Billionaire Leon Cooperman’s “Best Ideas” Include QUALCOMM, Inc. (QCOM) and More

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), the $31 billion market cap medical instruments and equipment company, was also mentioned as a quality growth stock. There’s significant disagreement with Cooperman here: 11% of the float is held short according to the most recent data. Wall Street analysts expect Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO)’s earnings per share to rise considerably over the next year and a half, resulting in a forward P/E of 15. While recent earnings growth has been high, improvements on the top line have been limited. Billionaire Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital was buying Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO) between January and March (check out Mandel’s stock picks).

One of Cooperman’s “turnaround” picks was natural gas and oil exploration and production company SandRidge Energy Inc. (NYSE:SD), which replaced its controversial CEO earlier this year. SandRidge’s expanding production has caused it problems as natural gas prices remain low- revenue growth has failed to keep pace with rising production volumes – and analyst consensus is that it will not make profits either this year or next year. We think that Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) is worth considering as an alternative for investors who like natural gas long term. Value investor Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial owned more than 32 million shares of the stock as of the beginning of April.

Cooperman’s best ideas also included a number of income names, such as real estate investment trust Chimera Investment Corporation (NYSE:CIM). Real estate investment trusts receive favorable tax status conditional on paying out a large share of taxable income to investors, which often results in high yields. Chimera Investment Corporation (NYSE:CIM) in mortgage-backed securities and other mortgage loans, and with the riskiness of these investments the stock currently pays an annual yield of over 10%. However, quarterly payments were cut about a year ago and were also slashed during the financial crisis, demonstrating that potential income investors shouldn’t consider the high yield to be safe.

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