Carl Icahn Files 13D's on Tegna, Gannett After Split

Activist investor Carl Icahn has filed a 13D on Gannett (GCI) as well as Tegna (TGNA).  The company recently split into two, with the publishing assets becoming Gannett and the rest of the company listing as Tegna.


Per Google Finance, Tegna is "a media and marketing solutions company. The Company is engaged in providing local content on a range of platforms in the United States. The Company operates through business segments: Broadcasting and Digital. It also provides digital marketing services and Internet-based human resource solutions. Its digital media products and services include search, social media and Website development, among others. The Company offers its services in a range of geographies, demographics and content areas. It provides consumers with the information and entertainment, and connects them to their communities through the platforms, including television stations, desktop, smartphone and tablet products. Its Broadcasting segment includes an independent station group of network affiliates. The Company's Digital business segment includes Cars.com, CareerBuilder, PointRoll and Shoplocal."

Per his 13D filing, Icahn shows a 6.51% ownership stake in Gannett (GCI) with 7,483,683 shares.  Icahn acquired additional shares in connection with the separation.

You can view additional recent portfolio activity from Icahn here.

Delivering Alpha Best Ideas Panel: Cooperman, Chanos, Feldstein & More

CNBC and Institutional Investor's Delivering Alpha Conference is going on today and we wanted to aggregate the highlights.  The "best ideas" panel included Omega Advisors' Leon Cooperman, Kynikos Associates' Jim Chanos, BlueMountain Capital's Andrew Feldstein, Queen Anne's Gate Capital's Kathleen Kelley, and BlackRock's Robert Kapito.

From the conference, we've also posted up the global opportunities panel as well as the chasing yield panel.


Leon Cooperman (Omega Advisors):  He pitched going long US stocks and called them the best house in the financial neighborhood, a tune he has been singing for well over a year.  However, he did make an excellent point that the maximum "pain trade" is going higher as tons of people are sitting on large sums of cash earning nothing. 

As for specific names he likes: Capital One (COF), Express Scripts (ESRX), Halliburton (HAL), Gannett (GCI), Kinder Morgan (KMI), MetLife (MET), Qualcomm (QCOM), Watson Pharma (WPI) and Western Union (WU).  He also likes AIA Group (1299.HK) traded in Hong Kong.

The Omega Advisors founder also continued to bash bonds, saying "buying US bonds right now is like walking in front of a steam roller and picking up dimes.  It's just not a good policy."

As far as the election goes, he thinks that if Romney wins, the market will spike by 150 points, but if Obama wins, it drifts lower. For more from the Omega man, we just posted up Leon Cooperman on 14 attributes that make a good portfolio manager.


Jim Chanos (Kynikos Associates):  The noted short-seller was out again negative on tech companies.  He mainly pitched the bear case on Hewlett Packard (HPQ), calling it a value trap.  We just recently highlighted Chanos' presentation on global value traps where HPQ was highlighted among other names.

He says that "when you lose the paradigm shift, you spend an awful lot of money defending what you have."  He compared HPQ to Eastman Kodak as the company is in declining businesses.

Chanos also touched on how instead of giving cash back to shareholders, companies will make value-destroying acquisitions.  He cited HPQ's buy of Autonomy last year.  The Kynikos man argues that HPQ has overspent on acquisitions and they're hiding research & development expenditures through them.

He's also negative on Dell (DELL) saying that the company finances its subprime customers (financing their revenue growth).  For more on Chanos we just recently posted up his thoughts on the psychology of short selling.


Andrew Feldstein (BlueMountain Capital):  He likes less liquid credit, angling for 8-12% returns over a 3-7 year time horizon.  He says you have to be patient as this opportunity is available due to everyone's obsession with liquidity (i.e. don't put your money here if you don't have an appropriate time horizon).  He mentioned bonds such as Prospect Medical if you can buy and hold.  Feldstein also mentioned he's less excited about legacy distressed assets in Europe.


Kathleen Kelley (Queen Anne's Gate Capital):  Formerly of Tudor and Kingdon, she pitched two ideas: short the British pound (against long US dollar) as well as short platinum, targeting 20-30% moves to the downside.  She wants to be long the USD against the sterling because the USD can be a commodity currency.

She also likes shorting platinum as there's an oversupply due to slowing Euro auto sales.  At the Ira Sohn conference two months ago, Ospraie's Dwight Anderson pitched going short platinum as well (in addition to going long palladium).


Robert Kapito (BlackRock):  He's going for the "income hog" approach by focusing on equity dividend funds, dividend stocks like AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), Merck (MRK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), high yield bond funds (or individual issues from Sprint, Ally) and municipal bonds such as the San Francisco Airport, New Jersey Tolls.  He thinks that default worry surrounding munis is "overrated."


Sources: Notes sent by readers, II's blog, @iimag,  @ldelevingne, @footnoted, @aarontask

For more from Delivering Alpha, head to the global opportunities panel (featuring Richard Perry) as well as the hunt for yield panel (featuring Marc Lasry)

Notes From Invest For Kids Conference: Ackman, Robbins, Whitney, Zell

The Invest For Kids Conference took place last week in Chicago and was a resounding success, raising over $1 million to benefit local children. We wanted to post up a quick summary of the event, including in-depth notes below from the prominent hedge fund managers that presented. Speakers included Bill Ackman (Pershing Square), Larry Robbins (Glenview Capital), Meredith Whitney, and more. Here are some of their latest investment recommendations:

Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management: Instead of doling out equity specific investment advice, Ackman instead turned to real estate. At the conference, he proclaimed his bullishness on the housing market and said to buy single family homes, citing home affordability at its highest level in many years. The low interest rate environment obviously helps this but he cautions rates won't stay low for long. This is the same recommendation as John Paulson who said to buy housing recently as well. Stay tuned next week as we'll examine Ackman's latest portfolio in our newsletter, Hedge Fund Wisdom. For our recent posts on the manager, head to Ackman's potential thesis on JC Penney (JCP).

Meredith Whitney of Whitney Advisory Group: Whitney harped on the issues found on the state and local government level regarding their fiscal problems. In short, she feels that municipalities are in trouble, especially New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan.

William Browder of Hermitage Capital: Browder focused on emerging markets and an inflationary environment. As such, he tossed out Koza Gold as an idea, a miner in Turkey. He cites their cheap valuation and cheap production costs at $320 an ounce. He also recommended Renhe Commercial Holdings, a shopping mall developer in China.

Larry Robbins of Glenview Capital: Robbins has been presenting the case for McKesson (MCK), Express Scripts (ESRX), and Life Technologies (LIFE) as of late. This conference was no different as he again pointed out the attractiveness of each investment. ESRX is well positioned for the generic drug boom in 2012 and Robbins likes their $6 billion in cash. He fancies LIFE due to its valuation and thinks the company should buyback shares. MCK is attractive due to the company's use of cash to accelerate EPS growth. He also cautioned about mortgage put-backs and appears to be short two banks with high exposure there. Head to our Hedge Fund Wisdom newsletter to view the rest of Glenview's portfolio. We also recently detailed how Glenview increased its position in Punch Taverns.

Joshua Friedman of Canyon Partners: Friedman's suggestion was to play the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy but cautions that it's a complex situation, to say the least. More detailed thoughts are found below.

John W. Rogers of Ariel Investments: Rogers offered three ideas: CBS (CBS), Viacom (VIA), and Gannett (GCI), the last of which he likes the best. He believes a natural move for CBS would be to go private later on as Sumner Redston ages. He also believes Redstone could push VIA private as well. Of the two, Rogers says VIA is cheaper and has solid upside. On GCI, Rogers argues that despite the unpopular print media business, he has been buying on the way down. In a sense, this is an economic recovery play as ad sales pick up.

Doug Silverman of Senator Investment Group: Possibly the most telling information from Silverman's presentation was the fact that they had previously focused on credit the past few years but are now focused on value equities. In terms of specific recommendations, Senator likes rental car companies at present. He referenced the bidding war for Dollar Thrifty (DTG) and sees consolidation in the space. Senator owns 6% of Avis Budget (CAR) and then a lot of Hertz (HTZ) shares as well. You can read his detailed thoughts below.


Numerous other speakers presented at the Invest For Kids Conference and we highly recommend reading the full set of notes attached. Embedded below are the notes, courtesy of Simoleon Sense:



You can download a .pdf copy here.

Overall the second annual conference was a resounding success, raising over $1 million to benefit local children. And, the various hedge fund managers that spoke presented some interesting investment ideas.