A bunch of big hedge funds could be getting hosed on Snap
The so-called smart money that scrambled to get in on the highly anticipated initial public offering for Snap Inc. (SNAP) earlier this year is probably experiencing a little buyers’ remorse.
Shares of Snap Inc., the parent company of the photo messaging app Snapchat, have dropped by about 50% since going public on March 2.
On Thursday, Snap reported disappointing revenue in the second quarter, sending shares tumbling. In an effort to help stop the bleeding, CEO Evan Spiegel said that neither he nor the company’s co-founder Bobby Murphy would sell shares.
The stock was last trading down more than 12.8% at around $12.01 per share on Friday.
It’s possible that some big-name money managers have lost a fortune on their bets on Snapchat’s parent company.
At the end of the first quarter, Philippe Laffont’s technology-focused Coatue Management held more than 20.9 million shares, a position that had been valued at over $472 million at the time. During the second quarter, Coatue added another 940,900 shares of Snap, bringing its stake to 21.89 million shares, according to a 13-F filing posted on Friday. It was also the fund’s 12th largest long stock position. At the end of the second quarter, that position was valued at around $389.14 million. Based on Friday’s stock price and assuming it hasn’t changed in size, it was last valued at around $263 million.
Other top fund managers that held a stake in Snap at the end of the first quarter include Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management with 2.74 million shares; Steve Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital with 1.79 million shares; George Soros’ family-office with 1.65 million shares; Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital with 1.33 million shares; Chris Hansen’s Valiant Capital with 671,000 shares; Barry Rosenstein’s JANA Partners with 550,000 shares; and David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management with 100,000 shares, according to regulatory filings.
Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC sold all of its 2.25 million shares during the second quarter, according to a 13-F filing posted on Friday.
Fortunately for most of these folks, these are minor positions in the overall context of their portfolios.
Tepper told CNBC on March 8 that he bought shares during the IPO, and that he liked the company and the story. He acknowledged that he had sold some of the shares.
“Listen, when I bought it, I actually talked to the guys, the underwriters, I said, ‘If the things gets up into high $20s, I’m going to have to sell it,'” he told CNBC at the time. He added that if the stock went down to the original offer price he might buy more.
It’s now almost five dollars below its IPO price of $17.
We’ll have a better picture of who still owns Snap and who’s been buying more shares next week when hedge funds report their long stock in 13-F regulatory filings for the second quarter ended June 30.
Hedge funds of a certain size are required to disclose their long stock holdings these filings. Of course, the filings only provide a partial picture since they do not show short positions or wagers on commodities and currencies. What’s more is these filings come out 45 days after the end of each quarter, so it’s possible they could have traded in and out of the position. Still, it does provide a partial look into where some of the top money managers have been placing money in the stock market.
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Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
