Tiger Cub Lee Ainslie’s Long Term Picks Include Apple Inc. (AAPL)

Maverick had 8.5 million shares of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) in its portfolio at the end of Q1 of this year. The $15 billion market cap enterprise networking and data storage systems company had its fiscal year end in April. With revenue not increasing by much compared to the previous fiscal year, and costs rising, NetApp recorded a considerable decline in both net income and earnings per share (offsetting the effect of share repurchases). NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) does still have considerable cash on hand, and analysts are optimistic enough about next year that the forward P/E is 13.

Dollar General Corp. (NYSE:DG) rounds out our list of Ainslie’s long term picks. As with other dollar stores and discount retailers, Dollar General has little dependence on the overall economy with a beta of 0.1. While growth has not been high, the company’s reports do show moderate improvements on both top and bottom lines. However, markets seem to be pricing in much better future performance than what the company has done recently as the current stock price makes for 19 times Dollar General’s trailing earnings. That seems a bit pricy given the recent financials.

As a result, it might be better to look at Dollar General Corp. (NYSE:DG)’s peers if an investor is interested in the industry, and the same might be more or less true for NetApp and HCA even with those stocks’ earnings multiples being arguably low as they have struggled recently. Qualcomm looks like it could be a potential “growth at a reasonable price” pick, and while we wouldn’t depend on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s net income actually growing in the near future the current valuation seems to already include some expectation of further declines and so it could be worth keeping an eye on.

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