Two NHC investors vote with 'sell' orders

NY fund run by company director among the sellers of stock that has missed rally

Email | Print By Geert De Lombaerde

Two of National HealthCare Corp.'s largest investors have been steady sellers of the company in recent months, trimming their combined stake in the nursing home operator by more than 470,000 shares, or about 3.5 percent of all outstanding stock.

The sales have come as NHC shares, which are generally considered to be a conservative bet, have completely missed the 50-percent rally in the broader market. The stock (Ticker: NHC) is essentially flat since March 6 while the S&P 500 Index has risen 54 percent over that time.

The most active NHC seller since the spring has been Ira Sochet, a former Drexel Burnham Lambert exec who has held a noteworthy stake in the Murfreesboro-based company since 2005 and has regularly added to or trimmed his holdings.

From early March until this past Monday, Sochet sold about 300,000 NHC shares — more than 100,000 of them since Aug. 20 — lowering his stake to 5.6 percent from 7.8 percent.

New York-based 1818 Fund II LP also has been lowering its stake in NHC since the spring. The fund is managed by Brown Brothers Harriman, which has an 11-year representative on the board in the form of Larry Tucker. In NHC's proxy this past spring, 1818 was listed as owning 5.9 percent of NHC's shares. This week, it declared that it owned 4.6 percent, a difference of about 170,000 shares.