Guru Andreas Halvorsen (Trades, Portfolio) is a Norwegian hedge fund executive who co-founded Viking Global Investors LP in 1999. Halvorsen graduated from the Norwegian Naval Academy and then went on to become a Navy Seal. He also earned an MBA with the highest honors from the Stanford University.
Upon graduating, Halvorsen began his investment career at Morgan Stanley where he worked in the investment banking division. Halvorsen then seized a tremendous opportunity to work alongside legendary guru Julian Robertson (Trades, Portfolio) at Tiger Management, where he was able to gain a tremendous amount of experience and expertise. From there he used his philosophies, mental models and tactics that he gained early on in his investment career to successfully co-found Viking Global Investors, which currently manages more than $30 billion in capital for investors.
In the fourth quarter of 2015,Ă‚ Andreas Halvorsen (Trades, Portfolio) sold out 8,582,498 shares of Sealed Air Corp. (SEE, Financial).
Sealed Air Corp. began when Alfred W. Fielding and Marc Chavannes had the vision to create a new wall covering by laminating two plastic sheets with air bubbles in between. Although their invention never caught on as interior decor, the two men discovered their new material’s lightweight and insulating properties were very useful, first as greenhouse insulating and then as the packing material called Bubble Wrap. In 1960 Fielding and Chavannes founded Sealed Air Corporation with Bubble Wrap as the company’s signature brand. Sealed Air is a global leader in food safety and security, facility hygiene and product protection. The company serves an array of end markets including food and beverage processing, foodservice, retail, healthcare, and industrial and commercial consumer applications. Sealed Air Corp. currently employs 25,000 employees across 175 countries worldwide.
Sealed Air has a market cap of $9.2 billion, an enterprise value of $13.37 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.65 and dividend yield of 1.14.
There are several reasons why Halvorsen may have sold out his holdings in Sealed Air:
- The company's book value has been on the decline over the previous 10 years at an average rate of close to 11%.
- The company is currently trading above its intrinsic value.
- The company keeps issuing long term debt. Over the previous three years, Sealed Air Corp. has issued $76.4 million dollars of debt.
- The company may not be able to generate sufficient cash to service all of their current debt obligations and may be forced to take other actions to satisfy the company’s indebtedness, which they admit in their most recent 10K may not be successful.
- As of Dec. 15, 2015, the company owes $1.264 billion of borrowings under the company's secured credit facilities at variable interest rates. This can severely affect a company's profits when they must pay fees with fluctuating interest rates.
- The company had a $16 million, or 1% constant dollar decrease in net sales in product care at the end of 2015 compared to 2014. This was caused by lower unit volumes due to rationalization efforts in North America, Latin America and to a lesser extent, EMEA (sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and weaknesses across the industrial sector.
Below is a Peter Lynch chart for Sealed Air Corp.
Cheers to your investment success.
