Latest news with #PaulSinger
Wall Street Journal
28-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Elliott Eyes Bet on Pipeline Carrying Russian Gas
Elliott Investment Management is in talks to buy a stake in a package of infrastructure assets, including a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Europe—a deal that could form a template for reviving Moscow's once-mighty energy business by involving American investors. The U.S. hedge fund, headed by billionaire founder Paul Singer, is considering a stake in the Bulgarian extension of the TurkStream pipeline, along with access to a network of data centers, data cables and other infrastructure assets, according to people familiar with the matter.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Phillips 66 and Elliott's contentious proxy battle ends in split vote over fight to break up energy giant
The barroom brawl of a boardroom fight between Phillips 66 and activist investor Elliott Investment Management to break up the massive energy company concluded May 21 with a split vote and both sides declaring victory. With four board positions up for grabs, Phillips 66 and Elliott each claimed two seats amid Elliott's campaign to force Phillips 66 to sell or spin off its petrochemical and midstream pipeline businesses and focus on its legacy refining unit. The battle pits one of the energy sector's most storied players against arguably the most influential activist fund manager in the world, led by billionaire Paul Singer. On a 14-person board chaired by CEO Mark Lashier, the future of Phillips 66 remains murky, but the vote is significant because no activist at an S&P 500 company had successfully won a board seat in at least 15 years without support of one of the big three index funds—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, according to Insightia. While Elliott's campaign was backed by prominent proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services, Glass Lewis, and Egan-Jones, Phillips 66's top three passive investors—the big three index funds—all sided with the company. Elliott called the vote a clear mandate for change. 'Today's vote sends a clear message: Shareholders demand meaningful change at Phillips 66,' Elliott said in a prepared statement. On the other hand, Lashier called the vote supportive of maintaining Phillips 66's current integrated structure. 'We welcome our new directors and look forward to working constructively as a board,' Lashier said in a statement. 'This vote reflects a belief in our integrated strategy and a recognition that our early results do not yet reflect the full potential of our plan or the value inherent in this business.' Elliott owns a nearly 6% stake in Phillips 66 and has pushed for major change, arguing that Phillips 66 has performed below peers such as Marathon Petroleum and Valero Energy. Likewise, Chevron has expressed an interest in buying out Phillips 66's stake in its Chevron Phillips Chemical joint venture, which Lashier has resisted to this point. Breaking up the company runs counter to Phillips 66's strategy of late to grow its midstream pipeline business, especially in natural gas liquids (NGLs), such as propane, butane, and ethane—the primary petrochemical feedstock, which Phillips 66 sees as its largest growth potential. Lashier argues Phillips 66 is in the early stages of its transformation strategy with refining improvements already demonstrated and that it needs to stay the course. The two Elliott nominees elected were Sigmund 'Sig' Cornelius, who recently retired as the president of Freeport LNG, and Michael Heim, an operating partner with Stonepeak who also was a founder and president of the Targa Resources midstream pipeline giant. Elliott said Cornelius and Heim will aim to 'improve operational execution and share-price performance, enhance corporate governance and help set a strategic course that can unlock Phillips 66's full value-creation potential.' On the Phillips 66 candidate slate, Robert Pease was reelected, and Harbour Energy Chief Operating Officer Nigel Hearne was added to the board. Pease's reelection stands out because he was originally backed by Elliott before being opposed this year. Elliott first reached out to Phillips 66 in late September 2023. They reached a deal and détente—after Elliott privately threatened to start a proxy fight with six board nominees—naming Pease, former CEO of refiner Motiva Enterprises, to the board in mid-February 2024. But Elliott alleged Pease flipflopped and supported Lashier as chairman when Elliott wanted a non-executive chair. With Pease's seat up for grabs, Elliott took aim at his as well when the proxy fight escalated earlier this year. Phillips 66 is making some divestments though, even if they were ones the company expressed a willingness to make last year. Just last week, Phillips 66 agreed to sell 65% stakes in its Germany and Austria retail fueling business to a consortium led by Energy Equation Partners and Stonepeak that will bring in $1.6 billion in pre-tax cash proceeds, giving the businesses a total enterprise value of $2.8 billion. The deal includes 970 retail fueling sites, of which 843 are JET-branded stores. Phillips 66 said the proceeds will go toward debt reduction and shareholder returns. Last fall, Phillips 66 also sold off its Switzerland and Lichtenstein businesses. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Phillips 66 sells Euro businesses valued at $2.8 billion ahead of Elliott proxy fight vote
Phillips 66 said May 15 it will sell majority stakes in its Germany and Austria retail fueling business ahead of its heated proxy fight next week with Elliott Investment Management. Elliott is seeking to break Phillips 66 up after potentially gaining four board seats following May 21 votes, attempting to sell or spin off the oil refiner's pipeline, terminals, and petrochemicals businesses. Phillips 66 already had expressed a willingness to divest its European retail businesses last year, including its prior sale last fall of its Switzerland and Liechtenstein business. Phillips 66 is selling 65% stakes in the Germany and Austria businesses to a consortium led by Energy Equation Partners and Stonepeak that will bring in $1.6 billion in pre-tax cash proceeds, giving the businesses a total enterprise value of $2.8 billion. The deal includes 970 retail fueling sites, of which 843 are JET-branded stores. Phillips 66 said the proceeds will go toward debt reduction and shareholder returns. 'This transaction advances our strategy to optimize our portfolio and enhances long-term shareholder value,' said Mark Lashier, Phillips 66 chairman and CEO, in a statement. 'The newly formed joint venture allows us to monetize this non-core asset while retaining the ability to benefit from its future growth.' The ongoing proxy fight that comes to a head next week pits one of the energy sector's most storied players, against arguably the most influential activist fund manager in the world, led by billionaire Paul Singer. Elliott owns a nearly 6% stake in Phillips 66 and is pushing for major change, arguing that Phillips 66 has performed below peers such as Marathon Petroleum and Valero Energy, and that Phillips 66 needs to focus on its core oil refining business instead of continuing to grow its midstream pipeline and terminals businesses. Likewise, Chevron has expressed an interest in buying out Phillips 66's stake in its Chevron Phillips Chemical joint venture. That runs counter to Phillips 66's strategy of late to grow its midstream pipeline business, especially in natural gas liquids (NGLs), such as propane, butane, and ethane—the primary petrochemical feedstock, which Phillips 66 sees as its largest growth potential. Elliott notched wins earlier this week when prominent proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Glass Lewis, and Egan-Jones all sided with Elliott's proposed board changes in the proxy fight, arguing that Phillips 66 has regularly fallen short of market expectations in recent years. Elliott said in a prepared statement that 'ISS cited Phillips 66's disappointing operating performance, poor corporate governance, and 'track record of providing selective and ambiguous disclosure' as reasons to support Elliott's 'strong slate.' With all three proxy advisory firms having endorsed Elliott's case, it is clearer than ever that urgent and meaningful change is needed in the Phillips 66 boardroom.' Elliott also is pushing for a non-executive chair to lead the board. Phillips 66 countered that it disagrees with the proxy advisory firms' decisions, contending that they failed to properly examine Elliott's thesis for breaking up the company, and that they relied on outdated information and analyses. Lashier said Phillips 66 is in the early days of its transformation strategy and that it is producing stronger results of late. 'Elliott is seeking rapid, irreversible change in pursuit of a short-term thesis that would introduce significant risks to Phillips 66 shareholders,' Phillips 66 said in a statement. 'Do not let Elliott's short-term and misinformed thesis disrupt your consistent and compelling returns.' This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Western Digital Corporation (WDC): Among Billionaire Paul Singer's Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential
We recently published a list of Billionaire Paul Singer's 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) stands against other stock picks with huge upside potential. Paul Singer founded Elliott Investment Management in 1977 in New York. It is one of the oldest hedge funds under continuous management and is also one of the largest activist funds in the world. It is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates and Elliott International Limited. Launched in 1994, Elliott International Limited has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 index by ~5 percentage points annually since its inception, which is a track record mirrored by Elliott Associates. Paul Singer earned a BS in psychology from the University of Rochester and a JD from Harvard Law School. He then spent 4 years working in corporate law firms and the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before founding Elliott Investment Management. Elliott Management has 38 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $97.37 billion, according to the Form ADV dated 13 February 2025. The last reported 13F filing for Q4 2024 included $16.66 billion in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 82.44%. Singer has built a reputation on Wall Street for his aggressive tactics that often generate significant shareholder value by exploiting weaknesses in various asset classes. His initial approach to investing was to target companies and even governments while purchasing extremely distressed debt. In February 2025, Singer appeared on a Podcast titled 'In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen', where he also discussed what he believes is the reason behind bad investments. While bad luck remains a relevant factor, he believes that these failures result from oversights and inadequate and/or incorrect hedging strategies: 'Sometimes it's bad luck, but more frequently it's (that) we missed something. We missed. Or the hedges weren't, they weren't the right hedges. The tracking error was much more than we expected. At the beginning of my career, 1977 to like 1987, hedging was much more simple, because we were long a convertible bond and short the stock into which the convertible was convertible. So that's very straightforward. And tracking error wasn't really a factor. We've become much more sophisticated in hedging, in creating bespoke hedges for different kinds of trades. But even those don't work out exactly, you know, all the time. But sometimes, you know, the worst trades, and I don't mind mentioning them, it's a kind of a form of therapy and a pedagogical exercise. The worst trades are the trades that you misunderstand the risk. You put it into the wrong category.' To compile the list of billionaire Paul Singer's 10 stock picks with huge upside potential, we sifted through Q4 2024 13F filings of Elliott Management from Insider Monkey. From these filings, we checked the upside potential from CNN for the top 20 stock picks and ranked the stocks in ascending order of this upside potential. We have also added Elliott Management's stake in each stock as well as the broader hedge fund sentiment for it. Note: All data was sourced on May 8. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here). A data center filled with racks of hard disk drives and solid state drives. Elliott Management's Stake: $134.17 million Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 85 Average Upside Potential as of May 8: 30.93% Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) develops, manufactures, and sells data storage devices and solutions. It offers client devices, such as hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) for desktop and notebook personal computers (PCs), gaming consoles, and set-top boxes. It also offers external HDD storage products in mobile and desktop form. In FQ3 2025, the company's Cloud end market generated $2 billion in revenue, which made up 87% of the company's total revenue. This was also a 38% improvement year-over-year, which was fueled by the increasing need for mass storage solutions driven by the growth of data due to enterprise workloads and the surge in AI-generated content. While there was a 6% sequential decrease in near-line bit shipments due to customer deployment plans, the average price per unit in the cloud sector increased by 5% sequentially to $179. Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) has also secured long-term agreements that extend through H1 2026 with two of its largest cloud customers. On April 10, Benchmark upgraded the stock from Hold to Buy with a price target of $55 due to the company's developments in the flash memory and nearline drive segments. Parnassus Mid Cap Fund stated the following regarding Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) in its Q2 2024 investor letter: 'We re-initiated a position in Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC), a manufacturer of memory semiconductor chips and hard disk drives, as we believe earnings expectations are far too low. Semiconductors have been another of our most-alpha-generative industries, thanks to the industry's secular tailwinds and our in-house expertise. Western Digital stands to benefit from the rapid growth of memory-hungry AI applications. The valuation for Western Digital was low relative to its peers, giving us a way to participate in AI at a reasonable valuation.' Overall, WDC ranks 7th on our list of billionaire Paul Singer's stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of WDC as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than WDC but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Seadrill Limited (SDRL): Among Billionaire Paul Singer's Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential
We recently published a list of Billionaire Paul Singer's 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) stands against other stock picks with huge upside potential. Paul Singer founded Elliott Investment Management in 1977 in New York. It is one of the oldest hedge funds under continuous management and is also one of the largest activist funds in the world. It is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates and Elliott International Limited. Launched in 1994, Elliott International Limited has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 index by ~5 percentage points annually since its inception, which is a track record mirrored by Elliott Associates. Paul Singer earned a BS in psychology from the University of Rochester and a JD from Harvard Law School. He then spent 4 years working in corporate law firms and the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before founding Elliott Investment Management. Elliott Management has 38 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $97.37 billion, according to the Form ADV dated 13 February 2025. The last reported 13F filing for Q4 2024 included $16.66 billion in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 82.44%. Singer has built a reputation on Wall Street for his aggressive tactics that often generate significant shareholder value by exploiting weaknesses in various asset classes. His initial approach to investing was to target companies and even governments while purchasing extremely distressed debt. In February 2025, Singer appeared on a Podcast titled 'In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen', where he also discussed what he believes is the reason behind bad investments. While bad luck remains a relevant factor, he believes that these failures result from oversights and inadequate and/or incorrect hedging strategies: 'Sometimes it's bad luck, but more frequently it's (that) we missed something. We missed. Or the hedges weren't, they weren't the right hedges. The tracking error was much more than we expected. At the beginning of my career, 1977 to like 1987, hedging was much more simple, because we were long a convertible bond and short the stock into which the convertible was convertible. So that's very straightforward. And tracking error wasn't really a factor. We've become much more sophisticated in hedging, in creating bespoke hedges for different kinds of trades. But even those don't work out exactly, you know, all the time. But sometimes, you know, the worst trades, and I don't mind mentioning them, it's a kind of a form of therapy and a pedagogical exercise. The worst trades are the trades that you misunderstand the risk. You put it into the wrong category.' To compile the list of billionaire Paul Singer's 10 stock picks with huge upside potential, we sifted through Q4 2024 13F filings of Elliott Management from Insider Monkey. From these filings, we checked the upside potential from CNN for the top 20 stock picks and ranked the stocks in ascending order of this upside potential. We have also added Elliott Management's stake in each stock as well as the broader hedge fund sentiment for it. Note: All data was sourced on May 8. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here). Drilling rig silhouetted against a setting sun in an offshore location. Elliott Management's Stake: $144.19 million Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 42 Average Upside Potential as of May 8: 66.08% Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) provides offshore drilling services to the oil & gas industry worldwide. It owns and operates drill ships and semi-submersible rigs for operations in shallow and ultra-deep water in benign and harsh environments. It serves oil super-majors, state-owned national oil companies, and independent oil and gas companies. The company reported a $1.3 billion contracted backlog in 2024, which saw a net increase of $700 million during the year. This backlog provides revenue visibility, which extends through 2028 and into 2029, with ~90% of the midpoint of the 2025 revenue guidance already secured within this backlog. This revenue guidance is between $1.3 and $1.36 billion. According to the CEO, Seadrill is positioned to navigate market volatility due to a strong balance sheet and durable backlog. Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) secured two significant long-term contract awards in Brazil in December 2024 as well, which are to commence in 2026. These added $1 billion to the company's backlog and included a mobilization fee exceeding $70 million. These awards for the West Jupiter and the West Telus are for 3-year terms each with Petrobras. Patient Capital Opportunity Equity Strategy is positive on the company and stated the following regarding Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) in its Q1 2025 investor letter: 'Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) is the fourth largest pure play deepwater drilling specialist. The company emerged from bankruptcy in February 2022 with a net cash position and is positioned to benefit from limited supply and increasing demand in the deepwater drilling rig market. Nearly half of all deepwater drilling rigs worldwide were scrapped during the last decade, while industry consolidation has created a more rational competitive landscape than we've seen historically. Although oil demand has remained reasonably healthy, surprisingly strong onshore production from the USA, Canada and Russia has helped keep a lid on prices. While this has negatively impacted contract rates near-term, we believe that long-term future shale supply growth will be limited, and more offshore supply will be required benefitting offshore drillers. Given its highly specialized rig fleet and minimal debt, we believe the company is well positioned to benefit from improving prices when demand rebounds. We believe Seadrill could either lead industry consolidation or become an acquisition target.' Overall, SDRL ranks 2nd on our list of billionaire Paul Singer's stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of SDRL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SDRL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Sign in to access your portfolio
