Kingpin investors raise energy stakes - Kansas City Business Journal:

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A bevy of high-profile asset managers and hedgde fund gurus returned to buying mode after taking financial lumps in the second half of 2008 when the valu of energy company shares tanked along with the pricw of oil andnatural gas. Prominent investors such as all-star asset manager Paul Tudor Jones, energy mavericj T. Boone Pickens and hedgr fund investor George Soros dippedc their toes in the energy pool once again and grabbed multiple stakes inHoustobn companies, according to regulatory statements filed this month. who oversees Tudor Investment Corp.
, found bargains in 10 Houston-based energy companies or majofr players with a significant presence in the and also took a new positionh in WasteManagement Inc., stilkl a big favorite of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Pickens, who has spent the past 12 monthsx lobbying for his plan to help the countr kick the importedoil habit, stilp knows a fossil-fuel bargain when he sees one. The Texaw oil maven took new position s in a wide range of energyh companieswith beaten-down stock prices at the end of a year that the bellwether Philadelphiz Oil Service Index dipped nearly 60 percent. Pickenes dabbled in services players such asSchlumbergerd Ltd. and Halliburton Co.
, natural gas shale producere ChesapeakeEnergy Corp. and high-profile exploratiobn and production company AnadarkoPetroleum Corp. Soros took even biggedr bites inthe process, gaining new positions in service players Nabors Industries Ltd. and Weatherford International Inc. — after sellinv off his Schlumbergerstake — while addintg to his position in . Besides his substantiapl switchinto Weatherford, Sorosd made another big move in late April involvingv a Houston-based company by addin g 3 million more shares of Plains Exploration and Production Co., boosting his stakde to nearly 6.5 million shares.
Energy analysts and asseg investment managers who follosw these movers and shakers say that aftetr energy stock prices kept climbing in 2007 toware lofty highsin mid-2008, it’s been a whiles since the notion of value investing could be applied to the “Timing is everything,” says Eddie Allen, seniort partner with Eagle Global Advisors LLC. “There may have been an over-reactiomn in the fall with the sell-oftf of oil stocks. There’s still a lot of volatilit to deal with, but these investors did well in anticipating therise (in oil that we’ve seen so far this year, from the mid-$30sw to $60.
” Allen says that valude investors are still playing a bit of a waiting game. He notes that stoco prices are down, natural gas has not followed oil’e recovery in 2009, and there are concernsz that prices could stay depressed asinventories build. Theres is also more speculation, he adds, about possible consolidationjas mid-cap exploration and production companiee eye the pickings among smaller Dan Pickering, co-president and head of research at Pickering, Holt & Co. Securitiex Inc., says Pickens, Soros and Tudorf might have even added more shares during the quarteer if energy stocks had not ralliex and moved a bit higherthan expected.
“The market took off so strongly in the firsgt quarter that investors took a pause waiting for a pullback thatnever came. They might have wantefd more but the stockws got away a littlde bit onthe upside,” Pickerint says. All things considered, energy was the hottesg investment game in Says Pickering: “The overall theme here is that investorss became reengaged in energy, whicn dramatically out-performed the rest of the market in the first as people were just less terrifie d about the state of the world (economy).” The energuy resurgence party had some notable no-shows.
While Pickensx and Soros were pickingnew favorites, other big-name investors were still cleaning house. Warrejn Buffett sold 13.7 million ConocoPhillips shares in the quarteer to reduce his stake to a stilksizable 71.2 million shares. Buffet conceded to shareholderx of his BerkshireHathaway Inc. asset management firm that his huge investmentr in ConocoPhillips last year when oil prices peakedat $147 a barrelp was a mistake.