Facebook & Apple Are Among Ken Griffin’s Top Technology Picks

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s fourth quarter financial results were impressive and involved an Earnings per Share (EPS) of $0.45, which beat the estimates by $0.28 and revenues of $29.33 billion, which were 15% higher on a year over basis, fell short of estimates by $340 million.

Citadel held about 9.7 million shares valued at $1.07 billion equivalent of of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) ‘Put’ options. Griffin decreased the stake by 13% during the fourth quarter. The fund also held ‘Call’ options underlying 5.67 million Apple shares valued at $625.79 million. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) held a special event this week in which it announced its partnership with HBO Now service, which provides a great promotion opportunity for Apple TV. Besides launching Apple Watch and a new MacBook with Retina display, which is the company’s thinnest and lightest to date, Tim Cook also announced that sales for the new iPhone 6 in the first quarter will top 50 million units, a 20% increase on a year over year basis.

Billionaire activist investor, Carl Icahn held a stake of 52.76 million Apple shares valued at $5.82 billion, which was also the highest holding among the hedge funds that we track. With a market cap of  $722.53 billion, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is up by nearly 63% during the last 52 weeks.

Derivative position on Priceline Group Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN) was decreased to a Put position equivalent to 666,400 shares valued at $759.84 million at the end of 2014. On the othe hand, Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital held a long position with 1.40 million shares valued at $1.59 billion at the end of 2014. The online travel company is up by about 3.5% year to date. The company made several acquisitions during 2014 including OpenTable.com which has opened up the fast growing mobile reservations arena for Priceline Group Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN). However, Priceline still hasn’t been able to grow in the U.S. market on a rate comparable to Expedia Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE). ‘Name your own price’, Priceline’s platform where buyers make suggestions regarding the price of a product, added 40% to Priceline Group Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN)’s revenues in 2012 but could only contribute with 26% in 2014.

Disclosure: none