Top 5 Stocks Billionaire Mets Owner Steve Cohen Just Added to His Portfolio

4. Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) 

Value of Point72 Asset Management‘s 13F Position: $116 million

Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 79

Cohen is clearly big on semiconductor equipment manufacturers right now, as he also took a large stake in Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) during Q4, buying 739,097 shares. There was a 16% jump in hedge fund ownership of AMAT during the quarter.

Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) achieved very similar growth results as Lam Research during its latest quarter, which represented Q1 of the company’s fiscal year 2022. Applied Materials grew revenue by 21% year-over-year to $6.27 billion, while adjusted earnings jumped by 36% to $1.89 per share. Unlike Lam Research, Applied Materials actually beat estimates and delivered results closer to the higher end of its guidance range, yet it too suffered an investor pullback following the quarterly results. AMAT shares are down by 16% so far in 2022.

Here is what Davis Opportunity Fund had to say about Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) and tech stocks in general in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“Within technology and communication services, we own a number of online businesses and semiconductor related companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, Intel, Applied Materials and Texas Instruments. Within the realm of high technology, we believe that leadership positions reflect enduring and widening competitive advantages over smaller competitors, with few exceptions. This is because online businesses, as well as semiconductor companies, benefit from economies of scale. An online search and advertising engine will, in general, be more profitable per unit of cost as it grows larger in terms of users and advertising dollars. It is a hub-and-spoke model, in other words, where it is generally not necessary to grow expenses at the same rate that revenues grow beyond a certain threshold. Therefore, returns on capital tend to be higher, the larger and more dominant the online search company is.”