Robert Karr, Joho Capital Boost Holding in Veeco Instruments

Robert Karr‘s hedge fund Joho Capital has boosted its position in Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ:VECO), a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed. Joho currently owns over 2.5 million shares of the company, up from around 941,000 shares reported in its latest 13F. The position is passive by nature and amasses 6.5% of the company’s outstanding stock. At the current share price of Veeco Instruments, the position held by the fund has a value of $79.5 million.

Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ:VECO)

Veeco Instruments is a company engaged in the semiconductors industry, which specializes on manufacturing and selling LED products, hard-disk drives, power and wireless semiconductors, etc. At the beginning of the month, Veeco completed the purchase of Synos Technologies, which produces systems that will help to initiate the production of flexible OLED displays for mobile devices. For the third quarter of the year, Veeco reported a net revenue of $99.3 million, down from $132.7 million in the same period of last year. The company also posted a net loss of $6.0 million, versus an income of $7.7 million in the third quarter of 2012. Since the beginning of the year, the stock of the company returned around 6%, trailing a P/E of 20.2.

According to our records, several hedge funds, aside from Joho, reported holding shares of Veeco Instruments. The largest position is owned by Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, with an ownership of 2.8 million shares; followed by Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, which holds 2.5 million shares. Bain Capital‘s Brookside Capital owns a smaller stake, which contains some 811,700 shares.

Robert Karr, the manager of Joho Capital, is one of the so-called “Tiger Cubs” of the notorious investor Julian Robertson. Karr employs a simplistic approach to picking investment opportunities, focusing on a small concentration of top-notch companies.

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