David Tepper, founder of
Appaloosa Management, disclosed last week that his fund's top five buys during the fourth quarter of 2019 included a new holding in
Intelsat SA (NYSE:I) and position boosts in four companies:
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA),
Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU),
Energy Transfer LP (NYSE:ET) and
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).
A distressed debt specialist, Tepper became interested in the stock market as a young boy watching his father trade stocks in his hometown of Pittsburgh. The Appaloosa fund manger has since earned international reputation for producing some of the highest returns among fund managers on Wall Street.
According to CNBC sources, Tepper announced in May 2019 that he plans to convert Appaloosa into a family office so that he can concentrate on managing the Carolina Panthers NFL football franchise, which he purchased for over $2.27 billion in 2018. As of December 2019, the $3.94 billion equity portfolio contains 22 stocks, with turnover of 13%. The top three sectors in terms of portfolio weight are communication services, consumer cyclical and technology, with weights of 31.53%, 30.05% and 17.39%.
New buy: Intelsat
Appaloosa purchased 2,885,019 shares of Intelsat, giving the stake 0.51% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $15.33 during the quarter.
The Luxembourg-based telecom company provides diversified communication services to media companies, fixed and wireless telecom operators and data networking service providers. According to GuruFocus, Intelsat's interest coverage and debt ratios underperform over 90% of global competitors, suggesting low financial strength.
Charts 6 months later:
- Intelsat SA (NYSE:I) is trading over the counter
