Jacob Rothschild’s RIT Capital Partners has filed its 13F for the reporting period as of the end of the first quarter of 2015. The fund manager has offered investment services since it was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1988. The investment trust has a current equity portfolio of $208.37 million as of the reporting period. Materials, industrials, energy, and information technology are the primary investment sectors of the fund. RIT Capital Partners has a concentrated portfolio consisting of just 10 stocks, with the fund adding two new stocks in the first quarter of 2015, one of which was in eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY).
Hedge funds and other wealthy money managers like Rothschild prefer to have the largest amounts of their capital invested in large and mega-cap stocks because these companies allow for much greater capital allocation, which is important taking into account that the global hedge fund industry has swollen to nearly $3.0 trillion. That’s why if we take a look at the most popular stocks among funds (we track more than 700 in our database), we won’t find any mid- or small-cap stocks there. However, our backtests of hedge funds’ equity portfolios between 1999 and 2012 revealed that the 50 most popular stocks among hedge funds underperformed the market by 7 basis points per month. On the other hand, we found that hedge fund expertise had a significant impact on their ability to generate alpha from their small-cap picks. This was confirmed through backtesting and in forward tests of our small-cap strategy since August 2012. The strategy, which involves imitating the 15 most popular small-cap picks among hedge funds managed to provide gains of more than 137%, beating the broader market by over 82 percentage points through the end of March (see the details).
United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX) is the largest stock holding of RIT Capital through a holding that is comprised of 476,500 shares with a market value of $55.91 million. The holding accounts for 26.83% of the overall value of the firm’s portfolio. United Technologies offers a versatile group of products and services for various sectors, including the commercial aerospace, defense, and building industries. It was an excellent quarter for United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX) as it reported 20% growth in earnings per share from a year ago, at $1.58, though the company did report net sales of $14.5 billion, which was 1% lower than the previous year’s first quarter. Ken Fisher‘s Fisher Asset Management, along with Citadel Investment Group and Diamond Hill Capital are among the other top investors in United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX).
Antero Resources Corp (NYSE:AR) comes in at number two in terms of the top stock holdings of RIT Capital Partners. The firm owns 1.23 million shares of Antero Resources with a value of $43.49 million. It is the first of two new positions added by the investor during the first quarter. Antero Resources Corp (NYSE:AR) is an oil and natural gas company involved in the extraction of natural gas. Its shares have offered returns of 9.76% year-to-date. The natural gas producer reported adjusted net income of $71 million in the first quarter, a decline of 20% in comparison to the same quarter of 2014. Some of the major investors of Antero Resources Corp (NYSE:AR) include Seth Klarman‘s Baupost Group, Select Equity Group, and Citadel Investment Group.
International Paper Co (NYSE:IP) is the third largest stock investment of Rothschild. It accounts for 12.94% of his firm’s equity portfolio through a position of 486,000 shares of the company valued at $26.97 million. International Paper Co (NYSE:IP) is a paper and packaging company with a current market cap of $22.14 billion. It operates primarily in North America, Latin America, Asia, Russia, Europe, and North Africa. International Paper reported net earnings of $0.74 per share in the first quarter of 2015 against a net loss per share of -$0.21 in the first quarter of 2014. The packaging company reported net sales of $5.51 billion in the first quarter of 2015, which was lower than the sales of the previous year’s first quarter, which were $5.72 billion. Quant funds D E Shaw and Renaissance Technologies are among the largest investors of International Paper Co (NYSE:IP).
eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) comes in at number four in the equity portfolio of RIT Capital Partners, the holding being valued at $24.80 million and being comprised of 430,000 shares. It is the second of two new positions added by the investor during the first quarter of 2015. eBay has offered returns of 2.28% year-to-date and has a current market cap of $71.30 billion. The e-commerce company reported net revenue of $4.44 billion in its first quarter of 2015 against net revenue of $4.26 billion in the year-ago quarter. The PayPal division of eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) reported growth of 18% in its net total payment volume as compared to the first quarter of 2014, at $61 billion. However that division will be spun off into a standalone company later this year. Carl Icahn, who pushed for that spinoff of PayPal, is eBay’s largest shareholder in our database with 46.27 million shares.
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