Count some of the world’s most high-profile money managers as fans of this year’s stock-market sensation, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Daniel Loeb ’s Third Point LLC, David Tepper ’s Appaloosa Management LP, John Paulson’s Paulson & Co. and Soros Fund Management LLC disclosed stakes in the Chinese e-commerce giant on Friday. Alibaba is up 69%, to $115.10, since its record-breaking IPO on Sept. 18.
The disclosures are part of a quarterly filing requirement for investors who manage more than $100 million. The filings give the public its freshest possible glimpse into the portfolios of well-known money managers.
The form, known as a 13F, must be filed within 45 days of the end of each quarter and many money managers wait until the last possible moment to submit their filings. Because the forms reflect the managers’ holdings as of the third quarter, they indicate the shareholders in Alibaba bought in relatively soon after the IPO and would have sizable paper gains if they still hold the stock.
Third Point owned Alibaba shares worth $639 million as of Sept. 30, the hedge-fund firm disclosed in a filing Friday, making the Chinese firm one of its largest stock positions.
Mr. Loeb’s firm has been enthusiastic about Alibaba for several years and has played Alibaba through other trades, such as a large position in SoftBank Corp. Alibaba is “a compelling potential multi-year investment,” Third Point wrote in its third-quarter letter to investors late last month where it announced the position, but not its size.
Appaloosa owned a smaller position as of Sept. 30, valued at $64.4 million. Paulson’s Alibaba stake was valued at $169 million at the end of the third quarter, according to a filing.
The Soros firm, which manages the fortune of billionaire financier George Soros , said it held a $390.9 million Alibaba stake as of Sept. 30. Soros also bought a total of $205.9 million of stock in Yahoo Inc. in the third quarter. The purchase comes as the pressure on Yahoo has intensified in recent months by other investors.
Carl Icahn , the famed activist investor, bulked up on eBay Inc. and sold some of his winning Netflix Inc. stake in the third quarter, according to his filing.
Mr. Icahn owned nearly 46 million shares of eBay as of the end of September, up from 31 million at the end of June, the filing showed. Mr. Icahn had early this year fought to get the online marketplace to separate its payments operator PayPal. While eBay rejected him at the time, it announced in September it would indeed separate PayPal. Mr. Icahn’s eBay stake would be worth about $2.5 billion as of Friday’s close. It would be about 3.7% of the outstanding shares.
During the quarter, Mr. Icahn also pared his stake in Netflix, the online-video provider, selling 352,981 shares and ending the quarter with 1.4 million shares. The investor has been selling off his stake in that company after making about $2 billion on the investment, first disclosed in October 2012.
The filings showed only modest additions to the U.S. stocks portfolio of Warren Buffett ’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., valued at $108 billion as of Sept. 30. The Omaha, Neb.-based conglomerate bought a $32 million stake in Express Scripts Holding Co. , the nation’s largest pharmacy-benefits manager. It also more than doubled its position in Charter Communications Inc. and owned $750 million worth of shares in the cable company as of Sept. 30.
Berkshire also added more than 7 million shares of General Motors Co. , and owned a stake of about $1.3 billion in the car maker as of Sept. 30.
In its filing, Berkshire said it has omitted information from the public record that it has filed confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The move indicates Berkshire could be building or selling a large position in a stock. In 2011, Berkshire built up a $10 billion stake in International Business Machines Corp. confidentially under the cover of SEC guidelines that allow some investors to make big moves without alerting the market and other investors.