Hedge Fund Hawkins Capital’s Top Stock Picks Include Intel

The fund also liked Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) with a position of 5.4 million shares. Intel had made our list of the ten tech stocks hedge funds were crazy about in Q3 (see the full top ten list). Intel trades at 10 times earnings, whether we use trailing earnings figures or analyst expectations for 2014. The stock is down 22% in the last year as investors worry about the PC ecosystem, where much of Intel’s product revenue comes from. We’d note that once again Hawkins has picked a stock which pays a dividend yield of over 4%. Even with the risks of its business the pricing might make Intel at least somewhat appealing.

Aon PLC (NYSE:AON), an $18 billion market cap insurance broker, was another of Hawkins’ favorite stocks. While the trailing P/E is 19, Aon did experience a 10% increase in net income in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to the same period in the previous year and analyst expectations for continued growth bring the forward P/E down to 11. Of course, we wouldn’t take those projections at face value. Glenview Capital, managed by Larry Robbins, was buying the stock in the third quarter of last year (check out more stocks Glenview was buying).

Hawkins rounded out its five largest holdings with 1.2 million shares of Ace Limited (NYSE:ACE). Ace is a property and casualty insurance company with a market capitalization of $29 billion. Ace’s trailing P/E is 11, which we would say is in line with the low earnings growth it reported in its most recent quarter compared to Q4 2011. Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group increased its own stake in Ace between July and September to a total of 1.6 million shares (research more stocks Griffin liked).

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