Why are we interested in the 13F filings of a select group of hedge funds? We use these filings to determine the top 15 small-cap stocks held by these elite funds based on 16 years of research that showed their top small-cap picks are much more profitable than both their large-cap stocks and the broader market as a whole. These small-cap stocks beat the S&P 500 Total Return Index by an average of nearly one percentage point per month in our backtests, which were conducted over the period of 1999 to 2012. Moreover, since the beginning of forward testing from August 2012, the strategy worked just as our research predicted, outperforming the market every year and returning 142% over the last 32 months, which is more than 83 percentage points higher than the returns of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (see more details).

Cameco Corporation (USA) (NYSE:CCJ) comes in at number one in the list of the top energy sector investments of David Iben. The investment manager has 4.91 million shares of the Canadian power firm, which have a market value of $68.39 million, which includes additional purchases of 1.79 million shares in the quarter ending on March 31. The primary work area of the power corporation involves the mining, refining, fabrication, and sale of Uranium for nuclear power reactors. It has been a rough year for all energy companies including Cameco Corporation (USA) (NYSE:CCJ), whose shares have dropped by 8.05% year-to-date. However, market experts are expecting all the companies dealing Uranium to profit from the upcoming increase in its demand, especially in emerging markets like China and India. Cameco Corporation (USA) (NYSE:CCJ) reported a 35% increase in its quarterly revenue year-over-year to $566 million and a 19% increase in gross profit to $129 million. The Uranium manufacturer has attracted investments from the likes of George Soros’ Soros Fund Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.