Hedge fund heavyweights dumped their stakes in Alibaba during the first quarter after the Chinese e-commerce giant disappointed investors with a revenue miss just a few months after its blockbuster initial public offering.
Dan Loeb’s Third Point sold its entire $1 billion, 10-million share stake in Alibaba, while John Paulson dumped his 1.9 million shares by the end of the first quarter, according to quarterly filings of hedge funds’ stock holdings Friday.
Jamie Dinan’s York Capital sold 2.8 million shares, and PointState Capital, run by alums of Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Capital, sold 1.2 million shares, leaving it with 20,000.
Alibaba’s stock is down 15 percent this year after the revenue miss in January sparked a brutal sell-off. Still, some hedgies — Soros Fund Management, Tiger Global Management, Viking Global Investors and Moore Capital Management — took the opportunity to boost their stakes.
In other big moves:
- Bill Ackman’s
Bill AckmanAP Pershing Square sold almost all of its shares of Actavis, which the hedge fund acquired when the drugmaker’s cash and stock merger with botox maker Allergan was completed in March. Ackman had only $401 million worth of Actavis stock at quarter’s end — about $5 billion less than Allergan’s value at year-end. The activist was unsuccessful in convincing Allergan to merge with Valeant, so he took the Allergan winnings and plowed them into Valeant, where he had a $3.9 million stake at the end of March.
- Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group took a new stake in Pioneer Natural Resources, buying 3.16 million shares to make it one of the energy company’s top holders. Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne family office also took a small a stake in Pioneer.
The company’s shares have been declining in recent weeks, following a take-down presentation by David Einhorn, which called it the “mother fracker” and predicted the entire industry was headed for trouble due to lower oil prices. Pioneer is up 4 percent this year, but still down 11 percent since Einhorn trashed it.
- Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors has sold his 383,790 shares of Apple, a small position. Although Apple is up 17 percent this year, its Apple Pay system is a competitor to one being developed by Monetise, a favorite holding of Cooperman’s.
After energy stocks and Monetise pummeled Cooperman’s portfolio last year, he’s up 5.43 percent through April.
- Einhorn, whose Greenlight Capital is down 2.2 percent for the year, pared his Apple stake by more than 1 million shares and dumped more than 15 million shares of Marvell Technology, a longtime holding. He took a new 9.5 million position in GM and a small stake in Bank of New York Mellon, which is the focus of activist pressure from Mick McGuire of Marcato Capital.
- Paulson also took a $800 million stake in American International Group, which was also a new holding of Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors.