To say that the fund’s performance is impressive could be an understatement, especially if we take into account that David Abrams has only a handful of analysts and office staff while handling around $9 billion in assets. To put this into perspective, another hedge fund of similar assets can easily hire hundreds of staff. Not surprisingly, in spite of a small number of carefully chosen professionals, David Abrams must personally approve all trades. Abrams Capital Mangement is unlevered, meaning it doesn’t make investments with borrowed money, and likes to own an impressive amount of cash. As of August 31, 2017, the fund holds around $9.3 billion in assets under management.
Let’s take a look at the fund’s holdings at the end of the third quarter of 2018.
The fund made a few changes during the third quarter, it has added three new stocks to its equity portfolio and also dumped three positions. The most valuable holding in its portfolio on September 30 was in Shire PLC (NASDAQ:SHPG), which was actually a new position. During the quarter the fund acquired 2.25 million Shire’s shares with a value of $407.34 million. Abrams Capital Management also held a position in the fourth of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds in Q3 of 2018, Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL), which counted 124,117 class A shares, worth $149.82 million.
The second largest position Abrams Capital Management held at the end of the third quarter was in The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU), and the fund actually lowered its stake by 1% to 21.17 million shares valued $403.41 million. The number of smart money investors from our database who were long this stock decreased by one during the quarter, and at the end of it there were 20 bullish hedge funds. Over the past six months, the company’s stock price lost 13%, and it is currently trading at $18.14. The third biggest stake the fund held in O’Reilly Automotive Inc (NASDAQ:ORLY) worth around $306.75 million, counting 883,194 shares, and occupying 8.1% of the fund’s portfolio. Over the past 12 months, the company’s stock gained 34%, and at the moment of writing, it is trading at $331.68. Investors from our table are becoming more interested in this stock, as the number of those with long holdings increased by 3, to 43 investors at the end of the third quarter.
Abrams Capital Management added Camping World Holdings Inc (NYSE:CWH) and Akebia Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AKBA) to its equity portfolio during the third quarter, acquiring 2.33 million shares worth $49.64 million, and 1.12 million shares with a value of $9.88 million, respectively. Year-to-date, CWH stock is down by 66%, now trading at $15.21, and AKBA stock price has lost 42.48%, currently trading at $8.61.
As for the holdings the fund decided to sell completely during the third quarter, they were in these three companies: Group 1 Automotive, Inc. (NYSE:GPI), PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), and Quality Care Properties Inc., which was actually acquired by Welltower Inc. The fund said goodbye to 457,301 GPI’s shares and 3.91 million PCG’s shares, and 7.03 million Quality Care Properties’ shares during Q3 2018.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
