Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management, which is launching a proxy fight against DuPont, says the chemical giant’s stock could be worth more than $120 by the end of 2017. In a regulatory filing, the New York activist hedge fund also chides DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman for implying she believes DuPont’s shares will be worth no more than $72 in 2017, noting that she exercised options and sold over half of her equity position, worth $80 million at $72 per share or less, after Trian first invested in the stock. “Most of these options did not expire until 2016 or 2017,” Trian adds in a regulatory filing. Trian has nominated four people to the DuPont board, including Peltz.
___
Hedge fund favorite Walgreens Boots Alliance surged 5.6 percent after the global drugstore chain beat quarterly earnings estimates and announced it plans to shut 200 stores in the U.S. Altogether, it said it hopes to save $1.5 billion by the end of fiscal 2017 under a wider cost-cutting program. At year-end, the stock was the third-largest long position of Greenwich, Connecticut-based Viking Global Investors, which was also the seventh-largest investor in the company. New York-based Jana Partners was the tenth-largest shareholder. In addition, Walgreens is Jana’s largest holding.
___
Allan Teh’s Kamunting Street Capital Management is returning all outside investor money due, in part, to losses on energy-related junk bonds, according to The Wall Street Journal. Teh founded the firm, which he named after the street he grew up on in Malaysia, in 2004 after serving as chief investment officer of Tribeca Global Investments, Citigroup’s one-time hedge-fund business. In a rather blunt admission, Teh said in the Journal article, “I’m the first to say: I can’t do it. I just don’t think in this environment I can have a portfolio that mirrors what was done in the past.” Kamunting was down 4 percent last year after rising 7 percent in the first half. It is down 2 percent so far this year. Teh will still manage his own money through a family office.
___
Yet another hedge fund data collector has been heard from. This time it’s New York-based eVestment, which calculates that the average hedge fund gained only 1.23 percent in the first quarter. We’ve earlier reported that HFR’s Weighted Composite Index rose 2.4 percent while Lyxor’s Managed Account Platform Research team calculates the average gain to be closer to 3.2 percent. All three databases, however, agree the average hedge fund beat the Standard & Poor’s 500, which rose 0.96 percent last quarter.
