Ken Griffin‘s Citadel Investment Group has considerably surged the position in Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL). According to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the fund now owns 5.31 million shares – 7.20% of the company’s common stock outstanding. Previously, Citadel Investment held 1.51 million shares of the company.
Operating 503 stores, including an online store, in 44 U.S. states and Puerto Rico, Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL) is a U.S. company offering fashionable branded products including women’s ready-to-wear apparel, menswear, youth apparel, and home goods using an Every Day Low Price model with savings up to 60-70% off department and specialty store regular prices. Recently, the company announced that it closed its public secondary offering of 12.00 million shares of its common stock at a price of $25.75 per share.
In 2013, Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL) generated profits of $16.15 million or $0.22 per share, up from the previous year’s result of $25.30 million or $-1.75 per share. In the company’s operating results for fiscal year ended February 1, 2014 report, Tom Kingsbury, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, said “For the year, we achieved a comparable store sales increase of 4.7%, an increase in Adjusted EBITDA of 15.6%, Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 70 basis points, and a 17.9% increase in Adjusted Net Income. These results benefited from strong fourth quarter comps of 4.0% as we continued to improve the execution of our off-price model.” Losing 12.50% year-to-date, the company’s shares currently trade at around $28.00 per share. Providing a target price of $33.50, market experts recommend that investors buy Burlington’s shares.
Led by Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson, Adage Capital Management owns 1.77 million shares of Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL). Another large shareholder of Burlington is Alexander Mitchell‘s Scopus Asset Management, which holds some 925,000 shares of the company.
Ken Griffin manages a $76.78 billion worth equity portfolio, nearly half of which is invested in the Services and Technology Sectors. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is among Griffin’s favorite picks, the fund holding almost 1.60 million shares with a total current market value of around $931.20 million.
Disclosure: This article was written by Casey Sanders. Casey does not hold any positions in any of the stocks mentioned in the article.
