David Harding‘s Winton Capital disclosed its holdings in publicly traded US stocks in a regulatory filing. The firm disclosed an equity portfolio valued at $12.56 billion at the end of March. The top holdings of Winton Capital are represented by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), Edwards Lifesciences Corp (NYSE:EW), Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) with the investor’s stakes in these companies have been increased significantly over the quarter. Harding founded Winton Capital Management in 1997 with investment capital of $1.6 million. Investing in future markets was firm’s main strategy since its inception until the launch of Winton Evolution Fund, which based on diversified investment strategy, in 2005. After growing very rapidly, nowadays the firm manages more than US$30 billion and employs more than 300 researchers.
We believe that following hedge funds’ holdings is a one of the smartest things a retail investor with a low budget can do. These filings are freely available and disclose hedge funds’ top ideas which are generated after spending millions on research. At Insider Monkey we are following more than 700 hedge funds and we have researching the performance of these hedge funds for a very long time. Our research have shown that the most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds managed to outperform the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2012. We have also been tracking the performance of these stocks in real time since the end of August 2012. These stocks have returned 143.7% through May 15th and beaten the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by over 80 percentage points (see the details here).
Harding’s latest filing disclosed ownership of 1.14 million shares of International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), with a market value of $182.81 million, up by 272% over the quarter. With P/E ratio of 11 the stock trades at a significant discount to other Information Technology Services companies which have an average P/E ratio of 19.0. Other tech giants also have higher valuation multiples than IBM. For example Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) trades at a P/E ratio of 15.92, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) trades at a P/E ratio of 20.06 and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades at a PE of 27.13. Furthermore IBM’s cloud division achieved year over year growth rate of 60% in 2014. There is also one thing which makes International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) very special. Legendary investor Warren Buffett had 79.56 million shares of the company which valued at $12.77 billion at the end of first quarter of 2015. Buffett has increased his position in the company by 2.59 million shares during the first quarter of 2015.
Harding also increased the stake of its second largest equity holding, Edwards Lifesciences Corp (NYSE:EW), by 42% during the first quarter to 991,054 shares valued at $141.19 million. Advanced medical equipment manufacturer has a market cap of $14.13 billion and P/E ratio of 16.26. Shares of Edwards Life sciences Corp (NYSE:EW) returned 483.27% over the past decade which means average yearly return of 19.28%. For the first quarter of 2015 the company reported revenue of $590.30 million which represents growth rate of 12.9% as compared to revenue of $522.4 million for the same quarter in 2014. Excluding foreign exchange losses EW’s sales increased by 21% during the first quarter. Net income has increased to $123.4 million in the first quarter of 2015 from $60.3 million in the first quarter of 2014. David Blood and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management are the major shareholders of the company according to our database.
The third spot was taken by the $42.69 billion health insurance provider, Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM). Harding’s holding increased to 867,502 shares valued at $133.95 million, after buying an additional 347,345 shares of the company during the first quarter. The shares of the company returned 53.5% over the past 12 months like other health insurance companies which benefited from Obamacare. Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM) has a P/E ratio of 16.7 which is less than industry average of 21.2. The company’s net profit margin is 3.64% compared to net profit margin of 3.2% for the industry. Larry Robbins’ Glenview Capital has increased his position in Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM) to 4.89 million shares worth $755.62 million by purchasing 1.30 million shares in the first quarter of 2015.
Last but not least of Harding’s positions in this article is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Winton Capital has bought 413,945 additional shares of Apple and increased its position to 931,261 shares worth $115.88 million at the end of the first quarter. According to recent report of UBS in this week, for the quarter ended with June the demand for iPhone will be 51.1 million units which are higher than the market estimate of 45 million units. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) which owns one of the most profitable businesses ever, continues to be one of the most favorite stock pick of hedge funds. More than 20% of hedge funds have reported an ownership stake in Apple at the end of first quarter of 2015.
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