By Daniel Shvartsman
Investing.com -- George Soros's fund Soros Fund Management opened new positions in Horizon Therapeutics (NASDAQ:HZNP) and First Horizon National Corporation (NYSE:FHN), while also nearly doubling its position in Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and trimming its position in Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Soros Fund Management opened a position worth $325M in Horizon Therapeutics as of the firm's Form 13F filing, which dates to December 31st and was published yesterday. The pharmaceutical company agreed to a buy out by Amgen Inc (NASDAQ:AMGN) late last year, and trades more than 6.3% below its agreed deal price of $116.5. First Horizon National Corporation is another merger arbitrage play, as the bank is due to be bought out by Toronto Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD) in a deal expected to close at the end of the quarter. This comes after Soros's fund successfully held merger arbitrage positions in Duke Realty (NYSE:DRE), Twitter, and Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co Ltd (NYSE:BHVN) last quarter.
Soros's fund also nearly doubled its position in Alphabet, increasing the Class A shares position by 73% and adding a small Class C share position. This filing's data predates the recent angst over ChatGPT, and Alphabet is up only 7% this year, lagging the Nasdaq. Soros Fund reduced its position in Amazon by more than half, dropping from 1.98M shares in the company to 901K.
Other new positions included Altra Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:AIMC), common stock and put holdings in Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE:COF) and Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS), and a new call position in Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Soros Fund Management also increased positions in Cboe Global Markets Inc (NYSE:CBOE), Tesla's common stock, 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD), Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), and Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS).
The fund decreased positions in D.R. Horton Inc (BVMF:D1HI34), Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), and Nike (NYSE:NKE). It also liquidated positions in Atlassian (NASDAQ:TEAM), Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE:BK), Global Blood Therapeutics (NASDAQ:GBT), and Zoom Video Communications Inc (NASDAQ:ZM).
While there's limited public reporting on George Soros's performance last year, according to the tracking on InvestingPro, his holdings measured from end of quarter to end of quarter have gained 9.5% in value in the last year, versus -3% in the SPDR® S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY).