- Lone Pine Capital, the Tiger Cub founded by Stephen Mandel Jr., is up more than 23% in its flagship long-short fund through November.
- The firm’s long-only fund is up even more — over 38% — thanks to November when it gained nearly 11%.
- The $30 billion firm has seen some of its biggest bets, like Shopify, Facebook, and Microsoft, soar this year.
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Lone Pine — the $30 billion Tiger Cub headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut — has soared in 2020.
The equity manager has returned more than 23% in its flagship long-short fund after gaining roughly 1.6% last month, sources say. Its long-only fund though has been the real star of its offerings — the fund is up more than 38% for the year after returning nearly 11% in November.
The average hedge fund has recorded a 4% gain this year up to the end of November, according to Hedge Fund Research.
The discreet manager — founded by Stephen Mandel Jr. and now run by the team of Mala Gaonkar, Kelly Granat, and David Craver — has fueled its run this year with the success of its biggest position, according to the firm’s most recent regulatory filing: Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify.
As of the end of September, the retailer made up more than 7% of Lone Pine’s portfolio, filings show, and Shopify has continued to skyrocket in price; since the start of the year, the company’s stock has more than doubled. The firm also boasts large stakes in Facebook and Microsoft, both of which have risen at least 35% this year.
The firm declined to comment.
While tech companies have often been thought of as growth stocks traditionally, Lone Pine has been arguing for at least a year that the investor community needs to reconsider what it means to be a growth or value stock. In an investor letter last year, the manager said that some downtrodden companies are struggling because they’ve become outdated, and shouldn’t be considered a value buy just because their stocks have fallen.
Similarly, Gaonkar, appearing on a panel hosted by the Milken Institute, said that companies like Facebook can even been considered a value buy now since the pandemic has sped up many technological changes people expected years to take.
Lone Pine, a concentrated equity manager, has been compared to fellow Tiger Cubs — managers that spun out of legendary investor Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management — such as Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue, Lee Ainslie’s Maverick, and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global.
Like those firms, Lone Pine has dipped into private market investing, including private taco chain Torchy’s Tacos and online fundraising platform Patreon.
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