Lomas Capital Management is a relatively young asset management firm co-founded in 2012 by Daniel Lascano, Charles LoCastro, and Ronald McIntosh, who all previously worked together for 10 years at the Caxton Equity Group. The fund had an initial capital of $240 million, out of which $200 million was seed money from Reservoir Capital Group while remaining $40 million was provided by its founders. As of December 30, 2016, this New York-based hedge fund had around $560.90 million in assets under management on a discretionary basis. The fund’s Chief Investment Officer is Daniel Lascano, and Ronald McIntosh and Charles LoCastro are Senior Portfolio Managers. Daniel Lascano has 21-year long investment career throughout which he mostly concentrated on the consumer sector. Prior to launching Lomas Capital Management, he worked at AllianceBernstein L.P, and before he joined AllianceBernstein he sharpened his investment knowledge as a Senior Managing Director and Equity Holder at Caxton Associates LP for 12 years. Daniel Lascano was also a part of the asset management division at Morgan Stanley Asset Management where he was Research Assistant, Portfolio Manager, and Vice President. He earned his B.A. in Economics and Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley.
The fund’s investment philosophy is centered around the idea that the highest priority should be given to the companies with the best risk/reward profile and that investment style should be adaptable. Among Lomas Capital Management team are portfolio managers and analysts who all concentrate on specific sectors and conduct a particular research methodology. The fund employs proper analysis of industry fundamentals and issuers within the framework of the current market environment, prior to making an investment. It usually looks for the stocks from consumer, financial, and industrial sectors. Let’s take a look at the performance record this investment strategy has set in the last couple of years.
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For instance, its Lomas Capital Master Fund LP IPO delivered high 25.75% in 2013, followed by 2.84% in 2014, and 4.59% in 2015. Then, in 2016, it lost 2.12%, but came back strong in 2017, generating a return of 15.96%. Last year through October it posted gains of 3.09%. Lomas Capital Master Fund LP IPO’s total return amounted to 59.38%, for a compound annual return of 8.08%, while its worst drawdown was of 6.97%.
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On December 31, 2018, Lomas Capital Management equity portfolio had a market value of $752.37 million, up by 6.60% from one quarter earlier, when it carried a value of $705.73 million. During the quarter, the fund acquired around 13 new positions, while dumping 12 at the same time, after which its 13F portfolio counted 31 long positions. The most valuable position was the one in Facebook, Inc. Common Stock (NASDAQ:FB), and, after the fund had boosted it by 308%, it was worth $56.48 million, on the account of 430,870 shares outstanding, comprising 7.5% of its portfolio. Facebook has a market cap of $474.59 billion, and it is one of the top three of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds in Q4 of 2018. Year-to-date, the company’s stock gained 22.56%, and on March 25th it was trading at $166.29. Its P/E ratio is 21.94. On March 18th, Bank of America restated its ‘Buy’ rating on the stock while also lowering its price target to $187.00 from $205.00, and on the same day Needham & Company LLC downgraded its rating to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ with a price target of $164.62. For the fourth quarter of 2018, Facebook reported total revenue of $16.91 billion and diluted EPS of $2.38, compared to total revenue of $12.97 billion and diluted EPS of $1.44 for the corresponding quarter in a prior year.
Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) was one of 13 companies the fund decided to drop during the fourth quarter, selling its entire stake, which was worth $22.13 million, on the account of 169,629 shares. Lomas Capital also said goodbye to its positions in BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), Momo Inc (NASDAQ:MOMO), and Manulife Financial Corporation (NYSE:MFC). In Black Rock, it held $20.09 million worth a position, on the basis of 42,616 shares, and in Momo Inc its position counted 426,331 shares outstanding, with a value of $18.67 million. The sold out position in Manulife Financial Corporation (MFC) was valued at $17.99 million, on the account of 1.01 million shares.
Click here to read the rest of the article if you want to find out more about Lomas Capital Management’s biggest 4th quarter positions and other interesting investment moves.
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This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
