Mandel’s Lone Pine Buys Over $400M of Verisign Inc.

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According to a 13G just filled with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Steven Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital LLC has now owns 8,645,289 shares of  Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN).

The hedge fund now owns 5.5% of shares outstanding. Shares of Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) closed today at $47.22. Based on the latest price, Long Pine owns $405,000 million of the Reston, Virginia based company. SEC laws typically require hedge funds to disclose any purchase above 5% of shares outstanding.

Steve Mandel’s Lone Pine hedge fund has approximately $14 billion of assets under management. While this latest buy is not a huge acquisition, it is somewhat significant in size.

Stephen ( also known as Steve) Mandel is formerly an analyst at Julian Robertson’s famous Tiger Global Management.  Mandel’s Lone Pine hedge Fund, is  commonly referred to as a ‘Tiger Cub.’ Tiger Cubs are hedge funds started by former analysts at Tiger Global. In many cases, the funds were seeded with their initial capital by Julian Robertson.

Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) provides Internet infrastructure services to networks across the globe. The company has a forward price earnings ratio of 21. Price to sales for the company is close to 10 and EV/EBITDA is 15. Tiger Cubs are more growth oriented, so the acquisition is not all that surprising.

Another recent purchase by Lone Pine Capital include a 5.1% stake in  The CooperCompanies  (NYSE:COO), as detailed by SEC fillings released on June 19th.

 

A spokesperson for the fund declined to comment on the matter.

(Disclosure: The author of this article has no position in any of the securities mentioned)

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