UBS filing on Clorox drives ‘activist speculation’ at Gordon Haskett

Gordon Haskett event-driven research analyst Don Bilson notes UBS “filed a perfectly innocuous 13G” at Clorox (CLX) back in January and the firm was “interested to see on Friday” that UBS filed a new 13G on Clorox that seems to imply that most of its year-end position was held outside of asset management. A 13G amendment was also filed on Friday and it suggests that the position held outside of asset management has been sold by the end of March, the firm added. While “tough to make heads or tails of all this but here is a theory that works for us … an activist bought a large position on swap and for reasons that aren’t clear, the position was labeled incorrectly in January,” the firm explains. The firm goes on to state: “Maybe, just maybe, all this will come out ahead of the 13F filings we see in a couple of weeks. Or sooner via a 13D filing, although that probably would have been out by now if our activist speculation were true.”