Billionaire Julian Robertson’s New Stock Picks Include Monsanto Company (MON), McGraw Hill Financial Inc (MHFI)

Page 1 of 2

In May, billionaire Julian Robertson- well known as the founder of Tiger Management and mentor to several “Tiger Cubs” who have since become successful hedge fund managers themselves- filed his 13F for the first quarter of 2013 with the SEC. We track 13F filings from hundreds of hedge funds and notable investors such as Robertson, using the included information to help us develop investing strategies (we have found, for example, that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds outperform the S&P 500 by an average of 18 percentage points per year). It’s also interesting to look back at our database and see which stocks top managers added to their portfolio in the previous quarter, so that investors can do more research on any interesting stocks in this category. Read on for our quick take on Robertson’s five largest new positions from the 13F or see the full list of stocks he reported owning.

H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB) was the legendary investor’s largest new pick, with the filing disclosing ownership of about 850,000 shares. The tax preparation company is expected to report a large percentage increase in earnings per share for the fiscal quarter that ended in April (the fourth of its fiscal year). This is partly due to delayed tax filings from the previous quarter but analysts are also expecting significant organic growth. This would bring the trailing P/E multiple to 18. Billionaire- and Tiger Cub- Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital reported a position of 6.8 million shares as of the end of March (check out Mandel’s stock picks).

TIGER MANAGEMENTRobertson initiated a position of about 410,000 shares in McGraw Hill Financial Inc (NYSE:MHFI), which recently spun out its education (i.e. textbook) unit and now focuses on providing financial information and analysis as the owner of Standard & Poors and Capital IQ. Analyst expectations for 2014 imply a forward P/E of 15, and it’s possible that the company will benefit from being able to focus more on these businesses rather than on the textbook segment as well. Tiger Global Management had just over 3 million shares in its portfolio at the end of Q1 (find Tiger Global’s favorite stocks).

Page 1 of 2