In a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Christian Leone’s Luxor Capital Group disclosed selling 1.0 million shares of BJ’s Restaurants Inc. (NASDAQ:BJRI) for $50.8 apiece. Following the transaction, Luxor Capital Group owns 2.50 million shares of the company, which represent 9.8% of its outstanding common stock. The sale was made under the terms of a secondary block trade agreement with UBS Securities, which bought the shares from Luxor.
Luxor Capital Group is a New York-based hedge fund, with approximately $3 billion in assets under management, founded by Christian Leone in 2002. The investment firm predominantly invests in special situations, distressed companies and global debt across the public equity and fixed income markets around the world. Luxor employs a value-oriented stock picking approach and manages a concentrated equity portfolio worth $6.19 billion, with the top ten holdings accounting for 66.52% of its entire portfolio. In the meantime, Luxor Capital Group’s top three holdings at the end of the first quarter were represented by: Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. (NYSE:NRF) and Liberty Global plc (NASDAQ:LBTYK).
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Luxor has been activist on BJ’s Restaurants since last year, when it formed an activist group with Patrick Welsh of PW Partners Atlas Fund and Jeffrey C. Neal from Horizon Capital. The group nominated three directors to the board last year and pursued the company to return some capital to shareholders and reduce costs.
BJ’s Restaurants Inc. (NASDAQ:BJRI) currently owns and operates 165 restaurants located in 22 states throughout the US. The company’s stock has declined by over 2% since the beginning of the year. However, it seems that the company has been growing at a high pace lately, with new restaurant openings taking place all around the country.
BJ’s Restaurants expects to open 16 new restaurants by the end this year, excluding five outlets opened during the second quarter of 2015. The company is not paying a dividend and doesn’t not anticipate paying out dividends in the near future either, which means that it will most likely use its earnings to invest in further growth. Just a few weeks ago, BJ’s reported its financial results for the second quarter of this year, and posted a revenue of $232.0 million, up by 5.8% on the year. The increase in revenues was mainly boosted by an increase in comparable restaurant sales and by the sales from new restaurants. At the same time, the company reported earnings per diluted share of $0.47 for the quarter, compared to a $0.02 delivered a year ago.
From the massive pool of over 700 hedge funds that we track, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group is among the largest shareholders of BJ’s Restaurants Inc. (NASDAQ:BJRI) with a stake of 371,320 as of March 31.
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