David Tepper’s Appaloosa takes new stake in Apple, cuts Facebook and Alibaba

Finance news

Appaloosa Management added new stakes in Apple and State Street in the third quarter while cutting exposure to Facebook and e-commerce hub Alibaba.

Billionaire manager David Tepper’s firm had added 100,000 shares of Apple and 1.2 million shares of financial firm State Street by the end of September. Appaloosa cut its position in Facebook by 1.8 million shares, to 3.3 million shares, and more than halved its stake in Bank of America, to 3.4 million shares.

Apple gained 0.6 percent in after hours trading following the release of Appaloosa’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In mid-September, Tepper told CNBC that Facebook’s stock looked inexpensive at its price and that the fund had not reduced its holding.

“It’s kinda cheap in this market for the growth rate. So we’re still holding on as big as we were,” Tepper told CNBC’s Scott Wapner on Sept. 13.

“It’s not the Cambridge Analytica stuff that’s [as] concerning as some of the other stuff with margins and what’s going on there,” he added. “But look, the stock still trades — it looks like it’s still trading at 16, 17 times” next year’s earnings estimates.

Appaloosa also more than doubled its position in PG&E by the end of the third quarter. That stock has dropped more than 45 percent in November as the utility struggles to deal with raging wildfires in Northern California. Appaloosa’s holdings for the fourth quarter, which began in October, won’t be revealed until February.

PG&E fell 21 percent on Wednesday after the company said that if its equipment is responsible for the “Camp Fire” burning in Northern California, the cost of the damage would exceed its insurance coverage and harm its financial health.

Though the cause of the Camp Fire remains under investigation, the utility company also said Tuesday that it submitted an “electric incident report” to the California Public Utilities Commission on Nov. 8, just before the wildfire.

The stock gained 1.2 percent in after hours trading following the release of Appaloosa’s 13-F filing.

Appaloosa Management has approximately $14 billion of assets under management. The billionaire investor is also the owner of the National Football League team Carolina Panthers.