Sandy Nairn’s Latest Stock Picks Include Google Inc (GOOG)

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Edinburgh Partners has about $13 billion under management, and while the fund is based in Scotland it does make substantial investments in U.S. stocks (it also has an office in New York). The fund, which is managed by Sandy Nairn, tends to be less diversified than many other hedge funds; it only reports significant positions in between 10 and 15 stocks in its 13F filings. These filings reveal some of its long equity holdings and can serve as a source of ideas that investors can consider further before deciding whether or not each is a good fit for their own portfolio. Read on for a quick look at the five largest positions Edinburgh reported on its most recent 13F, for the end of December, and compare them to previous filings.

Sandy Nairn

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) was Edinburgh’s top pick with the fund reporting a position of almost 12 million shares at the beginning of 2013. Cisco was also one of billionaire Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management’s favorite stocks according to that fund’s recently released 13F (check out the rest of Fisher’s latest stock picks). The stock trades at 13 times trailing earnings, despite 18% earnings growth in its most recent quarterly report compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year; revenue growth was lower, but still moderate. We think that Cisco could be a value play.

The fund reported owning about 300,000 shares of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), down from about 340,000 three months earlier (Edinburgh seems to have generally reduced its equities exposure during Q4). Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) had been the second most popular stock among hedge funds in the third quarter of 2012 (see the full top ten list), and the stock trades at 16 times consensus earnings for 2013 as both the sell-side and the market expects high earnings growth. We think that investors should wait for more quarterly data from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) to get a better picture of how much it is benefitting from the Motorola Mobility acquisition.

The fund had a large position in another big tech stock:

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