Stanley Druckenmiller‘s Duquesne Family Office LLC offloaded its stake in this famous artificial intelligence stock as it kept building a stake in this dividend-yielding tobacco company as of the end of the first quarter of 2025.
What Happened: Druckenmiller, who is the founder and the former chairman and president of Duquesne Family Office, reduced the fund’s holdings from 78 positions as of the fourth quarter of 2024 to 52 positions in the first quarter of 2025.
While the fund exited many companies and trimmed a lot of its positions, the most, so to speak, shocking exit was from the key AI player Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR).
Meanwhile, the fund has built a stake in Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) since the second quarter of 2024 and now holds 1.105 million shares in the tobacco company, with products sold in over 180 countries.
| Company | Holdings (as of Dec. 31) | Holdings (as of March 31) | Change (in %) | Value (as of March 31) |
| Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) | 41,710 | 0 | -100% | 0 |
| Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) | 1,352,255 | 1,105,268 | -18% | $175.439 million |
Despite a reduction in its stake by 18% from the fourth to the first quarter, the value of Philip Morris increased $163 million to $175 million. Before this period, the fund last held the stock during the first quarter of 2016.
The stock represented 5.7% of the total holdings of the Duquesne Family Office and has a dividend yield of 3% as per the Benzinga Pro data. It has gained 48.56% on a year-to-date basis and 71.23% over a year.
On the other hand, the fund was holding Palantir from the first quarter of 2021 to the same quarter of 2023. It again bought a stake in the firm during the first quarter of 2024 before completely exiting the stock in the first quarter of 2025..
There is a reasonable chance that this selling activity in Palantir represented nothing more than simple profit-taking. This comes as the stock has risen 88.99% on a year-to-date basis and 395.64% over the last year.
Why It Matters: Apart from Palantir, the fund exited major positions from names like Skechers USA Inc. (NYSE:SKX), SLM Corp. (NASDAQ:SLM), Warner Bros Discovery Inc. (NASDAQ:WBD), and American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ:AAL).
Meanwhile, it also built new positions in firms like Docusign Inc. (NASDAQ:DOCU), CCC Intelligent Solutions Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CCCS), EQT Corp. (NYSE:EQT), and Caesars Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ:CZR).
Price Action: The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, fell on Friday. The SPY was down 0.35% at $623.62, while the QQQ declined 0.23% to $554.20, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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