UPDATE: SAC Capital's Cohen Doubles Stake in Sprint Nextel

Investor Steven Cohen's SAC Capital, which has been wrestling with fallout from an insider-trading investigation, reported that it doubled its stake in Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) in the fourth quarter and also loaded up on shares of Time Warner Inc. (TWX), Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV).

Its holdings of Sprint jumped to 22.2 million shares, worth about $101 million at Monday's closing price, from 11.8 million shares at the end of the third quarter.

SAC reported 1,843 holdings at the end of December, excluding exemptions. That is down from 1,871 at the end of September, though the portfolio gained value over the intervening months, ending December at $15 billion, up from $12.8 billion at the end of September.

In addition to Sprint, SAC substantially increased its stake in Time Warner to 1,988,888 shares, worth about $69.5 million at Monday's closing price, from 29,628 shares. Cohen also more than tripled his stake in Comcast to 3.89 million shares, worth about $89.5 million, from a total of 1.04 million shares over two share classes.

He also loaded up on DirecTV, reporting 2.7 million shares, up from 11,651 at the end of September, worth about $116 million. His holdings of oil giant BP PLC (BP) increased from just over 1,000 shares to 1.7 million shares, worth about $82 million as of Monday. Cohen held call options on 342,000 shares at the end of September but he did not report that holding for December.

SAC Capital also reported a stake of 629,235 shares in Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD); it had no stake in AMD at the end of the third quarter.

While adding to his positions in TV providers, he was unloading shares of BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. (BJ), reducing his stake by 463,903 shares, to 1.1 million shares. He reduced a stake in General Electric Co. (GE) by nearly 3 million shares to 5.6 million at the end of December.

Cohen and his closely watched hedge fund have drawn unwanted scrutiny in recent months. Last week, two of SAC's former employees were ensnared in an ongoing federal probe of insider trading. A spokesman for the fund said last week the firm is "outraged" by the alleged actions of the former employees and that it was cooperating in the investigation.

-By Liz Moyer, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2512; liz.moyer@dowjones.com

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