Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD) does have other things going for it as well, including ranking as the most stable dividend stock, with a dividend that hasn’t been reduced in 28 years. Ackman has had a much greater effect on this particular stock, with his activist involvement leading to the installation of that new CEO. Ackman is the largest shareholder in our database, with exposure of over 18% to the stock, which is up by 1% year-to-date.
JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU) lands in fifth spot in Tilson’s portfolio. The airliner was the only position in his top five which he decreased during the quarter, though he expressed that the fundamentals of the industry are great (he also holds smaller long positions in Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) and American Airlines Group Inc (NASDAQ:AAL)). He also believesJetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU) is finally doing more to appease shareholders and not just its customers.
“The company has historically favored its customers over its shareholders, which can be a good thing of course, but I think it was taken to an extreme. For example, the company had fewer seats in its planes than its competitors, which meant more legroom – but less profit. Now, it’s adding two more rows, which will increase profits materially, yet is still keeping a few rows with extra legroom for passengers who are willing to pay a bit extra for it,” Tilson said.
Those moves have contributed to a huge 2015 thus far for JetBlue, which we ranked late last year as an airline stock to grab before it flew away on the wings of rising shares; it has been doing just that, with shares up by 33% so far in 2015. JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU) had a number of bullish new investors during the fourth quarter, including Will Snellings’ Marianas Fund Management and Carson Yost’s Yost Capital Management.
Value investors like Mr. Tilson spend considerable time and money conducting due diligence on each company they invest in, which makes them the perfect investors to emulate. However, we also know that the returns of hedge funds on the whole have not been good for several years, underperforming the market. We analyzed the historical stock picks of these investors and our research revealed that the small-cap picks of these funds performed far better than their large-cap picks, which is where most of their money is invested and why their performances as a whole have been poor. A portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among funds outperformed the S&P 500 Total Return Index by 95 basis points per month between 1999 and 2012 in backtesting. The exceptional results of this strategy got even better in forward testing after the strategy went live at the end of August 2012. A portfolio consisting of the 15 most popular small-cap stock picks among the funds we track has returned more than 137% and beaten the market by more than 82 percentage points since then, and by 4.6 percentage points in the first quarter of this year (see the details).
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