Jericho Capital Asset Management kept surging in June, capping a strong first half to the year.
Josh Resnick’s hedge fund firm posted a 5.3 percent rise last month in its flagship long-short fund, boosting the gain for the first six months to 37.3 percent, according to two people who have seen the results. The fund currently manages about $3 billion.
The more concentrated Jericho Capital Special Opportunities fund, which manages about $400 million, jumped 8.5 percent in June and is now up 76.4 percent for the year, says someone who has seen the results.
Even more noteworthy, Jericho made about 60 percent of its gains from longs and 40 percent from shorts, an investor notes. Although this is not unusual for Jericho, it is remarkable given that the S&P 500 was up significantly in the first half of the year. Jericho declined to comment.
Resnick founded the firm in 2009. Jericho currently manages about $3 billion and focuses on tech, media and entertainment, telecom, and consumer issues. It was up 20.2 percent in 2023, so it is solidly above its high-water mark despite losing 23 percent in 2022.
Institutional Investor previously reported that in the first quarter, Jericho bought 613,000 shares of streaming giant Netflix at a value of $372 million. It is not known exactly when Jericho bought the stock or the price it paid. Netflix immediately became the firm’s largest long, representing nearly 10 percent of the U.S. stock portfolio. In the second quarter, the stock was up about 11 percent.
In the first quarter, Jericho also nearly tripled its stake in AppLovin Corp., which became the second-largest long, accounting for about 7.2 percent of the U.S. stock portfolio’s capital. The company produces software that helps market, monetize, and analyze apps. The stock more than doubled in the first half.
Meanwhile, No. 3 long Nutanix, which sells software for data centers among other things, was up 19 percent in the first half. Jericho also benefited from a couple of Magnificent Seven stocks — most prominently, chip giant Nvidia, which surged 150 percent in the first half. In the first quarter, the stock was the fourth-largest long, even after the firm trimmed its position by about 20 percent. Facebook parent Meta Systems was the sixth-largest long, despite Jericho unloading more than 38 percent of its shares. It was up 42 percent in the first six months.
Other key holdings were up by double digits in first-half 2024, including online sports betting platform DraftKings and software company Cadence Design Systems.