After reporting another strong monthly gain in August, Glenview Capital Management is on pace for its best results in five years. The long-short hedge fund firm headed by Larry Robbins climbed 3.5 percent last month in its flagship Glenview Capital Partners, extending its increase for the year to 17.46 percent, according to an investor.
The fund jumped 16.6 percent in the first quarter, followed by a rise of less than 1 percent since then. But with four months to go, Glenview has more or less matched last year’s return and is within shooting distance of its 26.2 percent return in 2019.
Glenview Opportunity, a more concentrated fund, is performing in line with the flagship. It was up 3.45 percent in August and 17.2 percent through the first eight months of 2024, the investor says. Glenview’s small health care fund rose 1.5 percent in August and 19.1 percent for the year, according to the investor.
Several years ago, Glenview was known for having a health care–heavy portfolio. This has changed in recent years as it has diversified into tech and other companies. At the end of second-quarter 2024, just six of Glenview’s 11 largest U.S. long positions were health care–related, according to the second-quarter 13F regulatory filing.
One of the firm’s biggest winners this year is a longtime health care–related holding. Shares of Tenet Healthcare, an operator of hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers, were up 120 percent over the first eight months of the year. At the end of the second quarter, Tenet was Glenview’s largest U.S long position, accounting for roughly 12 percent of assets, per the filing. The hedge fund firm cut its stake by more than 26 percent in the second quarter and has slashed the position by about 40 percent since year-end.
Shares of No. 3 long Cigna, the managed health care and insurance giant, were up about 20 percent this year through August. In the second quarter, CVS became Glenview’s second-largest long after the investment firm boosted its stake by 440 percent. Over the past two months, the stock has dropped more than 3 percent.
Glenview benefited in August from the shares of Global Payments, its fourth-largest position in U.S. stocks at the end of June. The stock was up more than 9 percent last month. Glenview boosted the stake by more than 30 percent in the second quarter, according to the filing.
Corteva, Glenview’s fifth-largest long, is up nearly 19 percent for the year. It is a chemicals and seeds company that was the agricultural unit of DowDuPont before being spun off as an independent public company. Corteva was Glenview’s third-largest long at the end of the first quarter, but the hedge fund cut its stake by one-fourth in the June quarter, per filings.
Meanwhile, in the past nine months, Glenview has aggressively cut its exposure to the most widely held tech and internet companies. At year-end 2023, it liquidated its stake in Microsoft.
In the second quarter, it sold its remaining shares of Meta Platforms. And over the past three quarters, Glenview has slashed its stake in Amazon by more than 60 percent.