Gravel and Toll Roads: What London’s Big Stock Pickers Bought
Chris Hohn’s TCI finished selling Microsoft and bought aggregates. Terry Smith went the other way on Alphabet.
Europe (London). Two of London’s most closely followed money managers disclosed their US holdings for the second quarter in August, and they rarely agreed.
Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management, the activist hedge fund, finished selling Microsoft. It had already cut about 84% of the stake in the first quarter, a sale worth around $8 billion, according to InvestorLens. In came two US aggregates producers, Martin Marietta ($758 million) and Vulcan Materials ($722 million), each about 1.4% of the 13F portfolio, per Daniel Scrivner’s breakdown of the filing. TCI also added to Alphabet, Visa and S&P Global. A new $1.43 billion Ferrovial line appears to reflect the Spanish-Dutch infrastructure group’s re-domiciliation rather than a fresh bet. GE Aerospace remains the anchor at 33.6% of the reported portfolio, with Visa at 19.8%.
Terry Smith’s Fundsmith, the long-only equity house, exited Mettler Toledo and Zoetis and opened Uber, Mastercard, Taiwan Semiconductor, Netflix and GE Vernova, according to 41 Investments. It cut Alphabet by 40%, Philip Morris by 43% and Visa by 35%.
## The read-across
Both managers favor businesses that collect a fee on economic activity, but they disagree on who collects best: Hohn added to Visa and Alphabet as Smith trimmed both. Aggregates are the quieter idea, crushed stone and gravel being the unglamorous base layer of roads, buildings and data centers.
## The caveats
A 13F covers only US-listed long positions as of 30 June, so TCI’s European holdings and any hedges are invisible, and both books may have moved since. Aggregates demand follows construction, which is sensitive to borrowing costs at a moment when the Fed has resumed raising rates. Third-quarter filings land in mid-November.
Sources: Daniel Scrivner, InvestorLens, 41 Investments. This is information, not investment advice.
