Billionaire and Tiger Cub Andreas Halvorsen’s Top Stock Picks Include Qualcomm

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Andreas Halvorsen co-founded Viking Global in 1999 with two other former members of Tiger Management, the hedge fund run by legendary Julian Robertson. His partners have since left the firm. Viking filed its 13F for the fourth quarter of 2012 in February, disclosing many of its long equity positions as of the end of December. We use 13F filings to research investment strategies- for example, we have found that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds outperform the S&P 500 by 18 percentage points per year on average– as well as to analyze fund managers’ top picks. Read on for our thoughts on Halvorsen’s five largest holdings by market value and compare them to previous filings.

Viking increased its stake in Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX) by 45% and owned nearly 20 million shares at the end of 2012. The entertainment company managed a large percentage increase in earnings last quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, despite revenue being flat. While a continued discrepancy between the two would not be sustainable, Time Warner carries earnings multiples in the teens and might offer “growth at a reasonable price.” Coatue Management, managed by fellow Tiger Cub Philippe Laffont, more than tripled the size of its own position in Time Warner (see Laffont’s stock picks).

Andreas HalvorsenHalvorsen and his team were also buying News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA), likely due to the special situation offered by the breakup of the company. It’s well accepted that spinouts allow management of the newly independent company to better focus on operations, and the breakup of News Corp could create a similar situation. This is why the stock was the most popular consumer services stock among hedge funds (find more consumer services stocks hedge funds loved). We’ve noticed that at a trailing P/E of 17 News Corp is actually about fairly valued as things stand, meaning that not much post-breakup improvement would be required to make it a good value.

See three more stocks Halvorsen was buying, including a popular tech stock:

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