Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn has been constantly in the news since Donald Trump launched his Presidential campaign. During the campaign, the man who would become POTUS announced that Mr. Icahn – who has been an active supporter of his candidacy from day one – would be among his foremost choices for Treasury Secretary. While Mr. Icahn politely declined that offer, he recently was roped in by the Trump administration as a special adviser on regulatory reform. This decision hasn’t gone well with some of the Senate Democrats including Elizabeth Warren, who are opposing his appointment citing a ‘conflict of interest’. While it won’t be wrong to say that Mr. Icahn, for his part, has benefited immensely from Mr. Trump’s win – both materially and socially – it would perhaps be wrong and too early to assume that he would use his new role to benefit financially, considering that he is an octogenarian, multi-billionaire who has been advocating for corporate reforms for years now.
Coming to the material benefits part, on the day that Mr. Trump was announced as the new President, some media sources reported that Mr. Icahn left the victory party early to bet $1 billion on U.S stocks. The recent 13F filing of Mr. Icahn’s hedge fund Icahn Capital LP, one of the 140 Biggest and Most Famous Activist Hedge Funds, suggests that this was likely true. According to the filing, Icahn Capital LP’s 13F portfolio was worth $22.37 billion at the end of 2016, almost 13% more than the $19.80 billion it was worth at the end of September. The filing also revealed that during the fourth quarter the fund made additional purchases in three stocks, reduced its holding in three stocks and sold its entire stake in one stock. Moreover, at the end of the fourth quarter, Icahn Capital LP’s top-10 equity holdings accounted for over 90% of its portfolio’s value. In this article, we will take a look at some of the major holdings of Icahn Capital LP as of the end of 2016 and will discuss the moves made by the fund during the fourth quarter.
We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively the most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 39.7%, topping the 24.1% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. Insider Monkey’s enhanced small-cap strategy registered gains of more than 45% over the last 12 months and outperformed SPY by more than 30 percentage points in the last 4.5 years (see the details here).
Hertz Global Holdings, Inc (NYSE:HTZ)
– Shares Held By Icahn Capital (as of December 31): 29.26 Million
– Value of Holding (as of December 31): $630.93 Million
During the fourth quarter, Icahn Capital made its most bullish move in Hertz Global Holdings, Inc (NYSE:HTZ), having upped its stake in the company by 126%. Shares of the car rental company have been on a major downtrend since last September and have lost more than 54% of their value in the past six months. The company has been trying to reverse its fortune by making changes to its top management. In December, the company named Kathryn V. Marinello as its incoming CEO, to replace former CEO John Tague in January. Earlier this month, Hertz Global Holdings, Inc (NYSE:HTZ)’s Chief Revenue Officer, Jeffrey Foland, stepped down and the firm hasn’t announced his replacement as of yet. Most analysts who track the stock currently have a ‘Neutral’/’Hold’ rating on it.
Follow Hertz Global Holdings Inc
Follow Hertz Global Holdings Inc
We’ll check out four other prominent positions held by Icahn Capital on the next two pages of this article.
