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- Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn’s annual presentation to investors called 2018 "the year we weren’t right about anything."
- Greenlight, which has fallen to roughly $5 billion in assets as investors left the fund due to poor performance, finished 2018 down 34%, but is off to a good start in 2019.
- The presentation, given at the end of January, features cartoon strips and New Yorker comics to describe the firm’s feelings on different investments, like Tesla, General Motors and Brighthouse Financial.
Billionaire David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital has battled outflows and poor performance over the last several years, knocking his fund down from more than $12 billion to its current asset total of about $5 billion.
2018 was the biggest knock yet. The fund lost 34% in 2018, which Einhorn called "the year where we didn’t get anything right" in a January 22 presentation to investors.
The 96-slide presentation details different investments that went awry, staffing changes, expectations for 2019 and more — all summarized by different New Yorker cartoons.
Below is a summarized version of Einhorn’s presentation with the comics that he selected.
A tough 2018
Greenlight Capital partner presentation
According to a chart in the presentation, Greenlight only finished two months with positive returns, May and October, while ending five months with returns of -6% or worse.
Within Einhorn’s portfolio, both the short and long positions lost money. Short positions in Netflix and Tesla clipped returns, and December’s market rout hurt several stocks like General Motors and Brighthouse Financial that Einhorn was bullish on.
Tesla short
Greenlight Capital partner presentation
Tesla’s bumpy ride through 2018 — which included CEO and founder Elon Musk smoking weed on a podcast and relinquishing the chairman position after he tweeted about taking the company private — was tough on Einhorn, who shorted the stock several times in 2018.
A slide in the presentation shows that Greenlight shorted the stock after Musk settled with the SEC in late September only to see the stock price jump on the positive third quarter earnings and sales numbers.
Einhorn will continue to have a short position on the car manufacturer in 2019, the presentation states.
Musk has railed against short-sellers out Twitter in the past, claiming they are out to get him and that "short-selling should be illegal."
Tesla did not immediately return requests for comment.
Loading up on GM
Greenlight Capital partner presentation
General Motors has begun to shift into the latest fads in transportation, like electric-only and driverless cars, but 2018 was a hard year for the long-time automaker. There were layoffs and plant closures, and the stock suffered because of it.
See more: These are the five leaders in the self-driving-car race
Einhorn, who is still heavily invested in GM in 2019, cites the progress the company has made on automated driving technology as one of the factors for staying with the stock instead of cutting his losses.
A spokesman for GM declined to comment.
Greenlight’s 2019 internal changes
Greenlight Capital partner presentation
Greenlight is undergoing some changes in 2019. The firm will begin accepting new capital starting in March, after being "closed since 2000, with six periodic capital openings."
"We don’t believe there is a risk of our assets growing too quickly (other than through better performance)," a slide reads.
The presentation also mentions the firm’s new chief compliance officer, Steven Rosen, who was previously the chief compliance officer for Citadel’s Surveyor Capital unit for six years. The firm also added three three new research analysts at the end of last year, the presentation states.
Einhorn’s ‘2020 vision’
Greenlight Capital partner presentation
It’s unclear if Einhorn is commenting on the 2020 presidential election in this cartoon or his own future, but one of the last slides of the long presentation lets partners know that he thinks there won’t be a lot of openings for a "wise person" in the future.
Einhorn has given money to Democrats in the past, though he co-hosted a fundraiser for the bipartisan PAC Keep America Competitive in 2012 with fellow billionaire Leonard Tannenbaum. One of his most recent political contributions in 2018, was for independent Senate Candidate Neal Simon of Maryland, who is also a financial advisor.
A spokesman for Greenlight could not be reached for comment.
See Also:
- Hedge funds went from a niche market to a $3 trillion titan, but became a victim of their own success thanks to their biggest investors
- The shock surge in US car-loan delinquencies gives a clue why the Fed is treading carefully even in a booming economy
- Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square says it’s ‘returning to its roots,’ and it shed a third of its staff in 2018 as part of the journey
Source: Business Insider – bsaacks@businessinsider.com (Bradley Saacks)