Tesaro: All Antitrust Approvals Received

All of the required antitrust approvals have been received. This deal is pretty much a done…

From today’s filing: "On January 16, 2019, the FCO issued a clearance decision with respect to the Offer and the Merger, and the FCA provided a (declaratory) confirmation of clearance with respect to the Offer and the Merger. Accordingly, the portion of the Offer Conditions relating to approval by the FCO and the FCA of the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement has been satisfied."

US Antitrust Approval Received for Tesaro

One down and two to go with the antitrust approvals for GlaxoSmithKline’s acquisition of Tesaro. US antitrust approval was received, which should not be a surprise. Now just waiting for the German and Australian antitrust approvals.

Form today’s SEC filing: “On December 31, 2018, at 11:59 P.M., New York City time, the applicable waiting period under the HSR Act expired. Accordingly, the portion of the conditions of the Offer relating to the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the HSR Act in respect of the Transactions has been satisfied.”

2018 Performance

Let’s just say what a year... I ended the year down 4.11%, which stinks. It’s my first losing year in recent memory. I was tracking well for the first 3 quarters and then the bottom fell out in Q4. Overall I generated a slight gain from my arb plays with decent gains from Juno Therapeutics, Bioverativ and AveXis. On the other hand I got a bit sloppy with NXP Semiconductors, Rent-A-Center, iKang Healthcare Group and CA Technologies, which pretty much negated the positive returns from the successful arb positions. Even though I was able to beat the S&P 500 (negative return of 6.2%), a loss is still a loss.

I did take a nice beating in one of my larger long positions in Constellation Brands. Ever since Constellation Brands took a majority stake in Canopy Growth, the stock has headed in a downward trajectory. Constellation Brands ended the year down ~ 27%. Other big losers include Apple (down ~ 8.50%) and Alibaba (down ~ 26.7%). What saved my portfolio were positions in MasterCard (up ~ 22.2% and Visa up ~14.8%). Visa now makes up my largest portfolio holding surpassing Constellation Brands.

Looking at 2019, I’ll continue to keep a healthy cash position and pretty much maintain my long positions as is. I currently have one arb play and that is Tesaro, which could close in ~ 2 weeks. Other than that… I’ll be on the sidelines looking for high probability arb plays.

Hope everyone have a Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

2018 Performance = -4.11% with the running monthly returns as follows:

January +2.80%
February +2.82%
March -0.03%
April +2.10%
May +6.25%
June -1.51%
July +1.53%

August +5.1%

September -0.60%

October -8.78%

November -3.00%

December -9.50%

Annual performance for the past seven years is as follows:

2012 +61%
2013 +44.61%
2014 +29.47%
2015 +33.48%
2016 +14.61%
2017 +42.12%

2018 -4.11%