Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up Transocean and More

Royce & Associates, a fund managed by Chuck Royce, now owns 1.1 million shares of Marten Transport, Ltd (NASDAQ:MRTN) giving it just over 5% ownership of the company (see more of Royce’s stock picks). Marten is a trucking company with a focus on time- and/or temperature-sensitive transportation, and gets a sizable portion of its business from transporting food products and chemicals. Revenue and earnings growth have been moderate, and when we look at Marten’s cash flow we see that- partly because of a lack of long term debt- the EV/EBITDA multiple is only 4.1x. This is a fairly low valuation for a trucking company and so we can see why a value investor would want to take a closer look.

Eric Bannasch’s Cadian Capital Management has reported a position of 3.1 million shares in LogMeIn Inc (NASDAQ:LOGM), a software company primarily engaged in remote access functions. Cadian now owns over 12% of the company, after having more than doubled the size of its position from its 13F filing from the end of September (find more stocks the fund owned at that time). Earnings have been up, but this has been due to lower sales and marketing expenses; revenue has actually declined. In addition, we think that the stock may be priced too high for new buyers at 29 times this year’s expected earnings.

Perceptive Advisors, a healthcare focused hedge fund managed by Joseph Edelman, has been adding to its position in Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AEGR), where it was already a major shareholder. The most recent report has the fund at 3.2 million shares. Aegerion is a $690 million market cap (with plenty of dollar volume) development stage pharmaceutical company. As might be expected, it is expected to be unprofitable this year. 13% of the outstanding shares are held short, even though the stock has risen considerably in the last year.

Disclosure: I own no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.