Hoplite Capital Management LP has filed its 13F for the first three months of 2013. The firm’s documents, filed with the SEC at this link, show the changes it made to its long equity holdings in the first three months of the year. According to the filing the long equities held by Hoplite Capital Management were worth $3.1 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2013. That number is up from $2.3 billion at the end of 2012.
Hoplite Capital Exited Long Equity Positions
Hoplite exited a bunch of long equity positions in the three months ending March 30, including positions in Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) (NASDAQ:NWS), Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST), Hillshire Brands Co (NYSE:HSH), and Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP). Some of the positions that the fund closed are more notable than others however.
The 3,115,234 shares that Hoplite Capital held in American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG) were dropped in the first quarter. In the last three months of 2012, that holding made up 4.65 percent of Hoplite’s long portfolio. The company also got out of big positions in Sensata Technologies (NYSE:ST), a 2,580,830 position that made up 3.54 percent of the funds long equities at the end of last year.
To balance the sale of so many equities, as Hoplite Capital exited a total of 21 positions in the first three months of the year, the firm bought into 23 new stocks long, including some truly massive purchases. One of the big adds was in Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN). Hoplite bought 11,696,706 shares in the company in the first three months of the year, for a stake valued at more than $70 million at the end of the first quarter.
Hoplite also added 7,248,923 shares in H&R Block Inc. (NYSE:HRB), a stake valued at $ 213,263,315 at the end of the first quarter of the year, making it the most valuable single holding in the Hoplite long portfolio, accounting for a whopping 6.87 percent of the firm’s long equity holdings.
The company also added small holdings in a couple of key technology companies including Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM), AutoDesk Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK), TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO), Expedia Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE), and the SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK). Those buys appear to be part of a general wide bet on the technology market, across many key sectors.
John T. Lykouretzos founded Hoplite Capital Management in 2003. Since then his fund has grown into a $3.1 billion behemoth, and the manager’s AUM grew by 31.1 percent between the last day of 2012, and March 31st 2013. Those returns compare favorably with many contemporaries, and market indices.
