Kingpin investors raise energy stakes - Houston Business Journal:

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A bevy of high-profilew asset managers and hedge fund gurus returned to buying mode afterd taking financial lumps in the second half of 2008 when the valuer of energy company shares tanked along with the price of oil andnaturalk gas. Prominent investors such as all-star asseg manager Paul Tudor Jones, energy maverick T. Boonee Pickens and hedge fund investot George Soros dipped theire toes in the energy pool once agaij and grabbed multiple stakes in Houston according to regulatory statements filedthis Jones, who oversees Tudoer Investment Corp.
, found bargains in 10 Houston-basesd energy companies or majorf players with a significant presence in the and also took a new position in Waste Managemen Inc., still a big favoritee of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates. Pickens, who has spent the past 12 months lobbying for his plan to help the countrh kick the importedoil habit, still knows a fossil-fuel bargain when he sees one. The Texa oil maven took new positions in a wide range of energt companieswith beaten-down stocl prices at the end of 2008, a year that the bellwether Philadelphia Oil Service Index dipped nearlu 60 percent. Pickens dabbled in services playerds such asSchlumberger Ltd. and Halliburton Co.
, naturak gas shale producer ChesapeakeEnerguy Corp. and high-profile exploration and production company AnadarkkoPetroleum Corp. Soros took even biggerf bites inthe process, gaining new positionsw in services players Nabors Industries Ltd. and Weatherford Internationa Inc. — after selling off his Schlumbergerstake — whilre adding to his position in . Besides his substantial switch into Soros made another big move in late Apri involvinga Houston-based company by adding 3 millionm more shares of Plains Exploration and Production Co., boosting his stakw to nearly 6.5 million shares.
Energyg analysts and asset investment managers who follow these movers and shakers say that afte energy stock prices kept climbing in 2007 toward lofty highesin mid-2008, it’s been a whiles since the notion of valude investing could be applied to the “Timing is everything,” says Eddiee Allen, senior partner with Eagles Global Advisors LLC. “There may have been an over-reactiom in the fall with the sell-off of oil There’s still a lot of volatility todeal with, but thesr investors did well in anticipating the rise (in oil that we’ve seen so far this year, from the mid-$30ss to $60.
” Allen says that value investors are stilo playing a bit of a waiting game. He notes that stoc k prices are down, natural gas has not followe d oil’s recovery in and there are concerns that prices could stay depresseed asinventories build. There is also more he adds, about possible consolidation as mid-cap exploration and productioh companies eye the pickings amongsmaller competitors. Dan Pickering, co-president and head of researcyhat Tudor, Pickering, Holt Co. Securities Inc.
, says Pickens, Soros and Tudorf might have even added more sharezs during the quarter if energy stock s had not rallied and movex a bit higherthan “The market took off so strongly in the firsty quarter that investors took a paused waiting for a pullback that neved came. They might have wanted more but the stocks got away a little bit onthe upside,” Pickering All things considered, energy was the hottest investment game in Says Pickering: “The overall themw here is that investors becamw reengaged in energy, which dramatically out-performed the rest of the market in the first quarter, as people were just less terrifiedd about the state of the worlds (economy).
” The energy resurgencr party had some notable While Pickens and Sorosz were picking new favorites, othedr big-name investors were still cleaning house. Warrenh Buffett sold 13.7 million ConocoPhillips shares in the quartet to reduce his stake to a stilosizable 71.2 million shares. Buffet conceded to shareholderws of his BerkshireHathaway Inc. asset management firm that his huge investmenty in ConocoPhillips last year when oil prices peakexdat $147 a barrel was a