Of the 20 stocks in which guru Martin Whitman (Trades, Portfolio) traded in January of this year, he added to his holdings in eight. There was no real pattern to Whitman’s stock buys – except for the facts that two were in the Banking sector, and they dwarfed all of Whitman’s other January purchases.
Whitman’s investment in Comerica Inc (CMA, Financial), a financial services company that got its start in Detroit in 1849 and has been headquartered in Dallas since 2007, was his largest in terms of money spent on shares. Whitman bought 335,200 shares for an average price of $44.62 per share, bringing his stake to 2,152,239 shares and making it the 13th-largest by volume in his portfolio.
Comerica has a P/E of 14.5, a Price/Book of 1.1 and a Price/Sales of 3.3. Its market cap is $8.17 billion, and its enterprise value is $4.71 billion.
Ray Dalio (Trades, Portfolio), PRIMECAP Management (Trades, Portfolio), David Dreman (Trades, Portfolio) and John Keeley (Trades, Portfolio) have shares of Comerica in their portfolios.
Whitman’s other Banking purchase in January was KeyCorp (KEY, Financial), a regional bank based in Cleveland that is actually Whitman’s fifth-largest stake by volume – but, until January, he had only been selling, not buying, shares in the company for the last two years. He acquired 406,400 shares for an average price of $13.74 per share. The purchase brought his stake in KeyCorp to 6,050,798 shares.
KeyCorp has a P/E of 14.1, a Price/Book of 1.2 and a Price/Sales of 3.0. It has a market cap of $12.15 billion and an enterprise value of $15.06 billion.
David Dreman (Trades, Portfolio) also has shares of KeyCorp in his portfolio.
The other stocks in which Whitman invested in January and their business sectors were New York-based CBS Corp (CBS, Financial), entertainment; French-based tire manufacturer Michelin (XPAR:ML, Financial); Investor AB (OSTO:INVE B), a Stockholm-based asset management company; AGCO Corp (AGCO, Financial), a farm and construction machinery company from Georgia; New York-based Loews Corp (L, Financial), property and casualty insurance; and General Motors Co (GM, Financial), an automaker based in Detroit.
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