Billionaire George Soros’s Long Term Stock Picks Include Google Inc (GOOG)

Page 2 of 2

According to the filing, the investing legend was selling Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) between January and March but still had about 540,000 shares in his portfolio. The bank can claim value status in terms of trading at a discount to the book value of its equity (the P/B ratio is 0.8) or if it meets analyst targets as the forward earnings multiple is only 9. Earnings have been doing well at Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C), going by recent reports, though we would note that some other megabanks trade at similar levels with respect to forward estimates.

Soros and his team have been long-term investors in Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), which became one of their largest stock positions by market value in Q1 2013. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) made our list of the ten most popular stocks among hedge funds in the first quarter of this year (check the full top ten list). Revenue grew by over 30% in the first quarter of 2013 versus a year earlier, with earnings growing by 16% as Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) integrates its acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc (NYSE:MMI) and as the core advertising business continues to grow nicely.

Many of these picks are dependent on future earnings growth to justify their current valuations, but are generally worth investigating anyway. Adecoagro SA (NYSE:AGRO)’s recent performance worries us, but if the company can meet analyst expectations it would end up being a good value play and we’d at least be interested in watching for further results. Citi, similarly, is getting close to being a value stock although the same could be said of some other large banks. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a tougher call in our view as we’d have to disentangle the (more or less temporary) growth related to integration from organic improvements in advertising, but certainly its valuation on a forward basis doesn’t seem to account for much growth.

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

Page 2 of 2