After selling Apple, these are the stocks value investor Bill Nygren is buying now

Published Thu, Jul 16 20203:37 PM EDT

Kevin Stankiewicz @in/kevinstankiewicz @kevin_stank

(This story is for CNBC Pro subscribers only.) Value investor Bill Nygren told CNBC on Thursday he has exited his Apple position after more than a decade and started buying the stocks of T-Mobile , among other names. "Most of the time that we owned Apple, it was selling at below a market multiple so the only thing you needed to believe to justify holding it was that it was at least an average company and that for us was a really easy thing to believe about Apple," the Oakmark Fund 's portfolio manager said on "Halftime Report." Nygren said the fund earned over 25 times its money across the years it owned Apple, which was trading around $385 per share Thursday. Here are the stocks it's betting on now. Nygren said there's value to be had in T-Mobile following its major merger with Sprint that officially closed April 1 . The deal faced antitrust scrutiny , but the two companies argued it would allow them to form a stronger competitor to take on Verizon and AT & T while building out a robust 5G network. The combination of the two firms will have cost savings, but it may be two to four years down the road before they're fully realized, Nygren explained. "That tends to be beyond the time frame that most investors are willing to pay up for." He said he believes T-Mobile now has more network capacity, and a more quality network, than Verizon and AT & T. But the enterprise value of T-Mobile's stock is "a fraction" of its two main competitors," Nygren said. "We really like the entrepreneurial management that T-Mobile brings to the table," said Nygren, who added that Softbank's large sale of T-Mobile stock last month "gave us an opportunity to get in at a price we felt was very attractive." Shares of T-Mobile were slightly negative Thursday, trading down less than 1% at around $104 per share. The stock is up about 32% so far in 2020. General Dynamics Aerospace and defense company General Dynamics is another recent purchase for Nygren's fund. The stock sells at about 10 times estimates for 2022 earnings, Nygren said, explaining that he believes that will be the "first normal year for the economy" following the coronavirus-induced upheaval. "That's about 60% of the S & P multiple, and it sells about 20-25% below the other defense contractors so the way we think about it is, we're effectively getting Gulfstream, the premier private aviation company, for free," said Nygren. General Dynamics, which is the parent company of Gulfstream , has seen its stoc