Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, a PhD from the University of Michigan, is one of the titans of the hedge fund industry. Druckenmiller, whose net worth is estimated to be $3.1 billion, founded the legendary Duquesne Capital Management LLC in 1981, which today manages between $5 billion and $8 billion in assets. Although the fund is now closed to outside investors, Druckenmiller is still required to issue quarterly 13F filings, given the size of his equity portfolio. In the current round of 13F filings, Druckenmiller revealed an equity portfolio valued at $786.98 million, which contained a total of 28 positions. Duquesne Capital Management LLC has a somewhat diversified portfolio, being 36% invested in the health care sector, 22% in technology and 21% in energy. The fund’s largest stakes are represented by Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), Biogen Inc (NASDAQ:BIIB) and LyondellBasell Industries NV(NYSE:LYB).
Duquesne Capital Management LLC is one of more than 700 hedge funds that we track as part of our small-cap strategy. Our research has shown that a select group of these funds’ top stock picks (their small-cap picks) delivered superior risk-adjusted returns between the year 1999 and 2012. These top 15 small-cap picks delivered an alpha of around 80 basis points per month and beat the market by nearly a percentage point per month on average, while the 50 most popular stocks among hedge funds overall delivered a monthly alpha of just six basis points monthly between 1999 and 2012 and underperformed the market. This small-cap strategy has managed to post gains of over 139% in the last 32 months since we started following it in real-time, outperforming the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by over 80 percentage points (see the details here).
Let’s take a closer look at Stanley Druckenmiller’s top picks. On the first spot is Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), in which Duquesne Capital disclosed a stake of 410,100 shares valued at $76.13 million, which represents 9.67% of the fund’s equity portfolio. While the stake remained unchanged, Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) moved up one spot as Druckenmiller sold off over half of his previous top holding, in Biogen. Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) is a global leader in genomics with a $28.9 billion market cap. For the first quarter of 2015, the company registered strong financial results, including revenue growth of 28% to $538.56 million year-over-year and net income more than doubling to $136.66 million, or $0.92 diluted earnings per share compared to $59.98 million or $0.40 EPS during the first quarter of 2014. The largest investors in Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) among the funds we track are Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global with 8.51 million shares valued at $1.58 billion and Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital with 2.89 million shares.
We move next onto Stanley Druckenmiller’s investment in the global biotechnology company, Biogen Inc (NASDAQ:BIIB), one of the top biotech stocks among billionaires as a whole. Founded in 1978, the company discovers, develops and provides to customers innovative therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune disorders and hemophilia. During the January-March period, Duquesne Capital Management LLC cut its position in Biogen Inc (NASDAQ:BIIB) by 51.31% to 175,000 shares, valued at $73.89 million. In recent days, Biogen Inc (NASDAQ:BIIB) announced that it intends to repurchase up to $5 billion of its common stock, within a period of up to five years. Biogen Inc (NASDAQ:BIIB)’s stock gained 16.49% year-to-date and is up by 35.73% over the last 52 weeks. Samuel Isaly’s Orbimed Advisors and D E Shaw are among the largest investors that own substantial positions in the company as of the end of the first quarter of 2015, holding 1.21 million shares and 912,933 shares, respectively.
Duquesne Capital initiated a new position in LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB) consisting of 716,950 shares valued at $62.95 million, which represents 7.99% of its portfolio. LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB), with a $49.4 billion market cap, is one the world’s leading plastics, chemicals and refining companies. Its products are widely used in construction materials, electronics, automotive components, medical supplies and other domains. For the first quarter of 2015 the chemical company showed an increase in net income of 47.16% to $1.16 million, or $2.41 diluted earnings per share, compared to the same period of 2014. LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB) repurchased 15.7 million shares valued at $1.69 billion, which represents more than 3% of its outstanding shares. Other funds that have large positions in LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB) include Viking Global managed by Andreas Halvorsen with 7.71 million shares, followed by Zach Schreiber’s Point State Capital and the quant fund D. E. Shaw, with 5.96 million shares and 4.98 million shares, respectively.
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