Halliburton Company (HAL), salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) and Tata Motors Limited (ADR) (TTM): Segantii Capital’s New Favorite Stocks

Simon Sadler‘s Segantii Capital recently filed its 13F form for the reporting period of June 30 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The market value of the fund’s public equity portfolio significantly decreased to $111.84 million from $457.42 million at the end of the first quarter. The energy sector constituted about 47% of this value. During the quarter a few new positions were added that headed the equity portfolio, including stakes in Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL), salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM), and Tata Motors Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TTM).

pumpjack-591934_1280

The Hong Kong-based Segantii Capital was established in 2007 and focuses on investing in Asian securities across global exchanges. The fund employs a catalyst-driven trading strategy relying on the prowess and experience of its investing team. Other strategies employed include relative value, which includes share class arbitrage, and opportunistic events including IPOs, earnings releases, and calendar-driven events. Sadler has more than 20 years of trading experience in Europe and Asia. Prior to Segantii he had worked at managerial positions at HSBC Securities, Deutsche Securities, and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities.

Follow Simon Sadler's Segantii Capital

Why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment? Most investors ignore hedge funds’ moves because as a group their average net returns trailed the market since 2008 by a large margin. Unfortunately, most investors don’t realize that hedge funds are hedged and they also charge an arm and a leg, so they are likely to underperform the market in a bull market. We ignore their short positions and by imitating hedge funds’ stock picks independently, we don’t have to pay them a dime. Our research have shown that hedge funds’ long stock picks generate strong risk adjusted returns. For instance the 15 most popular small-cap stocks outperformed the S&P 500 Index by an average of 95 basis points per month in our back-tests spanning the 1999-2012 period. We have been tracking the performance of these stocks in real-time since the end of August 2012. After all, things change and we need to verify that back-test results aren’t just a statistical fluke. We weren’t proven wrong. These 15 stocks managed to return more than 123% over the last 35 months and outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 65 percentage points (see the details here).

Coming back to the fund’s new additions, the top spot is occupied by Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL). Owning 1.06 million shares valued at $45.42 million, the position represented more than 40% of the fund’s portfolio and was the largest equity holding. Although up by nearly 8.6% year-to-date, Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL)’s stock price has slid by more than 37% over the last 12 months owing to an oil supply glut which has been weighing on the company’s profitability. However, by managing its costs in a more efficient manner Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) has impressed investors. Evidence of this can be seen in the company’s financial results for the second quarter in which it managed to beat both the top and bottom line estimates. Mario Gabelli‘s GAMCO Investors has reported ownership of over 1.86 million shares of Halliburton as of June 30 through Gabelli Funds and GAMCO Investors Inc. 

Next in line is salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM), with the fund owning some 264,900 shares valued at $18.54 million, representing nearly 16.6% of its portfolio. The stock price of Segantii’s second-largest equity holding has appreciated by nearly 20% so far this year, with Brean Capital upgrading the stock last month to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ and setting a price target of $85 on it, which provides an upside of about 20% to the current trading levels. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) recently released 20 new enterprise-targeted apps for Apple Watch which provide a broad range of services, from looking at customer profiles to keeping track of project tasks. Ray Dalio‘s Bridgewater Associates recently revealed a new position in salesforce.com of 96,923 shares in  its own 13F filing.

The third-largest new purchase and fourth-largest overall position for Segantii was Tata Motors Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TTM), as the fund bought about 178,500 shares valued at $6.22 million. The $18.71 billion automotive company, which is heavily reliant on selling Jaguars and Land Rovers in China, has come under significant pressure as the demand for those vehicles continues to dwindle in the face of a slowdown in the Chinese economy. The state-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers expects the growth in car sales to be the slowest since 2011. Tata Motors Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TTM) has had to lower prices in order to compete in this challenging environment and the company expects lower margins to continue through March 2016. In its financial results for the fiscal first quarter of 2016, ending March 31, 2015, the company delivered revenues of ₹610 million ($9.35 million) marking a 6% decrease from the same quarter last year, while EBITDA margin also declined to 16.1 from 18.2 in the same period a year earlier. Profit after-tax dwindled to ₹27.69 million ($420,000) from ₹53 million ($810 million). Ken Fisher‘s Fisher Asset Management is the largest shareholder of Tata Motors Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TTM) among the funds we track that have thus far filed for the June 30 period, as it held some 6.95 million shares valued at $312.96 million as of the end of June.

Disclosure: None