Who owns Tweeter
The roster of Tweeter Home Entertainment Group Inc.'s largest shareholders keeps moving around, as you might expect with a company in serious financial trouble. Institutions, hedge funds and others take a risk, others get cold feet. Here's a look at what some of Tweeter's largest investors have been doing with their stock this year.
Wellington Management had been Tweeter's largest shareholder, owning nearly 13.2 percent of the company. But Wellington updated its SEC disclosure about 15 minutes after Tweeter announced it filed for bankruptcy court protection yesterday. The filing said Wellington had sold its entire Tweeter position by May 31.
Adage Capital Partners, a Boston hedge fund, had been Tweeter's third-largest shareholder with a 6.7 percent interest in the company. In its most recent filing, Adage said it had added 50,000 Tweeter shares during the first quarter of the year, for a total of 1.7 million shares.
Weston Presidio, a venture capital and private equity firm in Boston and California, had been Tweeter's fourth-largest stockholder owning 1.2 million shares as of last month. That stake represents a 4.7 percent interest in the company. Weston Presidio had financed Tweeter as far back as 1996, two years before the company went public, to help fund its expansion plans.
Portolan Capital Management of Boston had been Tweeter's No. 7 stockholder with 624,793 shares, which represents a 2.4 percent interest in the company. Portolan had trimmed its Tweeter holdings during the first quarter, selling 136,547 shares. I don't know Portolan, but Bloomberg News describes the firm's chief investment officer, George McCabe, as a former research analyst at the office of Peter Lynch and the Lynch Foundation. Wonder where Portolan got its seed money?
Fidelity Investments, once a big Tweeter stockholder, sold 1.9 million shares during the first quarter of the year. It owned 424,065 shares, or 1.7 percent of the company, on March 31.
And then there is Mark Wattles, who sold all his 3 million shares last December. Wattles, the chief executive of Tweeter rival Ultimate Electronics Inc., looked like a potential bidder when he bought his stock in 2005 but insisted his acquired the stock as an investment. It turned out to be a loser. All of his many share purchases were executed at prices above $2.17 per share, the price at which he sold his stock. On the other hand, $2.17 sounds much better than 26 cents, the closing price of Tweeter shares yesterday.
