As reported in a recently filed Schedule 13G form, Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital owns 6.34 million shares in Charter Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR), which represent 5.7% of the company’s outstanding common stock. Subsequently, the hedge fund increased its position in Charter Communications by 3.01 million shares since its most recently-filed 13F with the SEC.
Lone Pine Capital LLC, named for a fabled Dartmouth College pine tree that survived an 1887 lightning strike, is a long/short hedge fund founded by Tiger Cub Stephen Mandel in 1997. The Greenwich-based hedge fund employs thorough fundamental analysis accompanied by a bottom-up stock picking approach. Lone Pine Capital, which was launched with $8 million in capital, currently has $23 billion in assets under management and is among the largest hedge funds in the world. Stephen Mandel had acted as a Senior Managing Director and Consumer Analyst at Tiger Management Corporation prior to launching his own shop in 1997. Furthermore, he also worked as a Mass-Market Retailing Analyst at Goldman Sachs Group and as a Senior Consultant at Mars and Company. Mandel is considered to be one of the most successful of the Tiger Cubs who left the legendary Tiger Management, helmed by Julian Robertson, to start their own funds. Stephen Mandel’s fund has outpaced the S&P 500 index by over 20% since its inception. According to its most recent 13F filing, Lone Pine Capital manages a public equity portfolio of $26.42 billion as of March 31, 2015.
Follow Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital
Let’s first take a step back and analyze how tracking hedge funds can help an everyday investor. Through our research we discovered that a portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap picks of hedge funds beat the S&P 500 Total Return Index by nearly a percentage point per month on average between 1999 and 2012. On the other hand the most popular large-cap picks of hedge funds underperformed the same index by seven basis points per month during the same period. This is likely a surprise to many investors, who think of small-caps as risky, unpredictable stocks and put more faith (and money) in large-cap stocks. In forward tests since August 2012 these top small-cap stocks beat the market by an impressive 81 percentage points, returning over 139% (read the details here). Follow the smart money into only their best investment ideas all while avoiding their high fees.
Charter Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) is a leading broadband communications company and is the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, providing services to over 5.9 million customers in 29 states. The shares of Charter have increased by over 11% year-to-date and might keep rising in the upcoming months. On May 26, Charter Communication announced that it had struck a $55 billion cash-and-stock deal for Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC). The shareholders of Time Warner Cable will receive $195.71 per share, which represents a mere 14% premium on the stock’s closing price on May 22. In turn, Charter Communications will pay out $100 in cash, while the remainder will be given in shares of the new public parent company called “New Charter”, for each outstanding share of Time Warner Cable. Moreover, in addition to spending approximately $78.7 billion to purchase Time Warner Cable, Charter is also set to buy Bright House for $10.4 billion. The combined cable giant will have more than 23 million customers upon the completion of the deals, right behind Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), which has 27 million customers.
