How Did Michael Castor’s Picks Play Out in Q4?

#3 Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)

– Shares Owned by Sio Capital (as of September 30): 85,438

– Value of Holding (as of September 30): $7.98 million

Owing mostly to the strong third quarter results (minus the currency headwinds) the company reported on October 13, shares of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) ended fourth quarter up by 10%. Interestingly, while the ownership of the company among funds covered by us decreased by four to 74 during the third quarter, its ownership among billionaire investors covered by us increased by two to 12 during the same period.

Most big healthcare companies are relying on M&A to boost their growth, but Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) has been reluctant to do big M&A deals and it seems it will avoid them in the foreseeable future too. Speaking at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco earlier this month Johnson & Johnson’s CEO, Alex Gorsky, revealed that the company is more interested in doing smaller, value-boosting deals that can help it to lay its hands on early-stage drug candidates. After trading above the $100 mark for over two months, shares of the company have broken below it recently. This moved has pushed Johnson & Johnson’s annual dividend yield to over 3%.

On January 26, Johnson & Johnson reported its financial results for the last quarter of 2015. It delivered EPS of $1.15 on revenue of $17.81 billion, compared to $0.89 and $18.25 billion a year earlier. The results also missed the top and bottom-line estimates of $17.88 billion and $1.42, respectively. One of the main reasons for the decline in sales were currency headwinds, which the company expects to have a smaller effect this year.

With ownership of nearly 10.69 million shares of the company Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management continued to remain its largest shareholder at the end of September among the funds covered by us.