Clifton S. Robbins is taking advantage of the recent market sell-off to buy AGCO Corporation (NYSE: AGCO) shares at a low. In a newly-amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Robbins’ fund, Blue Harbour Group, has disclosed an increase in its holding to approximately 6.52 million shares, up from 4.68 million shares reported in its latest 13F filing. As a result, Robbins now has control over 7.5% of the AGCO’s common stock, with the hedge fund industry having mixed sentiments towards the stock.
An avid supporter of activist investing, Clifton Robbins stands out from the likes of Carl Icahn or Bill Ackman with his “friendly” approach to activism. He invests mainly in small- and mid-cap companies, whose management is open to collaboration, and has never engaged in a proxy contest or other aggressive tactics to increase his influence. Blue Harbour Group manages two funds: Blue Harbour Strategic Value Partners, a long/short fund, and the long-only Blue Harbour Active Ownership Partners. At the end of the second quarter, Blue Harbour reported an equity portfolio with a value of $3.42 billion, with 37% of the capital invested in technology stocks, while 25% were pledged to the industrial sector. AGCO Corporation (NYSE:AGCO), the subject of this article, is among the top five holdings of Clifton Robbins, who has increased his stake in the company by 23% during the second quarter. Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) is still his top equity bet, with Blue Harbour holding 10.3 million shares at the end of June. Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM) is one stock Robbins decided to trim exposure to, cutting his stake by 10% to 4.93 million shares, while his investment in BWX Technologies Inc (NYSE:BWXT) has remained unchanged at 10.5 million shares as of June 30.
Follow Clifton S. Robbins's Blue Harbour Group
We don’t just track the latest moves of hedge funds. We are, in fact, more interested in their 13F filings, which we use to determine the top 15 small-cap stocks held by the funds we track. We gather and share this information based on 16 years of research which showed that these 15 most popular small-cap picks have a great potential to outperform the market, beating the S&P 500 Total Return Index by nearly one percentage point per month in backtests, and easily beating the most popular large-cap picks of funds, which nonetheless get the majority of their collective capital. Why pay fees to invest in both the best and worst ideas of a particular hedge fund when you can simply mimic only the very best ideas of the best fund managers on your own? Since the beginning of forward testing in August 2012, the Insider Monkey small-cap strategy has outperformed the market every year, returning 118%, nearly 2.1 times greater returns than the S&P 500 during the same period (see more details).
