Arnold Van Den Berg (Trades, Portfolio) has tweaked his holding in real estate development and management firm UCP Inc. (UCP, Financial).
The founder of Austin-based Century Management added 10.13% more shares to his existing holding, bringing the total to 683,166 shares in his portfolio. His stake represents 8.61% of the company’s outstanding shares.
Van Den Berg started this position in third quarter 2013 but had been selling some shares over the past three quarters. His average purchase price of $14.28 has given him a 38% total average loss on the investment overall based on Wednesday’s closing share price of $7.89.
Started in 2004, the West Coast homebuilder and land developer has a $63 million market cap. Its fourth quarter revenue grew by 56.2% from the prior-year quarter to $46.2 million due to higher home sales. It also reported a net loss of $4.29 million, which deepened from $2.0 million in the prior-year quarter as its gross margin narrowed.
UCP Inc. is Van Den Berg’s only stock within the homebuilding and construction sector. An aficionado of undervalued stocks, he told a forum in December he looks first for stocks of great value and then explores sectors where he is finding values, the cheapest sectors of which he said were now energy, industrials, materials and financials.
UPI’s stock is down 24% since the start of the year, and its P/B ratio is 0.8. Both are near their two-year low.
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