We recently published a list of 9 Best Stocks to Buy in 2024 According to Billionaire George Soros. Since Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA) ranks 4th in the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Billionaire George Soros has been one of the most active and divisive figures in the Wall Street. Often a right-wing target, the billionaire handed over the control of his $25 billion empire to his son Alexander Soros last year. The 93 year-old Hungarian American is known as the philosopher investor in the Wall Street, mainly due to his contributions to philosophy and his deep desire to leave his mark in the world of philosophy, which many believe he fulfilled thanks to his General Theory of Reflexivity for capital markets.
George Soros founded Soros Fund Management in 1970. Since its inception through 2010, the fund posted on average a 20% annual rate of return. A Wall Street Journal report earlier this year said that Soros Fund Management has posted a compound annual return of 13.5% over the past three years through June 30, 2023.
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George Soros in his book The New Paradigm of Financial Markets wrote a chapter titled “Autobiography of a Failed Philosopher” in which he talked in detail about how many, including his son and his biographer, started accepting the idea that Soros was a failed philosopher. Soros talks in detail about his childhood, his relationship with his father who at one point, according to Soros, lost all ambition in life and did not amass any wealth. A Jew by birth, Soros decided to come to the UK after the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros’ first interactions with philosophy started when he was impressed by the works of Karl Popper. But Soros’ dreams of creating a career in philosophy could not realize for several reasons, some of which he talks about in his book:
“I would have preferred to stay within the safe walls of academe—I even had a teaching assistant job prospect at the University of Michigan in Kalamazoo, but my grades were not good enough, and I was forced to go out into the real world. After several false starts, I ended up working as an arbitrage trader, first in London and then in New York.* At first I had to forget everything I had learned as a student in order to hold down my job, but eventually my college education came in very useful. In particular, I could apply my theory of reflexivity to establish a disequilibrium scenario or boom-bust pattern for financial markets. The rewarding part came when markets entered what I called far-from-equilibrium territory because that is when the generally accepted equilibrium models broke down.”
For this article we scanned Billionaire Soros’s Soros Fund Management’s Q1 portfolio and chose its top 9 stock picks. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA)
Billionaire George Soros’s Q1’2024 Stake Value: $79,543,576
Billionaire George Soros’s hedge fund owns a $79 million stake in Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA) as of the end of the first quarter of 2024. The billionaire’s fund has been holding on to the stock despite losses. It fell about 36% so far this year. The stock was the biggest detractor for Longleaf Partners Fund, which stated the following regarding Liberty Broadband Corporation (NASDAQ:LBRDA) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Liberty Broadband Corporation (NASDAQ:LBRDA) – Cable and media holding company Liberty Broadband was the top detractor in the quarter. The company’s investment in Charter Communications posted disappointing numbers for key metrics like subscribers and cash flow growth. Other broadband industry players have also produced disappointing results, and has been a “1 step forward, 1 step back” situation over our holding period. We do, however, believe that competitive trends should get better as the year goes on, especially as fixed wireless capacity is not endless. It was encouraging to see Charter increase the pace of share repurchase in the quarter, with a simultaneous uptick in insider buying. Unfortunately, our value has not grown as we thought it would, leading to this investment being a smaller position in the portfolio today.”
Madison Investors Fund also lamented over the stock’s decline in its Q1’2024 letter but said it’s hopeful the company would be able to turnaround:
“Shares in Liberty Broadband Corporation (NASDAQ:LBRDA), a holding company with a large investment in cable operator Charter Communications, took another leg down this quarter as internet subscriber growth turned negative. However, there were also signs in the quarter that competition from fixed wireless internet providers was set to slow; this fact, combined with historically low valuation multiples, keep us optimistic regarding our investment.”
According to data from Yahoo Finance, average analyst price target on LBRDA set by Wall Street is $100, about 94% higher than the stock’s current price of $52.
Overall, Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA) ranks 4th in Insider Monkey’s list of 9 Best Stocks to Buy in 2024 According to Billionaire George Soros. You can visit 9 Best Stocks to Buy in 2024 According to Billionaire George Soros to see other stock picks of Billionaire George Soros. While we acknowledge the potential of Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA) but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.