Billionaire and Tiger Cub Andreas Halvorsen’s Top Stock Picks Include Qualcomm

Danaher Corporation (NYSE:DHR), a $42 billion market cap industrial and medical instruments company, was another of Viking’s favorite stocks as the fund owned over 14 million shares according to its 13F. It’s another stock competing for GARP status, given the fact that it trades at 18 times trailing earnings and that the combination of 6% revenue growth and improved margins pushed net income up 11% in Q4 2012 versus a year earlier. Billionaire Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors was also bullish on Danaher, increasing its position to a total of 2.1 million shares (check out more stocks SAC was buying).

The fund added shares of Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF) and closed December with nearly 14 million shares in its portfolio. Capital One’s stock price hasn’t performed as well in the last year as those of other credit card companies have, though at this point it looks like a good value: the stock posts trailing and forward P/Es of 8. Market leader Visa Inc (NYSE:V), for purposes of comparison, is up 36% from its levels at this point in 2012 but trades at 19 times consensus earnings for the fiscal year ending in September 2014. Lone Pine Capital initiated a position of 4.4 million shares in Capital One; Stephen Mandel, the manager of Lone Pine, is another billionaire Tiger Cub. See what else Mandel was buying.

Rounding out Viking’s top five picks is Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM), which was also one of the names on our list of the most popular tech stocks among hedge funds for the fourth quarter (see the full top ten list). The fund owned over 11 million shares of Qualcomm, up 12% from the beginning of October. At a market capitalization of over $110 billion, Qualcomm is valued at 14 times forward earnings estimates with a five-year PEG ratio of 1. With results from its most recent fiscal quarter looking good, it’s another stock that could be worth further research.

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