Standard Pacific Capital is a medium-sized hedge fund headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Douglas Dillard and Raj D. Venkatesan, both graduates of Harvard Business School, founded Standard Pacific in 1995. The long/short fund has an equity portfolio of around $123.38 million as of the end of March. The recent 13F filing displayed the fund’s focus on consumer discretionary, information technology and materials sectors. Standard Pacific Capital’s tops are: KAR Auction Services Inc (NYSE:KAR), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) and Interface, Inc. (NASDAQ:TILE).
After the end of each round of 13F filings we gather the data in order to identify the most popular stocks among a pool of over 700 investors. Our research showed, that despite a popular belief, most popular stocks among these funds, which are mostly represented by large and mega-cap stocks, underperformed the market by an average of 7.0 basis points per month in our backtests. On the other hand, imitating a portfolio of 15 most popular small-cap ideas of the same investors managed to beat Mr. Market by nearly 1.0 percentage points per month in backtests and generated returns of over 130% in the last 2.5 years, versus some 57% for the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (read more details here).
During the first quarter, Douglas Dillard and Raj D. Venkatesan cut their stake in KAR Auction Services Inc (NYSE:KAR) by 41%. Nevertheless, the amount of 331,259 shares, valued at $12.57 million represents the biggest position, representing 10.18% of the hedge fund’s 13F portfolio. KAR Auction Services Inc (NYSE:KAR) is a specialty retail company that offers a wide range of services, from used-car auctions to financial and logistical support to wholesale-used car sellers and buyers in the retail-auto industry. For the first quarter of 2015, KAR Auction Services Inc (NYSE:KAR) posted revenue of $632.4 million, up by 8% on the year, and its net income surged by 163% to $54.5 million. Another shareholder of KAR Auction Services Inc (NYSE:KAR) is Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors, holding 460,400 shares as of the end of March.
The hedge fund cut its stake in Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) by 105,600 shares, reporting in the latest 13F a total of 79,586 shares, valued at $6.54 million. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has revealed an annual 40% increase in revenues to $3.54 billion for the first quarter, which came slightly below the expectations. Nevertheless, the company posted a significant increase in mobile ad revenue, which was one of the highlights of its financial report. As of the end of 2014, Lone Pine Capital, run by Stephen Mandel and David E. Shaw’s fund disclosed the largest stakes in Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) among the funds we track.
The third in line is CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF), in which Standard Pacific Capital disclosed a $5.94 million position that contains 20,942 shares. CF Industries Holdings is a $14.83 billion company, which activates in the agro-industrial sector, and produces and distributes nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer products. The company pays a dividend of $1.50 per share, which gives it a yield of 2.00%. Although the company has registered a sharp decrease of 67.5% on the year in net income, to $230.6 million in the first quarter, CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) is still expecting to develop a positive trend in the next quarters, taking into consideration the overall market conditions. Among the funds that we track, D. E. Shaw, John Burbank’s Passport Capital also revealed stakes in CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) in their last 13F filings.
Douglas Dillard and Raj D. Venkatesan cut off their stake in Interface, Inc. (NASDAQ:TILE) by 156,504 shares to 284,896 shares, valued at $5.92 million. Interface, Inc. (NASDAQ:TILE) is a global leader manufacturer of modular carpet with a market cap of $1.47 billion, whose stock jumped by 34% since the beginning of the year. Including currency fluctuations, the company has had an increase of 8.2% on the year in sales to $236.9 million for the first quarter and a net income of $12.3 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, compared to $4.0 million, or $0.06 per diluted share posted a year earlier. Aside from Standard Pacific, among other shareholders of Interface, Inc. (NASDAQ:TILE) are Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates.
Disclosure: none
