Ken Griffin Stock Portfolio: Top 5 Stock Picks

1. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 269

Citadel Investment Group’s Stake Value: $1,046,208,000

Ken Griffin’s Citadel Group lifted its stake in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) by 94% in Q3 2022, holding 9.25 million shares worth $1.04 billion, representing 0.23% of the total 13F securities. Griffin has been a long-term position holder in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). 

On November 18, Erste Group analyst Hans Engel downgraded Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) to Hold from Buy. The “outlook for earnings development has deteriorated in recent weeks,” the analyst told investors in a research note. He said Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) recently reported a meaningful weakening of profitability in the retail business.

Among the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey, 269 funds reported owning stakes worth $34.60 billion in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of Q3 2022, compared to 252 funds in the prior quarter worth $30 billion. Jaime Sterne’s Skye Global Management is a prominent stakeholder of the company, with 15.5 million shares valued at $1.75 billion. 

Baron Funds made the following comment about Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q3 2022 investor letter:

“Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is the world’s largest e-commerce retailer and cloud services provider. Shares of Amazon increased 6% in the quarter after the company reported strong results with 7% year-over-year revenue growth driven by 33% growth in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s leading cloud computing service, while guiding for an acceleration in third quarter revenue growth, which is expected to be between 13% and 17% year-over-year. Amazon’s share of e-commerce is roughly 40%, far ahead of competition, yet domestic e-commerce accounted for only 14.5% of total retail sales (according to U.S. Census Bureau data for the second quarter of 2022), implying durable growth opportunities ahead. Internationally, the opportunity remains large as Amazon still has less than a 2% market share of international retail spending. Its advertising share is also only 3% and growing, underpinned by the structural closed-loop systems it enables (merchants know exactly whether their ad dollars resulted in a purchase since they are all done on the Amazon platform), which enables accurate targeting and measurement. Lastly, AWS has a good runway for growth as the industry still represents only 9.5% out of the $4.3 trillion of global IT spending according to Gartner. Areas such as logistics and health care present additional optionality.”

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