White Brook Capital, an investment management firm, published its first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 25.42% was delivered by the fund for the Q1 of 2021, ahead of its S&P 500 and S&P Midcap 400 benchmarks that delivered a 6.2% and 13.47% returns respectively for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
White Brook Capital, in their Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE: ALK), and shared their insights on the company. Alaska Air Group, Inc. is a SeaTac, Washington-based airline company that currently has an $8.5 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, ALK delivered a 32.85% return, extending its 12-month gains to 103.18%. As of April 27, 2021, the stock closed at $69.08 per share.
Here is what White Brook Capital has to say about Alaska Air Group, Inc. in their Q1 2021 investor letter:
“Despite initiating a position in the fourth quarter, Alaska Airlines Group, Inc (ALK) was sold during the first quarter. The Alaska Airlines investment was envisioned to be a long-term investment, but the stock price appreciated more quickly than expected. Like many other “re-open trades”, the value of the company including its debt now exceeds the value pre-pandemic. For that to be reasonable I’d have to believe:
1) The company/industry had too little debt and by adding debt they’ve better optimized their balance sheet for equity returns while still maintaining downside resiliency;
2) The company/industry’s profitability will be better moving forward than it was pre-pandemic and therefore warrant a higher multiple; and/or
3) The company/industry was significantly mispriced before the pandemic.
The first was true of Alaska Airlines pre-pandemic, but the certainty one can have about the second and third is not high enough to compel continued investment at today’s prices. The intended long-term position turned into a short-term trade with an exceptional IRR.”
Our calculations show that Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE: ALK) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Alaska Air Group, Inc. was in 35 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 34 funds in the third quarter. ALK delivered a 41.41% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
