Billionaire Paul Singer’s Latest Stock Picks Include NetApp

National Bank Holdings. The fund initiated a position of 3.8 million shares in National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC), a $960 million market cap holding company whose banks are based in Colorado and in the Kansas City area. National Bank Holdings went public in September 2012, and is down slightly from where it traded shortly after the IPO. Profits are low, despite significant revenue growth last quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. Analyst consensus is for 39 cents per share of earnings this year, which implies a current-year P/E of 47, and then for much higher earnings in 2014. While National Bank Holdings is certainly not a good value in terms of earnings metrics, it does trade at a small discount to book value with a P/B ratio of 0.9.

This indicates that the management of National Bank Holdings is not doing well at monetizing the company’s assets, and we think we would avoid the stock for now. We also think that Compuware’s current price is too high for a value investor, at least until it has executed its moves. Brocade and NetApp seem priced more attractively assuming they can stay in line with analyst expectations, and might be good stocks to watch over the next few months.

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