Billionaire David Einhorn’s Ira Sohn Recommendation: Oil States International, Inc. (OIS)

We track quarterly 13F filings from hedge funds and other notable investors, using the included information to help us develop investing strategies; for example, we have found that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds outperform the S&P 500 by an average of 18 percentage points per year. We can see that Greenlight did not own any shares of Oil States International, Inc. (NYSE:OIS) at the beginning of this year; the largest shareholder out of the funds we track was Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, which had about 3 million shares in its portfolio (check out more stocks Royce owned).

Oil States International, Inc. (NYSE:OIS) can be compared to other oilfield equipment and services companies including Superior Energy Services, Inc. (NYSE:SPN) and Weatherford International (NYSE:WFT). Each of these two is valued at 10 times its forward earnings estimates, with PEG ratios well below 1. This shows that Wall Street analysts consider them, as well as Oil States, to be undervalued. Both companies recorded revenue growth last quarter compared to Q1 2012, though in Weatherford International (NYSE:WFT)’s case net income came in considerably lower. We’d note that Oil States carries a small premium, and certainly in the event of spinning out a valuable REIT it could prove undervalued relative to these peers.

Einhorn’s move suggests that investors in Oil States aren’t necessarily dependent on JANA succeeding in its spinout strategy; the company may be undervalued as is, and it’s certainly more comforting to have the billionaire making that argument than the sell-side consensus. We think that Oil States is a good target for future research; it has a very strong best case scenario (the REIT spinout) and it would be well worth looking into if Greenlight is onto something as far as the current organization of the company.

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