Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Completely Revamped Top Picks: Visteon Corp (VC), EQT Corporation (EQT), Suncor Energy Inc. (USA) (SU)

Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management has filed its 13F with the SEC for the reporting period of March 31. The fund manager has revamped its top stock investments by introducing a number of new positions and making additional purchases in several existing ones during the first quarter. Point72 is a well-diversified fund, with the consumer discretionary, energy, and finance sectors being slightly more prominent within its holdings than other sectors. It has an equity portfolio valued at $14.67 billion with its top ten stock holdings representing just 16.25% of that overall value. Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC), EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT), Suncor Energy Inc. (USA) (NYSE:SU) and Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) are among the revamped top stock picks of Point72 Asset Management which we’ll discuss in this article.

 Steve Cohen SAC CAPITAL ADVISORS

Professional investors like Cohen spend considerable time and money conducting due diligence on each company they invest in, which makes them the perfect investors to emulate. We analyzed the historical stock picks of these investors and our research revealed that the small-cap picks of these funds performed far better than their large-cap picks, which is where most of their money is invested and why their performances as a whole have been poor. A portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap stocks outperformed the S&P 500 Total Return Index by 95 basis points per month between 1999 and 2012 in backtesting. The exceptional results of this strategy got even better in forward testing after the strategy went live at the end of August 2012, returning more than 139% and beating the market by more than 80 percentage points since then, and by 4.6 percentage points in the first quarter of this year (see the details).

Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC) ranks as the number one long position in the equity portfolio of Cohen, who owns 2.15 million shares of the automotive parts supplier, with a market value of $207.65 million. Cohen increased his stake in Visteon by 79% during the first quarter and the position accounts for 1.41% of his overall portfolio. It was an excellent quarter for Visteon Corp as the company beat the earnings expectations of the market with its reported earnings per share of $1.10, trouncing the consensus estimate of $0.29 per share by Thomson Reuters. At the same time, Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC) reported net sales of $2.03 billion in the first quarter against net sales of $1.72 billion in the year-ago period. The investment from Cohen had paid off thanks to those stellar earnings, vaulting the stock by more than 13% so far in the second quarter. Solus Alternative Asset Management, Iridian Asset Management, and Jim Simons‘ Renaissance Technologies are some of the other investment managers holding major positions in Visteon.

EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT) is one of the new positions in Cohen’s portfolio and his current investment in the natural gas producer includes 2.28 million shares with a market value of $188.96 million. The shares of EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT) have grown 16.79% year-to-date and the company has a market cap of $13.43 billion. One of the subsidiaries of EQT Corp, EQT GP Holdings LP (NYSE:EQGP), started trading on the NYSE last week after offering 26.45 million common shares in its IPO, which represents 9.9% interest in the company. EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT) owns the remaining 90.1% interest in the newly formed company, which offers partnership interests in EQT Midstream Partners, LP. Some of the primary investors of the natural gas company include Citadel Investment Group, Soros Fund Management, and Israel Englander‘s Millennium Management.

Suncor Energy Inc. (USA) (NYSE:SU) is the third-ranked long position in the equity portfolio of Point72 Asset Management. The investment manager owns 6.46 million shares of the Canadian energy company, sporting a market value of $188.91 million. Cohen made an additional purchase of 5.87 million shares of the Canadian oil producer during the quarter. Suncor Energy Inc. (USA) (NYSE:SU) had a rough first quarter primarily because of the fall in crude oil prices which lead to a quarterly loss of CA$341 million (US$279 million) in the first quarter of 2015. Suncor reported operating earnings of CA$175 million (US$143 million) in the first quarter of 2015 against operating earnings of $1.79 billion (US$1.47 billion) in the prior year quarter. As such, the Canadian oil company’s cash flow from operations crumbled to CA$1.48 billion (US$1.21 billion) from CA$2.88 billion (US$2.36 billion) in the year ago quarter. Berkshire Hathaway, Tetrem Capital Management, and Cliff Asness‘ AQR Capital Management hold major investments in the oil producer.

Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) is another holding of Point72 Asset Management’s that it added onto significantly during the first quarter, by 180%. The current position of Cohen amounts to 2.05 million shares with a value of $165.98 million. The discount variety store offers merchandise at a fixed price of $1.00 and its share price has improved 7.86% year-to-date. The retailer is going to report its first quarter earnings on May 21 with Wall Street optimistic about the results, predicting profit of $0.74 per share, which would be 10.45% higher than the per share profit during the same quarter last year. The revenue of Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) is also expected to improve 10% year-over-year to $2.20 billion.

Disclosure: None