Mariko Gordon (Trades, Portfolio) established three new positions in a $1.6 billion portfolio of 55 holdings during the final months of 2017.
The founder of Daruma Capital Management kicked off positions in Twinkies maker Hostess Brands Inc. (TWNK, Financial), application software provider Hortonworks Inc. (HDP, Financial) and Neenah Inc. (NP, Financial), a premium paper company.
Hostess
Gordon was joined by guru investor Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio) in establishing a new position in the fourth quarter.
Guru Julian Robertson (Trades, Portfolio) exited the stock during the quarter after holding 40,000 shares.
Gordon bought 3.67 million shares of Hostess for an average price of $13.16 a share. The new holding takes up 3.39% of the portfolio.
In afternoon trading, the Dallas-based company’s shares were down 1.27% to $12.80 a share. Shares of the company have dropped 18% over the last 12 months.
The packaged foods company has a market cap of $1.65 billion, a financial strength rating of 4 in 10 and profitability and growth rating of 6 in 10.
The company’s financial indicator is attributed to a 12-month decline in revenue and a short interest of 37.94%.
Hortonworks
Greenblatt also purchased shares alongside Gordon. Guru George Soros (Trades, Portfolio) exited in the quarter after purchasing 34,000 shares in the third quarter.
Gordon purchased 2.7 million shares of the investment that takes up 3.4% of the portfolio. Cost was an average of $18.33 a share.
Santa Clara, California-based Hortonworks, which was incorporated in 2011, was trading at $18.28 a share on Friday, down 0.98%. The company’s shares have jumped 74% in the last 12 months.
The company has a market cap of $1.3 billion. It is rated 5 of 10 in financial strength and in profitability and growth.
The company’s revenue per share has been in decline over the past three years, but it has no debt.
Hortonworks develops and supports the Hadoop open source project from the Apache Software Foundation. Its solution is an enterprise-grade data management platform built on a distribution of Apache Hadoop and powered by YARN. Its competitors include Cloudera and MapR Technologies, as well as enterprise software and infrastructure vendors that offer Hadoop distributions, such as IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL) and Pivotal Software.
Neenah
The paper products company takes up 1.35% of the portfolio. Gordon paid an average of $87 a share and bought 238,000 shares.
Neenah was down 1% to $79 a share in afternoon trading.
The company’s stock has gone up by 4% in the last 12 months.
The Georgia-based company has a market cap of $1.33 billion, and a financial strength rating of 6 in 10 and profitability and growth rating of 8 in 10.
GuruFocus gave it points for a Piotroski-F Score that is high, a price-book ratio that is close to a one-year low and an expanding operating margin.
One red flag is the company’s asset growth is at a quicker pace compared to revenue growth.
