Leonard A. Potter founded Wildcat Capital Management in 2011 for managing the investment portfolios of David Bonderman’s family and friends. Assets under management (AUM) of the fund is $1.03 billion. The fund filed its most recent 13F for the reporting period of March 31, on May 11. According to this filing the fund held 11 long positions and 13 positions total, with the value of the equity portfolio being $258.06 million. Kite Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:KITE), CoStar Group Inc (NASDAQ:CSGP), MiMedx Group Inc (NASDAQ:MDXG) and LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA) were among the top stock holdings of Wildcat Capital Management at the end of first quarter of 2015.
Most of the picks of Leonard Potter are small-cap companies. We like small-cap companies because our detailed research has shown that small-cap picks of the hedge funds perform much better than their large-cap picks. For our small-cap strategy, we started to determine the favorite 15 small-cap picks of 700+ funds in August 2012. Since we launched this strategy in 2012,we obtained cumulative return of more than 137%, beating the S&P 500 Total Return Index by about 80 percentage points (see the details).
Kite Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:KITE) is the largest stock holding of Wildcat Capital Management. The position in the company consisted of 2.36 million shares valued at $136.01 million, which constituted a hefty 52.71% of the fund’s 13F portfolio as of the end of the first quarter. The position remained unchanged throughout the first quarter. Kite Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:KITE) is a $2.51 billion biotechnology company which produces and sells cancer immunotherapy products. The company has returned 93.97% since its IPO on June 23, 2014. Kite Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:KITE)’s treatment strategy is to use patients’ own cells and harness them to combat the affliction. The company has one product in stage two testing and another in stage one testing, with its other four products planned to enter stage one sometime in 2015. Kite Pharma is aiming for a 2017 launch for its first treatment, should all go according to plan. According to its most recent financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2014, Kite Pharma has a net cash position of $209.30 million and total stockholder equity is $362.59 million. Recently, Marc Better, Vice President of the company, sold 9,000 shares at an average share price of $50.70. George Soros’ Soros Fund Management and Oleg Nodelman’s Ecor1 Capital were other prominent investors of the company at the end of 2014.
CoStar Group Inc (NASDAQ:CSGP) is the second favorite pick of Len Potter. Potter currently holds 291,447 shares valued at $57.66 million at the end of the first quarter. CoStar Group Inc (NASDAQ:CSGP) is a $6.60 billion company which was founded in 1987 to provide commercial real estate information and analytics services and maintains a largest commercial real estate database. CoStar Group Inc (NASDAQ:CSGP) increased its revenue to $575.94 million in 2014 from $251.74 million in 2011. The company also grew its net income to $44.87 million in 2014 from $14.66 million in 2011. Shares of CoStar Group have returned 10.86% since the end of 2014. Mariko Gordon’s Daruma Asset Management is the largest shareholder of the company with its position of 410,687 shares valued at $75.41 million at the end of 2014.
Another major pick of Potter at the end of the first quarter was MiMedx Group Inc (NASDAQ:MDXG), with his position of 1.03 million shares having a value of $10.73 million. Potter increased this position by 88.25% during the first quarter of 2015, though it still ranked well beneath his top two picks in stature. MiMedx Group Inc (NASDAQ:MDXG) is a medical equipment company which has a market cap of $1.04 billion. Recently the company disclosed its first quarter 2015 financial results, posting revenue of $40.77 million compared to $19.56 million in the same quarter during the previous year. Net income during the first quarter was $4.09 million compared to a loss of $0.92 million in the same period of 2014. Charles William Taylor, president and COO of the company, and Roberta McCaw, general counsel and secretary of the company sold 5,989 and 100,000 shares of MiMedx respectively during the first quarter of 2015. Richard Driehaus’ Driehaus Capital and Samuel Isaly’s Orbimed Advisors also hold positions in MiMedx Group Inc (NASDAQ:MDXG).
LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA) is next in Potter’s portfolio, the position ranking fourth with a value of $9.06 million and consisting of 206,647 shares. LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA) is a holding company which provides brokerage and investment advisory services. The company has achieved 12% growth in net advisory assets during the past 12 months. This rate is higher than other publicly traded companies in the industry, which has experienced growth of less than 10% overall. For the first quarter of 2015, LPL recorded revenue of $1.11 billion which is up by 2% from its revenue during the same quarter a year ago. However, LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA) also announced net income that was down by 5% from a year ago to $50.68 million. Bob Peck’s FPR Partners, John Scully’s SPO Advisory Corp, Sharlyn Heslam’s Stockbridge Partners and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group all have positions valued at more than $100 million in LPL Financial Holdings.
Disclosure: None
