Spencer M. Waxman’s Shannon River Fund Management LLC has filed its 13F with the SEC for the reporting period of March 31. The investment manager has an equity portfolio valued at $871.21 million, with its top ten holdings accounting for 49.55% of its portfolio. Information technology, consumer discretionary, and health care are among the primary investment sectors of Waxman. Among those top ten holdings are Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) and Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO), two of the largest publicly-traded gaming companies in the world. We’ll discuss those stocks as well as Shannon River’s other gaming-related stock pick in this article.
Let’s start with Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), the largest gaming stock in Waxman’s portfolio. Activision is known for publishing games across multiple platforms including personal computers, consoles, and tablets and other mobile devices. The fund manager holds 1.93 million shares of the gaming company with a market value of $43.84 million as of the reporting period. The shares of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) have grown 24.36% year-to-date. It was an excellent first quarter for the game publisher, which surpassed its prior outlook released in February 2015. The publisher of Call of Duty reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.16 for the first quarter of 2015 along with revenues of $703 million. These results were slightly lower than the prior year quarter’s non-GAAP EPS of $0.19 and revenue of $772 million. Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) was also included in Fortune’s list of the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For®.’ Millennium Management, Coatue Management, and Alkeon Capital Management hold large positions in the game publisher.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) comes in at number two in terms of the largest gaming investments made by the fund manager. Waxman owns 1.15 million shares of the console gaming publisher, with a market value of $29.27 million. Shannon River Management did cut its holdings in all three of the gaming stocks featured in this article, including its 45% sell-off of its stake in Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO). The gaming firm is likely to release its fiscal 2015 fourth quarter financial results on May 18, 2015. As per the EPS estimate from Zacks, the company is likely to report an EPS of $0.10 for the quarter. Among other upcoming releases, the 2k Sports division of Take-Two Interactive Software is going to release a new version of WWE 2K15 this spring. David Einhorn, one of the top investors in the world, along with Gotham Asset Management and Impala Asset Management are some of the primary investors of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is the third-largest gaming-related holding of Shannon River. The investment manager has 200,000 shares of the social network company in its equity portfolio with a market value of $16.44 million. Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR®, the company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, makes it a compelling future player in the gaming industry. While talking about the prospects of Oculus Rift in a town hall located at the Menlo Park, California-based headquarter of his company, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that virtual reality is the next big computing platform. He further took a dip into the future and talked about the shrinking size of the virtual reality hardware. In his words, it would be amazing to pack this technology into normal glasses and have people able to share media without carrying their computer everywhere. At the same time, he added that this vision might take up to ten or even 12 years to be realizated. The shares of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) were up by 4% after a JPMorgan analyst, Doug Anmuth, called its April engagement data “impressive.”As per Anmuth, the social network platform is still in the early phases of monetizing its 1.4 billion user base. JPMorgan has a $100 price target for the company, which currently trades at $80.35. Shares of Facebook are up by 2.71% year-to-date. Stephen Mandel‘s Lone Pine Capital, Coatue Management, and Citadel Investment Group maintain significant investments in Facebook Inc.
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