Thursday, June 7, 2007

Al Gore and Green Investing

I received a question yesterday about Al Gore's investment company, Generation Investment Management. I hadn't looked at them in a while so I pulled their last couple SEC filings.

It appears they lost money in the first quarter of 2007.

GIM started Q1 2007 with 19 names in the portfolio, sold two and added a new one, ending with 18 positions.

Portfolio value started the quarter at $206 million and ended at $232.5 million. The increase appears to be due to cash inflows.

In addition to the two liquidations, they peeled off some Techne.
GIM added to 15 of the positions, almost tripling Blackbaud from 183K to 545K shares and raising Nuveen from 142K to 380K.

The portfolio doesn't seem exceptionally green, although I like Johnson Controls and the biggest position is GE (among the Ecomagination businesses: Enron's wind business and the new hybrid locomotive, HT: Treehugger)

For proof GIM is as human as the rest of us, they sold their Aquantive position before MSFT bid for the AQNT, leaving a 130% move for someone else.
For comparison, the S&P 500 went from 1418.30 to 1420.86.
Here's the Q4 2006 13F
Here's the Q1 2007 13F
Here's GIM's website.

Edit: 10:07 Here's some news on one of their positions: "Metabolix licenses bioplastic tech from UMass Lowell"