Was Ahmet Okumus’ Right About His Top Bets?

#2 Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WEB)

– Shares Owned by Okumus Fund Management (as of September 30): 7.23 million

– Value of Holding (as of September 30): $152.52 million

Web.com Group Inc (NASDAQ:WEB) is the only stock in this list in which Okumus Fund Management reduced its stake (by 8%) during the third quarter. Since the end of September, the stock is down by some 21% amid a broader market sell-off and following a data breach reported by the company in August. However, the company said that the data breach affected only 3% of its customer base and resulted in a revenue loss of less than 1%. Following the decline, the stock is currently trading at a forward P/E multiple of 5.5, which makes it very cheap. For the last quarter of 2015, Web.com posted EPS of $0.66, which was better than the $0.63 reported by analysts. Renaissance Technologies is also bullish on Web.com, and reported 438,000 shares in its 13F filing for the fourth quarter.

#1 EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC)

– Shares Owned by Okumus Fund Management (as of September 30): 7.18 million

– Value of Holding (as of September 30): $173.65 million

Okumus Fund Management initiated a large stake in EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) during the third quarter, making the stock its largest equity holding at the end of September. It seems to have been the right call as later in October Dell Inc. announced that it would acquire EMC for $67 billion, which propelled the stock higher. In January, EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) announced that it will lay off a large number of its employees in 2016 to bring its operating costs down. Though there are still some concerns about whether the deal will go through or not, most analysts expect the Dell-EMC merger to get completed by the end of the third quarter of 2016.

Disclosure: None