In two transactions in March, Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) sold more than half of his stake in Nuance Communications Inc. (NUAN, Financial), a computer software company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. It provides speech and imaging applications.
In Icahn’s first transaction, on March 9, he sold more than 26.3 million shares for $20.21 per share. The transaction lowered his stake by 43.29%. A week later, on March 16, Icahn sold another 4.4 million shares for $20 per share, further reducing the stake by 12.77%.
The deals trimmed his 60,784,623-share stake to 30,068,833 shares. Icahn remained Nuance’s leading shareholder among the gurus with 9.88% of the company’s outstanding shares in his portfolio, representing 2.04% of his total assets. Icahn’s stake is more than twice that of the company’s second-leading shareholder among the gurus, PRIMECAP Management (Trades, Portfolio), which owns 13,943,300 shares.
In addition to its speech and imaging applications, Nuance’s products also include speech recognition, telephone call steering systems, automated telephone directory services, medical transcription software, optical character recognition software and desktop imaging software. It also develops software for defense and government purposes.
Nuance has a forward P/E of 11.6, a P/B of 2.5 and a P/S of 3. GuruFocus gives Nuance a Financial Strength rating of 4/10 and a Profitability and Growth rating of 7/10.
Nuance sold for $18.45 per share Monday afternoon.
To view the gurus' latest stock picks, visit the Real Time Stock Picks page. Not a premium member of GuruFocus? Try it free for seven days.
