Qorvo Inc (QRVO), Verint Systems Inc. (VRNT) Among Billionaire Ken Fisher’s Top New Picks

Billionaire Ken Fisher is the Chief Investment Officer and CEO of Fisher Asset Management, a fund with an equity portfolio of $50 billion. However, Fisher is also known for his “Portfolio Strategy” column in Forbes magazine that he has been writing for more than 30 years, and for his books, four of which became New York Times bestsellers. Fisher currently ranks as the 236th richest person in the U.S with a net worth of $2.90 billion. We have already covered Fisher’s largest holdings from his latest 13F filing, which are represented by large and mega-cap companies from the technology, finance and healthcare sectors. In this article, we will take a look at the three largest new positions that Fisher initiated during the first three months of 2015.

The reason we analyze equity portfolios that great investors like Fisher disclose in their quarterly 13F filings is that we can benefit from their stock picking skills, even though the filings come with a delay of up to six weeks. The key is to focus on their small-cap picks, as we determined through a series of backtests for the period from 1999 to 2012. The backtests showed that a portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among several hundred investors managed to beat the market by an average of nearly a percentage point per month. This system also posted strong returns after going live, having gained around 137% in the last 2.5 years, outperforming the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by some 82 percentage points (read more details here).

The largest new position held by Fisher as of the end of March is represented by Qorvo Inc (NASDAQ:QRVO) with a value of $149.75 million, which contains 1.88 million shares. Qorvo Inc (NASDAQ:QRVO) is specialized in the design and manufacturing of broadband and wireless communications, being formed after the merger of TriQuint Semiconductors and RF Micro Devices. Its stock has lost almost 5% since the IPO on January 2. Qorvo Inc (NASDAQ:QRVO) will publish its financial results on Wednesday and analysts are expecting earnings of $0.87 per share and revenue of $623.38 million. However, the company has a high chance to beat the estimates for several reasons, including its exposure to Apple’s iPhone, which enjoyed strong sales in the first quarter. Mr. Fisher was a shareholder of Triquint before the merger with RF Micro Devices.