David Einhorn Sells More Punch Taverns (LON: PUB) ~ market folly

Monday, November 2, 2009

David Einhorn Sells More Punch Taverns (LON: PUB)

A few weeks ago, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) news service announced that David Einhorn's hedge fund Greenlight Capital has reduced its position in Punch Taverns (LON: PUB) from a 3.7% ownership stake down to 2.57%. Unfortunately, this maneuver means that we will no longer be able to see his adjustments with this position as the LSE only requires hedge funds to report their positions in companies when they hold a 3% stake or greater. So, unless Einhorn re-ups his stake in Punch, we won't see anymore movements in this regard. We don't think that will happen as Einhorn has been selling down this position over time. This has been a bit of a crowded trade per se in hedge fund land as noted colleagues D.E. Shaw & Co and Citadel Investment Group also had stakes in Punch. We simply wanted to detail this information for Market Folly readers that enjoy updates regarding various hedge funds' UK positions.

We have tracked Einhorn extensively over the past few weeks at his various investment conference appearances. You can read over his Value Investing Congress presentation where he further presented the case for gold, as well as in his appearance at the Great Investors' Best Ideas symposium. Additionally, Einhorn gave us an update to some of his portfolio positions in his most recent investor letter. All of the above provide great reading and we highly recommend checking them out.

Taken from Google Finance, Punch Taverns is "a pub company in the United Kingdom, with over 8,400 pubs across its leased and managed portfolio. The Company is engaged in the trading activities in the operation of public houses either under the leased model or as directly managed by the Company. The leased model involves the granting of leases to tenants who operate the pub as their own business, paying rent to the Company, purchasing beer and other drinks from it and entering into profit sharing arrangements for income from leisure machines. Pubs that are directly managed involve the employment of a manager to operate each managed pub and the Group receives all revenues generated by the pub and is responsible for costs."

Lastly, make sure to also check out these other resources from Einhorn's Greenlight Capital:

- The Curse of the Triple-A (short the ratings agencies)
- Greenlight stores physical gold


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