Billionaire David Einhorn’s Low P/E Stock Picks Include Apple Inc. (AAPL)

Greenlight was buying Aetna Inc. (NYSE:AET) between October and December as well, and closed 2012 with a total of 6.5 million shares. Aetna trades at 10 times trailing earnings; many health insurers carry low P/Es as investors worry about future government regulations. We’d note that fellow health insurer Cigna Corporation (NYSE:CI), which has a slightly higher trailing P/E, was another top pick in Einhorn’s portfolio. Billionaire John Paulson’s Paulson & Co. initiated a position of 4.5 million shares in Aetna during the fourth quarter of 2012 (check out more stocks Paulson was buying).

Seagate Technology PLC (NYSE:STX) was another of the fund’s top picks. In the fiscal quarter ending in December- the second of its fiscal year- Seagate reported a 13% decline in net income versus a year earlier though revenue was up. In quantitative terms the stock looks quite cheap, at 6 times consensus earnings for the fiscal year ending in June 2014, and the dividend yield is high as well. However, about 10% of the outstanding shares are held short as a number of market players are bearish. Renaissance Technologies, founded by billionaire Jim Simons, was another major holder of Seagate (research more stocks Renaissance likes).

Einhorn and his team owned about 26 million shares of Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX), which is declining as a business (though revenue last quarter was down only slightly compared to the fourth quarter of 2011) and is priced cheaply as a result. Specifically, the trailing and forward P/Es are 10 and 7 respectively; note that this means that the sell-side is expecting net income to rise over the next couple years. Glenview Capital, managed by Larry Robbins, trimmed its stake slightly but still owned over 34 million shares of Xerox at the end of December.

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