John Paulson (Trades, Portfolio) made a record Wall Street $5 billion payday in 2010 but has had some tough years since then.
His firm, Paulson & Co., reported a decline of around 27% last year. Paulson began to see a glimmer of a turnaround in 2015, returning 1.1% for January, people familiar with the secretive investment company told Bloomberg.
Paulson’s firm manages merger arbitrage, event-driven and merger arbitrage strategies and employs fundamental analysis to choose investments.
The investor has reduced his stock purchasing recently, buying only three new stocks in the fourth quarter, down from seven in the third quarter. Paulson’s three new stock picks in the fourth quarter were Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (SLXP, Financial), Talisman Energy LP (TLM, Financial) and Spansion Inc. (CODE, Financial).
Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (SLXP, Financial)
Paulson purchased 5,806,000 shares of his largest new holding, Salix Pharmaceuticals. The holding occupied 3.4% of his portfolio, and the stock’s price averaged $121 per share for the quarter.
Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is a Delaware corporation incorporated on December 1993. Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. has a market cap of $9.61 billion; its shares were traded at around $150.74 with and P/S ratio of 7.10.
Talisman Energy LP (TLM, Financial)
Paulson purchased 70 million shares of Talisman Energy LP, a 2.8% portfolio holding. The stock’s average share price was $6 for the quarter.
Talisman Energy Inc. is incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act. Talisman Energy Inc. has a market cap of $7.94 billion; its shares were traded at around $7.70 with and P/S ratio of 1.90. The dividend yield of Talisman Energy Inc. stocks is 3.50%.
Spansion Inc. (CODE, Financial)
Paulson purchased 430,000 shares of Spanion Inc. in the fourth quarter, worth 0.076% of his portfolio. The company’s quarterly price averaged $24 per share.
Spansion Inc. is incorporated in Delaware in 2005. It is engaged in designing, manufacturing and developing of embedded systems semiconductors, which include flash memory, microcontroller, mixed-signal and analog products and embedded system-on-chip solutions. Spansion Inc. has a market cap of $2.3 billion; its shares were traded at around $36.34 with and P/S ratio of 1.70.
See more John Paulson (Trades, Portfolio) stocks at his portfolio here. Not a Premium Member of GuruFocus? Try it free for 7 days here.
