Phil Falcone's Harbinger Capital Still Owns Mercer International (MERC)

Philip Falcone's hedge fund firm Harbinger Capital Partners recently filed an amended 13G with the SEC due to activity on April 23rd, 2010. In it, we learn that they own a 6.11% stake in Mercer International (MERC) with 2,228,194 shares. This is the exact same amount of shares they held on December 31st, 2009 when we took a look at Harbinger's portfolio. So, there has been no change in their position. While not as exciting as a 'buy' or 'sell', we just wanted to update you on their 'hold' status since they filed a disclosure.

While Harbinger still owns shares of MERC, we just recently learned that David Einhorn's hedge fund Greenlight Capital recently sold their Mercer stake after holding it for many years so we see a little difference in opinion here. In their letter to investors, Greenlight Capital mentioned that they first purchased their stake in 1997 and sold most of their common shares in 2008. They continued to hold their debt position and Einhorn's fund just sold this in the first quarter. Greenlight said they were, "happy to move on."

Taken from Google Finance, Mercer International is "a producer of market northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK), pulp in the world. The Company operates in the pulp business. It is a kraft pulp producer, and producer of pulp for resale, known as market pulp, in Germany."

If you've been following all of our coverage regarding Harbinger Capital Partners, you know it's been a bit of a zoo in terms of SEC filings. Falcone's fund recently sold New York Times shares (NYT), started a stake in Palm (PALM) and the hedge fund also interestingly planned a 4G wireless network. We'll continue to keep you updated on all their disclosed activity.

Hedge Fund Harbinger Capital Adds Convertible Bonds

Philip Falcone's hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners has filed an amended 13G with the SEC on shares of Mercer International (MERC). In the filing, we learn that Harbinger has a 10.94% ownership stake in MERC with 4,201,527 shares. Do note that this total includes shares they are eligible to obtain upon the conversion of convertible bonds. As per their last 13F filing which detailed positions as of September 30th, 2009, Harbinger previously owned 1,995,100 shares of Mercer. So, we see that they have added 1,973,333 shares via exposure through convertible bonds somewhere over the past four months. Digging into their separately filed SEC Form 3, we discover that Harbinger purchased the 8.5% convertible notes due in October 2012.

In terms of other recent activity out of Harbinger, we saw that they have been selling Calpine (CPN) and in early January we covered Harbinger's three new positions. After having a dismal 2008, Harbinger had a great showing last year as they finished up 46.5% as we noted in our 2009 hedge fund performance numbers post. Falcone runs a series of hedge funds focused on distressed plays and concentrated equity positions.

Taken from Google Finance, Mercer International "operates in the pulp business and is a producer of market northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK) pulp. The Company’s operations are located in Eastern Germany and Western Canada. It operates three NBSK pulp mills with a consolidated annual production capacity of approximately 1.5 million million air-dried metric tons (ADMTs)."