Kraft Foods Group Inc (KRFT), Goldcorp Inc. (USA) (GG): Billion-Dollar Hedge Fund Focusing On These Stocks

This was a result of the increase in the amount of sales devoted to the cost of goods sold. The weakness in Edison’s stock price is blamed on the drop in power prices, which ultimately resulted in the bankruptcy filing of Edison Mission. Like Goldcorp Inc. (NYSE:GG), the success of Edison relies on the price of energy. As one goes, so goes the other, but it’s easy to see Carlson’s motivations here.

At number four is Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE: RF). Regions has recently shed its brokerage and investment banking divisions to focus its resources solely on banking. This seems to be the ticket, as Regions is trading less than 1 times its book value, and it also enjoyed a 29% increase in fourth quarter revenue. Carlson Capital owns 9.4 million shares of Regions Financial, and has to be pleased with the way the stock has been trading over the past six months.  Since hitting a low of $6.25 during the fourth quarter of 2012, the stock last traded near the $8.20 mark.

Finally there is Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (NASDAQ:HBAN), which continues to feel the pain from its 2007 acquisition of Sky Financial Group. Huntington attempted to mitigate these losses by writing off a significant amount of bad loans, and recent earnings reports suggest that Huntington may be through the worst of it. For the fourth quarter, revenues are up to $2.7 billion compared to $2.4 billion one quarter earlier. This, at least partially, has helped to improve the bank’s bottom line to $641 million from $542 million. Compared to Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC), Huntington trades at very similar multiples, but does enjoy a much better debt-to-equity ratio. Carlson might consider Huntington a slightly better value at 10 times earnings, as Wells Fargo is trading near a P/E of 11.0x.

From what we can tell by Carlson Capital’s recent purchases, its “trend of focus” appears to be placing a higher preference on value over other philosophies, and the fund also appears to favor banking and energy stocks, both of which are expected to grow in tandem with an improving global economy. Insider Monkey will continue to follow the developments in Carlson Capital, and you can too by bookmarking here.

Disclosure: none