Billionaire Och’s Most Disappointing New Pick (And Two Good Ones)

Daniel Och’s OZ Management has filed its 13F with the SEC for the reporting period of March 31, 2015 and the fund manager reported a public equity portfolio value of $30.85 billion. Daniel Och holds the 150^th spot on Forbes’ list of billionaires with a net worth of $4 billion, mostly attained through managing his fund, which he founded in 1994. OZ Management is among the largest alternative asset managers in the world today, and holds assets worth $48.1 billion under management as of June 2015. Actavis plc (NYSE:ACT), Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD), and Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (USA) (NYSE:CP) are among the major stock investments of the fund manager, but it’s his new picks we’ll be studying during this article. Och initiated positions in 159 new stocks during the first quarter, with the leaders among those being Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), and Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH).

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OZ Management initiated a new position in Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) consisting of 2.46 million shares valued at $311.96 million. The investment manager owns 0.96% of the common shares of the semiconductor device manufacturer, which has witnessed 41.69% growth in its shares year-to-date, though about two-thirds of that was during the first quarter, potentially before Och bought into the stock. Nonetheless, Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) grows with every merger and the recent acquisition of Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM) only continues that trend. Avago and Broadcom announced a definitive merger agreement under which Avago would acquire the latter for $37 billion. After the acquisition, the combined enterprise value of the firm would be $77 billion, with it having expected annual revenues of $15 billion. As per market experts, Avago Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) should initiate large-scale cost-cutting for Broadcom Corp starting with its R&D expenditure. At the same time, the company should divest unproven and unprofitable products in the upcoming years, with a target to increase its operating margins to 40%. Philippe Laffont and Lee Ainslie are among some of the other major stockholders of Avago Technologies.

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is another new stock pick of Daniel Och, who owns 4.50 million shares of the micro-blogging engine with a market value of $223.03 million as of March 31. The social media and news platform is transforming in the hopes of offering a better user experience and increase its user base. One of the recent introductions to Twitter involves its plan to present product pages and product collections over the platform. It is an attempt by Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) to attract more retailers and merchandisers to the platform, with users able to shop by clicking Twitter’s ‘buy’ button. “Project Lighting” is another new addition that will focus on real-time information, and offer images, videos, and tweets covering real-time activities. Twitter will introduce a button to the center of its home screen to switch to the latest real-time events happening around the world. All of these efforts are likely to help Twitter grow its user base and attract more investors/partnerships in the process. JAT Capital Management and Andor Capital Management hold large stakes in Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), which suffered a big second quarter setback after a strong first quarter in which it gained over 30%; it gave all of those gains back in the second quarter.

Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH) comes in at number three in the list of new stock picks of OZ Management, with the fund holding 8.01 million shares valued at $205.50 million. The investment manager’s stake in the chemical product manufacturer represents 4.16% ownership of the company’s outstanding common shares. As per a recent announcement from Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH), the technology service provider will acquire OM Group, Inc. (NYSE:OMG)’s Electronic Chemicals and Photomasks businesses from Apollo Global Management, LLC (NYSE:APO) for $365 million. Platform Specialty believes that the acquisition will help the company save $20 million in synergies over the next two years. The shares of Platform Specialty Products Corp (NYSE:PAH) have grown 13.84% year-to-date and it has an average rating of “Hold” from analysts, with a one-year price target of $31.67, which indicates an upside of 22.59% from its current share price. The chemical product company has attracted investments from major investment managers including Bill Ackman‘s Pershing Square and John Griffin’s Blue Ridge Capital.

Disclosure: None