Cash in Hand, Hedge Funds Bail on Big Lots
Thursday, June 28, 2007 : PermalinkNew York Times- Big Lots, the nation’s largest seller of overstocked and discontinued items and whose fare includes organic plant food made from chicken droppings, is losing its novelty for its hedge fund investors, Bloomberg News reported.
New management and a planned restructuring lured about 56 hedge funds to buy Big Lots beginning in June 2005, and the stock jumped 91 percent last year for the fifth-best gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to the report. But, says Bloomberg, a third of those funds sold shares in the first quarter, and the stock has dropped 19 percent since the end of May.
Hedge funds that have begun to cash out include Fortress Investment, which has sold all its holdings in the company; Fir Tree Partners; and London’s GSA Capital Partners, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Now that the funds have pocketed big gains on the stock, they’ve decided to move on, expecting little further gain to be plucked from the shares, the report concluded.