Richard Blum Sells Portions of Four Stakes

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Jun 29, 2015

By just about any measure, Richard Blum (Trades, Portfolio) has had a successful investing career. He is also an advocate of education, serving as a regent of the University of California (at one time, he was chairman of that board). Consequently, Blum’s sales of holdings in education-oriented stocks – on the surface – can seem to be contradictory.

In recent years, Blum has rarely bought a new stake or added to an existing one. Nearly all of his transactions since 2012 have involved reducing existing stakes – which is what he did in the first quarter of 2015.

Blum sold portions of four existing stakes in the first quarter – CBRE Group Inc (CBG, Financial), Career Education Corp (CECO, Financial), MoneyGram International Inc (MGI, Financial) and ITT Educational Services Inc (ESI, Financial).

Blum sold 502,604 shares of CBRE Group, a Los Angeles-based commercial real estate company, for an average price of $34.48 per share. The sale had a -2.98% impact on Blum’s portfolio.

CBRE Group has a market cap of $12.39 billion and an enterprise value of $14.94 billion. It has a P/E of 24.3, a Price/Book of 5.5 and a Price/Sales of 1.4. Jeff Ubben (Trades, Portfolio), Ron Baron (Trades, Portfolio), John Rogers (Trades, Portfolio), Ken Heebner (Trades, Portfolio), RS Investment Management (Trades, Portfolio), Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio), Louis Moore Bacon (Trades, Portfolio) and Jeremy Grantham (Trades, Portfolio) have shares of CBRE in their portfolios.

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Blum sold 2,000,000 shares of Career Education Corp, more than 30% of his stake, for an average price of $5.77 per share. Career Education is an Illinois-based postsecondary higher education provider with campus-based and online programs; Blum’s sale had a -2.39% impact on his portfolio.

Career Education Corp has a market cap of $242.35 million and an enterprise value of $49.92 million. It has a Price/Book of 0.9 and a Price/Sales of 0.4. Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio) and Paul Tudor Jones (Trades, Portfolio) have shares of Career Education Corp in their portfolios.

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Blum sold nearly 90% of his stake in MoneyGram International Inc, a money transfer company based in Dallas, Texas. Blum sold 1,376,700 shares for an average price of $8.7; the sale had a -2.14% impact on his portfolio.

MoneyGram International has a market cap of $483.03 million and an enterprise value of $1.45 billion. It has a Price/Sales of 0.4. David Abrams (Trades, Portfolio), Chuck Royce (Trades, Portfolio), James Barrow (Trades, Portfolio) and Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio) have shares of MoneyGram International in their portfolios.

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Blum also sold 470,000 shares of ITT Educational Services Inc, an Indiana-based technical institute, for an average price of $7.82 per share. The transaction had a -0.78% impact on his portfolio.’

ITT Educational Services has a market cap of $103.02 million and an enterprise value of $230.65 million. It has a P/E of 2.9, a Price/Book of 0.7 and a Price/Sales of 0.1. Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio) and Charles Brandes (Trades, Portfolio) have shares of ITT Educational Services in their portfolios.

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