Julian Robertson is an iconic hedge fund manager who started Tiger Management in 1980. Not only is he famous for his own hedge fund, but he also seeded a large number of other funds which were run by his former employees known as “Tiger Cubs”. These Tiger funds today collectively have assets under management of more than 100 billion dollars, though 2016 has been a difficult one in terms of performance for many of these giant funds. Tiger Management had a 13F portfolio value of $551 million at the end of December with its top 10 holdings accounting for more than 60% of its total portfolio value. Robertson is heavily bullish on the IT and healthcare sectors. The technology heavy NASDAQ has been on a roll and many of Robertson’s tech picks have done exceedingly well.
The filing also showed that Tiger Management initiated eight new stakes and closed two positions, including the one in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE:BMY) during the quarter ended December. In the article below, we will discuss some of the fund’s top tech picks, including Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), Autodesk Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Don’t miss our list of 140 biggest and most famous Activist Hedge Funds, for further reading.
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During the fourth quarter, Tiger Management increased its stake in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Class C stock by 34% to 45,193 shares worth $34.88 million during the fourth quarter. Tiger cub and billionaire Chase Coleman‘s Tiger Global Management cut its position in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Class C stock by 93,377 shares over the quarter and held 190,500 shares at the end of December. Despite the sharp stock price increase, analysts continue to be extremely bullish on the stock. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) high-speed internet business, Google Fiber, recently announced major changes with a new CEO and a new business strategy to focus on providing Internet through wireless services instead of underground fiber-optic cables. At the end of the fourth quarter, 126 funds from our database held shares worth $12.74 billion in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Class C stock, versus 134 funds and $14.22 billion, respectively, a quarter earlier.
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Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) was another technology stock where Tiger Management increased its stake by 86,135 shares to 283,635 shares worth $32.6 million, which makes it the sixth-largest holding in the fund’s 13F portfolio. Another Tiger cub, Andreas Halvorsen‘s Viking Global Investors, bought an additional 228,753 shares of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) and held 18.98 million shares at the end of the fourth quarter. Besides its extremely popular social media website, the company also a number of other assets such as Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus. For the latest fourth quarter, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) reported an earnings of $1.41 a share on revenues of $8.8 billion, beating analyst earnings estimate of $1.31 a share on revenues of of $8.5 billion. Revenues were driven by increasing mobile video ad revenue. According to our database, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) was the most popular stock among hedge funds at the end of 2016, but the number of funds long the stock decreased by three to 146 during the fourth quarter.
