Hedge Funds Have Bought Smithfield Foods, Inc. (SFD), Tim Hortons Inc. (USA) (THI) & More

Luxor Capital, managed by Christian Leone and his team, have increased their stake in American Realty Capital Properties Inc (NASDAQ:ARCP) to a total of 17 million shares or over 9% of total shares outstanding. Check out more stocks Luxor owns. American Realty Capital Properties is a real estate investment trust focused on retail and office properties. Due to the nature of REITs, these stocks often pay high dividend yields and there’s no exception here with an annual yield of about 6% at current dividend levels. However, the history of paying dividends is limited and payments might fall in the event of troubles in the real estate market.

Mueller Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MLI) is another stock seeing recent hedge fund buying, with Jeffrey Gates’s Gates Capital Management disclosing ownership of 1.4 million shares (research more stocks Gates likes). The company reported a decline in both revenue and earnings in its most recent quarter compared to the same period in the previous year. After having carried out a large buyback in late 2012, earnings per share for Q1 came in at 93 cents; annualizing that gives a P/E multiple of 14. Still, we’d say that pricing incorporates an expectation that earnings will improve going forward and given current conditions we would avoid the stock.

Rounding out our list of stocks with recent hedge fund buying is $1.8 billion market cap cancer drug company Clovis Oncology Inc (NASDAQ:CLVS). Partner Fund Management owned 1.9 million shares of stock according to a filing. Clovis is unprofitable on a trailing basis, but the stock has risen over 400% in the last year as markets have become more optimistic about its products’ prospects. Still, outside of any acquisition possibilities it will take some time for the business to produce good financial results- Wall Street analysts are forecasting steep losses per share both this year and in 2014.

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