As 2014 drew to a close, the Yacktman Fund (Trades, Portfolio) reported adding to two of its largest stakes, Oracle (ORCL, Financial) and Procter & Gamble (PG, Financial) while reducing its holdings in a third, PepsiCo (PEP, Financial).
The Yacktman Fund (Trades, Portfolio) bought 3,810,000 shares of Oracle, increasing the firm’s stake to 17 million shares and making it the fifth-largest holding in the Fund’s portfolio. Yacktman purchased the shares for an average price of $40.65 per share.
Oracle is a software company that was founded in Santa Clara, California, in 1977. Currently headquartered in Redwood City, California, Oracle has more than 120,000 employees and was the second-largest software maker (by revenue) behind Microsoft (MSFT, Financial) in 2011.
Oracle’s co-founder, Larry Ellison, announced in September that he planned to step down as CEO to become Oracle’s chairman and CTO.
The Fund’s purchase of 500,000 shares of Procter & Gamble brought its stake in the company to 11,745,000 shares, less than 500,000 shares behind PepsiCo, the seventh-largest stake in the Fund’s portfolio. The shares were purchased for an average price of $87.94 per share.
Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble is a consumer goods company that was founded in 1837 by a candlemaker and a soapmaker who married sisters and became business partners. The company, which had already achieved $1 million in sales, was awarded a contract to provide soap and candles to the Union army during the Civil War.
In 2013, Procter & Gamble was estimated to have 122,000 employees.
In August 2014, the company announced that it was dropping about 100 of its brands in order to focus on the brands that produced more than 90% of its profits.
Earlier this week, Procter & Gamble declared a quarterly dividend of $0.6436 per share. “P&G has been paying a dividend for 124 consecutive years since its incorporation in 1890,” the company’s website reported, “and has increased its dividend for 58 consecutive years.”
While the Yacktman Fund (Trades, Portfolio) was increasing its stake in Procter & Gamble, it was reducing its stake in PepsiCo, a food and beverage company that was founded in North Carolina in the 1880s and is presently headquartered in New York, by 495,000 shares. The shares were sold for an average price of $95.9. That brought the Fund's holding in the company down to 12,160,000 shares.
