Hedge Fund Manager John Burbank’s Top 5 Tech Stock Picks

Passport also reported a reduced stake in SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY). The fund reported ownership of 1.25 million shares, down by 2% on the quarter, the value of the stake amounting to $66.78 million. SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) is one of the largest new positions in the equity portfolio of activist investor Barry Rosenstein’s JANA Partners. As of the end of 2014, JANA reported holding 5.16 million shares, valued at $275.16 million. As the solar industry is expected to consolidate in the near future, the investors might be right on the money with betting on solar stocks. In addition, at last year’s Robin Hood Investors Conference, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital said that renewable energy has a lot of opportunities. Greenlight doesn’t own shares of SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY), but during the fourth quarter it raised its stake in Sunedison Inc (NYSE:SUNE) by 17% to 24.95 million shares.

Another tech pick of Passport Capital is security platform company Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW). The fund reported a $61.28 million position in the company that contains close to 500,000 shares, down by 6% on the quarter. As the stock of the company almost doubled in the last 52 weeks, the company has seen an outflow of capital from investors. At the end of 2014, 43 funds among those we track reported holding $793.40 million worth of Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW)’s stock, versus 44 funds with $1.0 billion worth of stock a quarter earlier. Billionaire Israel Englander was one of the many investors that sold shares of Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW) during the October-December period. Englander’s Millennium Management cut its position by 40% to around 221,500 shares.

On the other hand, Hortonworks Inc (NASDAQ:HDP) represents a new position in Passport Capital’s equity portfolio. The fund owned 1.40 million shares worth $37.88 million as of the end of 2014. Hortonworks Inc (NASDAQ:HDP) is a company specialized in the development, distribution and support of the Hadoop open source project from the Apache Software Foundation. The company went public in December, and since it started trading, its stock lost around 11%. Billionaire Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group was another investor that had Hortonworks Inc (NASDAQ:HDP) show up on his radar, as Citadel reported holding some 858,000 shares valued at $23.17 million.

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