Gator Capital Management’s Q1 2019 Investor Letter

Gator Capital Management is a Tampa-based hedge fund, that was launched in 2008 by Derek Pilecki, its current Portfolio Manager. Prior to launching his own fund, Derek was employed at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and earlier at Clover Capital Management. He holds a BA in Economics from Duke University and an MBA with honors in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago. The fund utilizes long-only and long/short investment strategies, mainly investing in small-cap companies. Recently, Gator Capital Management released its Q1 2019 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download below. Among other things in the letter, the fund reported a quarterly return of 19.78%, and its annualized return since inception of 21.74%.

Dear Gator Financial Partner:

We are providing you with Gator Financial Partners, LLC’s (the “Fund” or “GFP”) Q1 2019 investor letter. This letter reviews the Fund’s investment performance for the 1st quarter of 2019, presents our investment thesis on SVB Financial Group, which is the bank holding company for Silicon Valley Bank, and discusses the Fund’s current net exposure and positioning by sub-sector.

Review of Q1 2019 Performance

For the 1st quarter of 2019, we outperformed the Financials sector benchmark and the overall market. The Fund gained 19.78%. Fannie Mae preferred stock, NMI Holdings, OneMain Financial and Syncorawere top contributors to performance. The largest detractors were Bimini Capital Management, Kingstone Companies, UBS Group, and Community Bankers Trust.

You can download a copy of Gator Capital Management’s Q1 2019 Investor Letter here:

20190415-GFP-2019-Q1-Letter