Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Top Consumer Picks Include Starbucks

Accessories designer and retailer Fossil Inc (NASDAQ:FOSL) was another of Cohen’s consumer picks with the 13F disclosing a position of 1.6 million shares. At a market capitalization of $6.3 billion, Fossil carries trailing and forward P/Es of 19 and 15 respectively. While the stock price is down 20% in the last year against a rising market, the company has actually turned in a good financial performance and seems worthy of further investigation. Ricky Sandler’s Eminence Capital added shares of Fossil between October and December and closed 2012 with about 950,000 shares in its portfolio (research more stocks Sandler was buying).

Cohen and his team reported a position of 2.5 million shares in $3.1 billion market cap auto parts company Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC), which provides climate and electronics components. Since demand is tied to the auto market the stock price is highly sensitive to changes in broader market indices, giving it a beta of 2.3. While the trailing earnings multiple is a bit high, the sell-side expects an improved bottom line over the next couple years leading to a forward P/E of 12. JANA Partners, managed by Barry Rosenstein, had 1.9 million shares at the end of the fourth quarter according to its own 13F (check out Rosenstein’s stock picks).

SAC owned 2.6 million shares of Nike, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) at the beginning of January after moving heavily into the stock over the previous three months. Nike is another growth stock, as it trades at 25 times trailing earnings. Its most recent quarterly report- for the fiscal quarter ending in November 2012- showed an 18% decline in earnings compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year though sales were up 7%. Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group increased its stake in Nike to 2.1 million shares (see more stocks Griffin liked). We think that the valuation may be a bit high here as well.

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