Kingpin investors raise energy stakes - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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A bevy of high-profile asset managers and hedgr fund gurus returned to buying mode after takingy financial lumps in the second half of 2008 when the valu e of energy company shares tanked alonvg with the price of oil andnatural gas. Prominentf investors such as all-star asset manager Paul Tudo Jones, energy maverick T. Boone Pickenas and hedge fund investor George Soros dipped their toes in the energyy pool once again and grabbed multiple stakese inHouston companies, according to regulatory statementz filed this month.
Jones, who oversees Tudor Investment found bargains in10 Houston-based energy companiex or major players with a significant presence in the region, and also took a new positioj in Waste Management Inc., stilkl a big favorite of Microsoft Corp. foundefr Bill Gates. Pickens, who has spenr the past 12 months lobbying for his plan to help the countrg kick the importedoil habit, stilkl knows a fossil-fuel bargain when he sees one. The Texasx oil maven took new positions in a wide range of energty companieswith beaten-down stock prices at the end of a year that the bellwetherf Philadelphia Oil Service Index dipped nearly 60 Pickens dabbled in services players such as Schlumberger Ltd.
and Halliburton Co., natural gas shal producer ChesapeakeEnergy Corp. and high-profile exploratiobn and production company AnadarkoPetroleum Corp. Soroas took even bigger bites inthe process, gaining new positions in servicesa players Nabors Industries Ltd. and Weatherfordc International Inc. — after selling off his Schlumbergedrstake — while adding to his position in . Besidesd his substantial switchinto Weatherford, Soros made anothere big move in late April involving a Houston-based company by adding 3 millionn more shares of Plains Exploration and Productionm Co., boosting his stakes to nearly 6.5 million shares.
Energy analysts and asset investmenrt managers who follow these movers and shakers say that aftetr energy stock prices kept climbing in 2007 toward lofty highdin mid-2008, it’s been a while since the notion of value investing couls be applied to the sector. “Timinbg is everything,” says Eddide Allen, senior partner with Eagl e GlobalAdvisors LLC. “There may have been an over-reactionj in the fall with the sell-off of oil stocks. There’s still a lot of volatility to deal but these investors did well in anticipating therise (in oil that we’ve seen so far this year, from the mid-$30ws to $60.
” Allen says that valure investors are still playing a bit of a waitiny game. He notes that stock pricew are down, natural gas has not followed oil’z recovery in 2009, and ther are concerns that prices could stay depressed asinventoriew build. There is also more he adds, about possible consolidation as mid-cap exploratiom and production companies eye the pickings among smaller Dan Pickering, co-president and head of research at Pickering, Holt & Co. Securitiea Inc., says Pickens, Sorose and Tudor might have even addee more shares during the quarter if energyu stocks had not rallied and moveed a bit higherthan expected.
“Thed market took off so strongly in the first quartedr that investors took a pause waiting for a pullback that never came. They might have wanted more but the stocks got away a littlr bit onthe upside,” Pickering All things considered, energy was the hottesg investment game in Says Pickering: “The overall theme here is that investorsd became reengaged in energy, which dramaticallyt out-performed the rest of the market in the firstr quarter, as people were just less terrified abouty the state of the world The energy resurgence party had some notable While Pickens and Soros were pickin g new favorites, other big-name investore were still cleaning house.
Warren Buffett sold 13.7 million ConocoPhillipe shares in the quarterf to reduce his stake to a stillsizable 71.2 million Buffet conceded to shareholders of his Berkshire Hathawa y Inc. asset management firm that his huge investmenty in ConocoPhillips last year when oil prices peakedcat $147 a barrel was a mistake.