Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Cheap Stock Picks Include Apple Inc. (AAPL)

Griffin and his team reported a position of 2.7 million shares in United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX) at the end of Q1. The industrial technology company, whose products include Otis elevators, Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, and Sikorsky helicopters, trades at 14 times earnings regardless of whether we compare the $87 billion market cap to trailing earnings or consensus forecasts for 2014. Business is up, thanks in part to a recent acquisition, and we’d be interested in taking a closer look at the company- even low growth could make it a good value at this price.

Citadel more than tripled the size of its position in PNC Financial Services (NYSE:PNC) and owned 3.7 million shares according to the filing. PNC is another well liked bank among investors, with its P/B ratio also being slightly above 1. The trailing P/E is 13, even though recent results have been quite good; specifically, net income came in 26% higher last quarter than in the first quarter of 2012. We think that combination of earnings growth and fairly low pricing makes PNC Financial Services (NYSE:PNC) a good candidate for value status.

Griffin has a number of at least somewhat interesting picks here. While The Allstate Corporation (NYSE:ALL) and U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) have not been doing so great recently, they are at least cheap enough to be worth a look or watching for further results, and we’ve mentioned that PNC Financial Services (NYSE:PNC) seems attractive. United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX) would take some work to tease out the effects of acquisitions, but certainly the market seems to have low expectations for the company. As for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), the earnings multiples are certainly low but we do have some concerns on the earnings front. It might best be placed on a watchlist.

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