Billionaire George Soros’s High Upside Potential Picks Include Apple Inc. (AAPL)

The 13F showed a 55% increase in holdings of Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) to a total of 9.6 million shares. We are interested in Delta since it would benefit from the industry consolidation resulting from US Airways Group, Inc. (NYSE:LCC)’s acquisition of American Airlines without dealing with integration risk itself. The stock trades at 6 times forward earnings estimates, as the market has much lower expectations than analysts do. Billionaire David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management is bullish on airlines and had over 10 million shares in its portfolio at the end of 2012 (research more stocks Tepper likes).

$1.4 billion market cap patent portfolio manager Acacia Research Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTG) was another of Soros’s picks with the filing disclosing ownership of almost 4 million shares. The stock is down 29% in the last year; while we can see from the forward P/E multiple and PEG ratio that Acacia is expected to grow over the next several years, it’s of course critical for interested investors to become more informed about the status of its patents before considering any moves. Ascend Capital was another fund in our database of filings which reported a position in Acacia.

Soros more than doubled the size of his position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to a total of over 180,000 shares. A number of hedge funds were selling Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) between October and December, which helped pave the way for AIG to rise to the #1 place on our most popular stocks list; Greenlight Capital, managed by billionaire David Einhorn, was one of those actually adding shares (see more stocks Einhorn was buying). Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) trades at only 10 times trailing earnings and has a large cash haul; investors are pricing in a decline in earnings, leaving the company room to beat expectations with even mediocre performance.

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