Lone Pine Capital Reduces Esprit Stake

Steve Mandel's hedge fund firm Lone Pine Capital recently reduced its holdings in Hong Kong listed Esprit (HK:330). 

Lone Pine sold nil-paid rights in two transactions on November 7th and 9th.  In total, they sold 62,538,542 nil-paid rights at average prices of HK$3.10 and HK$3.50, with the bulk of the transaction taking place at the latter price, according to Hong Kong exchange disclosures. 

This reduces their ownership stake in Esprit down to 10.88% as they still have exposure to just under 211 million shares.  Lone Pine disposed of most of the rights shares they were allocated.  The company plans to use the proceeds of the recent rights issue to partially fund a facelift to compete with other retailers like Zara.

Also worth highlighting is the fact that around the same time, Esprit's former chairman Michael Ying added to his stake in the company. He now owns more than 10%.

Previously, we had highlighted how Lone Pine was buying Esprit back in June of this year.

For more of Lone Pine's recent activity, we've highlighted Steve Mandel's pitch on VeriSign.

Steve Mandel's Lone Pine Capital Buys More Esprit

Steve Mandel's hedge fund firm Lone Pine Capital have raised their stake in Esprit Holdings (HK:330).  Per Hong Kong Stock Exchange data, the hedge fund bought just over 14 million shares on June 15th and almost 1.4 million shares on June 13th.

These buys come right after the company's CEO and chairman left and shares plunged.  Lone Pine now owns over 14% of the company.  Additionally, Mandel's firm has easily doubled its stake in the company over the past year or so and are the company's largest shareholder.

Also worth highlighting is that Marathon Asset Management is the second largest shareholder with around 7% ownership in Esprit.

Last week we highlighted an interview with Neev Capital's Rahul Sharma who talked about Inditex's Zara brand and Hennes & Mauritz, otherwise known as H&M.  Esprit seems to be hurt by competition by these brands.

For more on this hedge fund, we've detailed Lone Pine's new position in Cooper Companies.

Per Google Finance,  Esprit is "engaged in wholesale and retail distribution and licensing of fashion and lifestyle products designed under its own Esprit brand name. The brand creates women’s, men’s and kids’ collections for all occasions and distributes in over 1,100 directly managed retail stores and over 11,000 controlled-space wholesale point-of-sales internationally. The Company operates with 12 established product lines offering women’s wear, men’s wear, kid’s wear, edc youth, as well as shoes and accessories."

Be sure to also check out our post on why Steve Mandel likes Kohls.

Steve Mandel's Lone Pine Buys More Esprit Holdings

Steve Mandel's hedge fund Lone Pine Capital recently raised its stake in Esprit Holdings (HK:0330) listed in Hong Kong. The hedge fund is now the second largest shareholder at 6.23% of Esprit Holdings. This is up from a 3.22% stake previously.

Lone Pine Capital purchased almost 39 million shares at around HK $9.50 on October 4th according to Hong Kong regulatory disclosures. Over the past month, shares of Esprit are down 45% as the company saw revenue from Europe decline again due to the debt crisis there.

In other activity from this hedge fund, last week we covered how Lone Pine added to its Oceaneering position as well as their new position in Williams Sonoma.

Per Google Finance, Esprit is "principally engaged in wholesale and retail distribution, and licensing of fashion and life-style products designed under its own Esprit brand name. The Company operates with 12 established product lines offering women’s wear, men’s wear, kid’s wear, edc youth, as well as shoes and accessories in over 800 directly managed retail stores and over 14,000 controlled-space wholesale point-of-sales internationally."