Greenlight Capital Q3 Letter: New Stakes in HPE, Tempur Sealy, Micron

David Einhorn's hedge fund firm Greenlight Capital returned 6.2% in the third quarter and is now up 3.3% year-to-date.  Their third quarter letter outlines they had average exposure of 118% long and 73% short.

At the end of Q3, Greenlight's top five positions (alphabetical order) were AerCap, Bayer, CONSOL Energy, General Motors, and gold.

New Positions in Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Tempur Sealy, Micron

The letter highlights that they established a few new positions.  First, they entered Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) shares.  They see earnings of $1.40 to $1.70 over the next few years as the company recently sold its outsourced services and software businesses.  They bought at $13.29 per share.

Second, they re-entered a previous holding: Micron Technology (MU).  They feel the DRAM market has improved as have the company's earnings, though think investors are underappreciating the improvements.  They bought around $29.21.

Thirdly, Einhorn's firm entered Tempur Sealy (TPX).  We posted Einhorn's presentation on Tempur Sealy from the GIBI Dallas Conference recently as well.

Other interesting notes: they covered their short of Best Buy (BBY), closed their longs in PVH and Axiare Patrimonio.

Embedded below is Greenlight Capital's Q3 letter:



Credit to ValueWalk who posted it first.

For more hedge fund letters, we also posted up Third Point's Q3 letter here.

Greenlight Capital Q2 Letter: New Toshiba Position

David Einhorn's hedge fund firm Greenlight Capital is out with its second quarter letter.  During the quarter, they lost 4% and thus far for the year are down 2.8% net.  Their average exposure was 111% long and 79% short.

Their five largest longs in alphabetical order are: AerCap (AER), Bayer (Germany: BAYN), CONSOL Energy (CNX), General Motors (GM), and Mylan (MYL).

They also point out short positions in their 'bubble basket' include Amazon (AMZN), athenahealth (ATHN), Netflix (NFLX), and Tesla (TSLA) that have moved against them.

The letter walks through some of their thoughts on each.  While Greenlight is long one auto manufacturer (GM) and short another one via Tesla, they don't do pair trades.

Also, the letter highlights that Greenlight started a new long in Toshiba (Japan: 6502) and outlines their thesis there.

Lastly, they also note they've sold their longs in Altice and Time Warner (TWX), as well as covered their decade-long short position in the credit rating agencies and their short of Mallinckrodt (MNK).

Embedded below is Greenlight Capital's Q2 letter:

 

For more from this manager, be sure to check out Einhorn's presentation on shorting Core Labs.

Greenlight Capital Q2 Letter: Long Chemours (CC)

David Einhorn's hedge fund Greenlight Capital is out with its Q2 letter.  They feel that the 'Brexit' won't be a significant economic event by itself.

Turning to specific stocks, Greenlight outlines its thesis on Chemours (CC), a recent spin-off from DuPont (DD). 

They note, "CC should benefit from the continued recovery of TiO2 prices.  Further, EU regulations are driving adoption of CC's next generation refrigerant Opteon, which should increase fluoroproduts profits.  Lastly, management can reduce costs and shutter unprofitable businesses now that the company is independent of DuPont.  We expect the stock to appreciate as investors refocus on the earnings power of the business, which we think will approach $2.00 in 2017.  Our overall average purchase price is $6.58."

The hedge fund also exited numerous longs during the quarter: Macy's (M), American Capital Agency (AGNC), Baxter (BAX), Oil States International (OIS).

They also covered short positions after the Brexit volatility, including: Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Under Armour (UA), and United Rentals (URI).

At the end of Q2, Greenlight's largest disclosed longs (in alphabetical order) were: AerCap, Apple, CONSOL Energy, General Motors and gold.  Average exposure was 96% long and 69% short.

Greenlight's Q2 letter is embedded below:



H/T ValueWalk


For other recent hedge fund letters, we also posted up Third Point's Q2 letter here.

Greenlight Capital Increases CONSOL Energy Stake

David Einhorn's hedge fund firm Greenlight Capital has filed an amended 13D with the SEC regarding its position in CONSOL Energy (CNX).  Per the filing, Greenlight now owns 12.9% of the company with over 29.6 million shares.

This is up from the 20.5 million shares Greenlight owned at the end of the first quarter. 

An additional Form 4 filed with the SEC by Greenlight indicates that they were buying CNX shares on July 20th, 21st, and 22nd at weighted average prices ranging between $16.3908 to $17.27.

Einhorn isn't the only activist involved in CNX shares, either.  Southeastern Asset Management recently increased its stake to around 21% of the company.  Mason Hawkins' firm would like the company to monetize its E&P portfolio.

In addition to its position in CNX, recently Greenlight also revealed a stake in CNX Coal Resources.

For more from this hedge fund, we recently posted Greenlight's Q2 letter.

Greenlight Capital Discloses CNX Coal Resources Stake

David Einhorn's hedge fund firm Greenlight Capital has filed a 13D with the SEC regarding shares of CNX Coal Resources (CNXC).  Per the filing, Einhorn now owns 47.3% of the company with over 5.48 million shares.

The company recently IPO'd and is a master limited partnership (MLP) formed by CONSOL Energy (CNX).  Einhorn's firm owns a sizable stake in the latter as well.

Greenlight bought CNXS shares in the private placement at $15 and also in the open market at $15.05.

We've highlighted other recent portfolio activity from Greenlight here.

Per Google Finance, CNX Coal Resources is "a producer of thermal coal. The Company is formed by CONSOL Energy Inc. (CONSOL Energy) to manage and develop all of its thermal coal operations in Pennsylvania. Its initial assets include around 20% undivided interest in and operational control over, CONSOL Energy's Pennsylvania mining complex, which consists of around three underground mines and related infrastructure that produce bituminous thermal coal that is sold primarily to electric utilities in the eastern United States. Its Pennsylvania mining complex, which includes the Bailey mine, the Enlow Fork mine and the Harvey mine, has coal reserves. The Company mines its reserves from the Pittsburgh No. 8 Coal Seam, which is a contiguous formation of uniform, thermal coal. The Pennsylvania mining complex includes around 785.6 million tons of coal reserves with an average gross heat content of approximately 13,000 British thermal units per pound and an average sulfur content of around 2.38%."

Jim Chanos' Presentation on Global Value Traps: CNX, PBR, HPQ, CSTR, SAN & FMG

Emailed in from a reader, today we're posting up Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates' presentation entitled 'A Search For Global Value ... Traps!" 

He gave the presentation this past week at the VALUEx Vail conference, an event put on by Vitaliy Katsenelson, a CIO who made our list of top finance people to follow on Twitter.  You can follow Vitaliy on Twitter here.

In Chanos' presentation, the hedge fund manager outlines how investors can separate value stocks from value traps.  He specifies common characteristics of value traps as:

- Cyclical and/or overly dependent on one product

- Hindsight drives expectations

- Marquis management and/or famous investor(s)

- Appears cheap using management's metric

- Accounting issues

This is not the first time we've seen Chanos talk about his focus on value traps as we've posted up how he's been shorting Petrobras and Fortescue.  And in a separate interview he talked about his shorts of Coinstar and Dell.

In his latest presentation, Chanos outlines the bearish and "value trap" thesis associated with the following names:

U.S. shale explosion: Consol Energy (CNX), national oil company: Petrobras (PBR), computing revolution: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), digital distribution: Coinstar (CSTR), troubled national balance sheet: Banco Santander (SAN SM), and  iron ore rush: Fortescue (ASX:FMG).


Embedded below is Chanos' entire presentation with his thesis on each name outlined:




For more on Chanos, yesterday we posted up his bearish China stance as well as an in-depth interview with Columbia Business School.

Analysts' Best Stock Picks For 2011

Raymond James is out with its Analysts Best Picks for 2011 report. We highlighted their picks from 2010 and those performed pretty well with a 22.3% return. In fact, their annual selections have a 10 year average return of 12.4%.

The report details analysis of the fundamentals, growth prospects and risks associated with each stock. They've selected 13 stocks again this year and in alphabetical order, here are the Analysts' Best Stock Picks for 2011:

- Allscripts Healthcare (MDRX)
- Bank of America (BAC)
- CONSOL Energy (CNX)
- Covidien (COV)
- Digital Realty Trust (DLR)
- Equinix (EQIX)
- Halliburton (HAL)
- HealthSouth (HLS)
- Lincoln National (LNC)
- NVIDIA (NVDA)
- Panera Bread (PNRA)
- Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD)
- Stanley Black & Decker (SWK)

There are some pretty familiar names in that bunch and a few prevalent themes. They've included multiple plays in the health space with MDRX, HLS, and COV. Also, technology is represented with two names in NVDA and EQIX. Also, energy/natural resources are abundant via PXD, CNX and HAL. We wanted to highlight a few of their selections below:

Bank of America (BAC): This name is interesting because it was also on the analysts' best picks list for 2010. However, over the course of last year the stock declined. Raymond James sees the price depreciation as further opportunity and is again a buyer of shares this year. Not to mention, some of the largest hedge funds in the game have sizable stakes in BAC, including John Paulson.

Halliburton (HAL): Arguably, the time to buy this name was during the Gulf oil spill when uncertainty abounded and the stock price was depressed. Yet, RJ feels the company will see near-term earnings momentum and a rebound in international activity. We've talked about how hedge funds are betting on higher oil prices as well.

Equinix (EQIX): This tech name is intriguing because it saw some volatility last year. And as we detailed in our Hedge Fund Wisdom newsletter months ago, a large shareholder (Shumway Capital) was reducing its position size and could be partially responsible for the volatility. Raymond James likes the company's dominant market position in the colocation market and data center industry.


Keep in mind that obviously with the market rally, a lot of these names have been bid up significantly already. Some strategists would obviously advocate waiting to purchase some of these names given that they're extended and knowing that the market doesn't go straight up forever. RJ's Chief Investment Strategist Jeff Saut expects a buyable pullback.

Embedded below is the full research on Analysts' Best Picks for 2011:



You can download a .pdf copy here.

For further research from this shop, head to the previous best stock picks for 2010 as well as Jeff Saut's risk management principles.