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.
On the second spot is Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT), a small-cap Actionable Intelligence solutions company, whose stock advanced by 6% since the beginning of the year. Fisher Asset Management holds 838,020 shares of the Verint, with a value of $51.90 million. Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) has a strong client base with more than 10,000 companies and organizations that use its software solutions. For the last fiscal year, the company posted revenue of $1.13 billion, up from $907 million a year earlier, but its EPS declined to $0.53 from $1.01. The largest shareholder of Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) among the funds we track is Eric Bannasch‘s Cadian Capital, which owns 5.28 million shares according to its latest 13F filing.
Fisher also initiated a position in Select Medical Holdings Corporation (NYSE:SEM) during the first quarter, disclosing a $31.77 million stake that contains 2.14 million shares. Select Medical Holdings Corporation (NYSE:SEM) is a healthcare company that owns hospitals and clinics throughout the United States. For the first quarter of 2015, Select Medical posted earnings of $0.27 per share on revenue of around $795 million, versus $0.24 per share and $763 million for the same period of the previous year. Amid these results the company’s stock inched up by 3.60% year-to-date, underperforming the Medical Care industry average of 8.60%. Israel Englander, David Shaw and Chuck Royce are three other billionaire investors with long positions in Select Medical Holdings Corporation (NYSE:SEM).
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