David Atterbury’s Whetstone Capital Advisors’ Top Energy and Technology Bets

Whetstone’s also holds and long position and call options on Williams Companies Inc (NYSE:WMB). The long position saw an increase of 70,800 shares during the first quarter to 321,433 shares valued at $16.26 million. The position of call options was underlying 729,628 shares valued at $37.97 million, a dip of 32,373 shares during the quarter. Williams Companies Inc (NYSE:WMB) is another MLP in the fund’s portfolio. The company completed the merger of its limited partnership, Williams Partners L.P. (NYSE: WPZ) and Access Midstream Partners in February this year to form a leading large-cap Natural Gas Infrastructure-focused MLP. Williams Companies Inc (NYSE:WMB)’s stock is up by nearly 11% year-to-date. Keith Meister‘s Corvex Capital held 41.69 million shares of the company, according to its latest filing.

Moving on to Whetstone’s technology picks we find a newly initiated position in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) of 120,000 shares valued at $5.33 million, representing 1.86% of the fund’s portfolio value. Despite a lack of strength in its search and display businesses, some analysts believe that the guidance that Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) provided for the second quarter is strong and the fact that the core stub, taking out Alibaba’s and Yahoo Japan’s stakes, is currently trading at a negative value provides an enticing investment opportunity. Aside from Whetstone, two other prominent stockholders of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) are D.E Shaw and York Capital Management.

Whetstone acquired an additional 1,100 Class A shares of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) during the first quarter which lifted the total stake to 5,780 shares valued at $3.21 million. The fund also owns Class C shares of the tech giant amounting to 6,780 shares valued at $3.72 million. In an effort to assuage the European Commission, which has been hanging the sword of antitrust violations over Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s neck for quite some time now, the company launched a new Digital News Initiative (DNI). A €150 million ($168 million) fund has been established under the initiative, which with the help of the eight leading European newspapers (in advisory capacity), will be used to promote digital journalism. Boykin Curry’s Eagle Management held about 1.12 million shares of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Class C shares at the end of the fourth quarter.

Disclosure: None