Apple Inc. (AAPL): Billionaire David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management Sold It, Still Likes Airlines

Metlife. Appaloosa did buy a significant number of shares of Metlife Inc (NYSE:MET) between January and March, increasing its holdings from 3.4 million shares to 4.6 million. The $47 billion market cap life insurer’s revenue grew by 9% in the first quarter of 2013 versus a year earlier, and the company beat adjusted earnings estimates as it had done in the previous few quarters as well. Like AIG, it trades at considerably less than the book value of its equity; in addition, the forward P/E looks low at 8. Renaissance Technologies, founded by billionaire Jim Simons, owned 5.5 million shares at the end of 2012 (see Renaissance’s stock picks).

Metlife looks like a prospective target for value investors as well, though analyst targets do look to be quite a bit higher than what the company has done on a trailing basis. We of course understand the mindset of any investors who would completely rule out airlines, and certainly some of any inherent value opportunity there has already been captured, but the industry is still worthy of further research in our view. The same is true for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and AIG: the former has been struggling recently but has a sizable cash hoard (and has very low expectations from the market) while we’ve mentioned AIG’s upside potential given where it is trading relative to book value.

Disclosure: I own no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.