Winton Capital Management is a London-based hedge fund founded in 1997 by David Harding, an MS graduate from University of Cambridge. In the current round of 13F filings, David Harding disclosed an equity portfolio valued at $12.56 billion, with a total of 400 long positions. Winton Capital Management’s portfolio is diversified across sectors with 22% held in technology, 20% – in finance and 19% – in consumer discretionary sectors. In this article we will cover David Harding’s top small-cap holdings in the following companies: GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME), Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE:TCO) and Assurant, Inc. (NYSE:AIZ).
Winton Capital Management is just one of more than 700 hedge funds that we have in our database, whose equity portfolios we collate quarterly as part of our small-cap strategy. Even though most smaller investors believe that tracking 13F filings is a fruitless endeavor because they are filed with a delay of a maximum of 45 days after the end of a calendar quarter, the results of our research prove that is not the case. To be on the safe side, we used a delay of 60 days in our backtests that involved the 13F filings of funds between 1999 and 2012 and we still managed to gain an annual alpha in the double digits. Moreover, since the official launch of our strategy in August 2012, our small-cap strategy has obtained returns of more than 144%, beating the S&P 500 Total Return Index by greater than 84 percentage points (see more details here).
Winton Capital Management boosted its stake in GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME) by more than 100% during the first quarter to 1.50 million shares, with a value of $57.05 million. Earlier this month, the $4.7 billion video game retailer announced an agreement to acquire Geeknet, Inc. at $20.00 per common share, with a total value of $140 million. For the first quarter of the year, the company posted an increase in its diluted EPS by 15.3% on the year to $0.68 on revenue of $2.06 billion, up from $2.0 billion a year earlier.. Other investors that hold large positions in GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME) are Ross Margolies’ Stelliam Investment Management with 3.88 million shares, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates and Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management with 2.25 million shares and 2.00 million shares, respectively.
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In Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE:TCO) David Harding’s hedge fund disclosed a $43.08 million position that contains 558,530 shares, a slightly decrease (1.45%) compared to previous quarter. Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE:TCO) is a self-managed real estate investment trust with a market cap of $4.5 billion and a dividend yield of 3.0%. In March, Taubman Centers announced an increase in its share repurchase program by $250 million to $450 million. Among the funds we track, John Khoury’s Long Pond Capital and Jeffrey Furber’s Aew Capital Management hold large positions in Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE:TCO) as of the end of March.
David Harding’s stake in Assurant, Inc. (NYSE:AIZ), a company providing specialized insurance products and services, is valued at $42.62 million and amasses 694,100 shares. The company reported for the first quarter of 2015, a net income of $50.0 million or $0.71 per diluted EPS, compared to $137.2 million or $1.86 in diluted EPS posted for the same period of 2014. These financial results were primarly affected by the normalization of lender-placed insurance. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management are also prominent investors with large positions in Assurant, Inc. (NYSE:AIZ), disclosing 2.27 million shares and 1.96 million shares respectively.
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