저자: BillAckman · 외국인
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Pershing Square가 50억 달러 규모 미국 상장(PSUS 등 폐쇄형 구조)을 마쳤다. 애크먼은 기존 보유 종목(우버, 메타 등)을 추가 매수하겠다고 밝히고, 주가가 극단적으로 싸졌으며 최고 품질 기업의 예상 IRR이 20%대 중반이라고 주장한다. 이란 전쟁과 해협 봉쇄로 유가 급등(약 116달러)이 있지만 단기적 현상으로 보고, 향후 연준 금리 인하와 AI·에너지 투자 확대를 근거로 시장 낙관. 사모신용(private credit)에는 자산군 자체의 질적 우려를 언급. 장기 자본 확보와 Howard Hughes·Vantage Holdings를 통한 버크셔식 지주회사 구축을 목표로 한다.
다듬은 글
[. Now, the big deal of today, and it's a day that's been years in the making for Bill Ackman and his hedge fund Pershing Square. Pershing has raised a $5 for a US dual IPO in pursuit of a Warren Buffett investing powerhouse. And for our radio and TV listeners, I want to welcome Pershing Square CEO and founder Bill Ackman.
Bill, thank you so much for stopping by today. Of course, thank you. So, as I mentioned, this this has been years in the making, at at least 2 years. It's had fits and starts, much like this American IPO market itself. What was it like to get this over the line? It's great. It's great day, but it's really, you know, it's the beginning, right?
The beginning of a journey. So, it's the beginning of a journey and now armed with 5 billion. How quickly can you put that to work? Actually, we think it's a very good time to put the capital to work, and we invest in the most liquid companies in the world. So, it's really it's weeks, not months. So, it's weeks, but there's this question.
So, some of the companies that you own in your other portfolio, for example, example, Uber, Meta, they've had a good run, and you're already very long them. So, the question might arise, is now the right time to be doubling down? Actually, I think the companies you mentioned are a very cheap stocks today.
They're interestingly some of the best businesses in the world that are trading at the lowest multiples they've traded at in some cases in history. Actually, those multiples bottomed maybe 2 weeks ago, so we're a little bit off the uh the all-time bottom, but, you know, very bullish on the economy, and, you know, there are some amazing businesses available at really cheap prices.
This will be kind of a continuation of what we're doing now. So, we're going to just add to existing positions, uh which will give us more ownership. And our strategy, we like to be a big big shareholder. As you said, very liquid stocks. So, the market is there. What what about for like a Fannie or Freddie, where they trade OTC?
How does that work? How do you dive back in without moving the market? We're going to be very thoughtful about the way we deploy the capital, and we're not going to tell anyone on TV what we're going to do. I see. You don't want to front run anyone. Per- perhaps a wise decision. And and look, you you've discussed you you were talking about it earlier this morning on on CNBC that closed-end funds, they trade at a discount to NAV.
That that's not a surprise. So, what what does success look like in this scenario? Is is, for example, like a 10% discount, okay? So, I want to give you a new construct to think about. Please. Okay, so there's hundreds of closed-end funds, but they're a very different animal from what we're doing here.
We've we're adopting the closed-end structure, the legal structure, the corporate structure, because it's the most flexible and most tax-efficient corporate structure in America. It's never been used for the purpose that we're going to use it for. But, if you think about our business as a business, think of us as an investment holding company.
It's a business that's earned a 19% return on equity for the last 22 years. If you look in Bloomberg, do someone want to do a search real time. Find me a business that's earned 19% of equity for the last 22 years that trades for less than two times book value. And we're taking the company public at book value.
So, we think that's a going to be a cheap price. Now, the nature of IPOs are such that in the first couple of days, I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen. But, over time, we're going to compound this book value or NAV, as some people call it, at if we do anything like what we've done in the past, at a high rate over time, and it's going to compound, and it's going to grow.
And we're going to run it like a real company. Closed-end funds are kind of a backwater. Um no one actually wakes up and gets excited about investing in a closed-end a traditional closed-end IPO. They're kind of generic. You don't know who runs them. I bet Bloomberg's never even run a story uh on a They don't hold con- conference calls with their shareholders.
They don't have particularly distinguished boards of directors. Or if this were a C-corp, no one would be asking me whether it should trade at a discount or not. Sure. But, you can't deploy our strategy in a C-corp, uh which is why we've uh chosen this structure, and it's more tax-efficient than a C-corp.
It's a flow-through entity for tax purposes. So, more tax-efficient, and then we fix the things that are problematic about closed-end funds. So, it's the lowest cost compensation for a management firm like us to manage this pool of assets. In fact, we charge our other funds incentive fees. We don't do so here.
We're not permitted to do so here. So, it's the lowest cost version of Pershing Square. You take our record over the last 8 years since we've had permanent capital, it's been a 24.9% return. That's a very high rate of return relative even to the stock market, which is, you know, about 10% per annum.
Uh not as well. So, it's a liquid way to invest in Pershing Square uh at very low cost, and we're going to build the value of this entity over decades. Well, and I know you've said before the way, that's just one of the companies we took public today. That's true. And you have Pershing Square, the holding company, the holdco, and you also have ambitions to maybe list more funds.
How quickly can you ramp up AUM? I know you said just by the nature of what you're doing, by compounding, that you could get to a trillion in 20 years. Do you have your own internal targets you're thinking of? So, the first priority is to compound at a high rate for a long period of time. That's a much easier thing than doing an IPO.
Right? IPOs can take management time and attention. So, we're going to focus on investing. We're going to focus on getting our Universal Music deal done. We're going to focus on um helping the administration figure out Fannie and Freddie. Uh we're going to help our company succeed. And the beauty of that is it grows our AUM.
And the beauty of this of Pershing Square, the the management company, or some people call the GP, is it grows with compounding. Other asset management firms generally only grow with raising money. If you look at a a KKR or or the other sort of alternative asset management firms, if they stop raising money, they shrink, cuz they they're constantly sending money back to their investors.
As they sell assets, they send money back. In our model, we build off a base, and if we're up 20%, the assets will grow about 20%. And so, that's a very fast rate of growth without the need to raise any additional capital. Can you rival the size of those? I mean, I know it's a very different model, but do you see yourself growing to a size of of a Blackstone, of an Apollo?
Over time, for sure. And that was the point I was making. We'll have 25 today, post the closing of this IPO, we'll have 25 to 26 billion of fee-paying assets. Does the way you invest need to change then, because these are huge platforms that have many different types of assets they invest in? of our strategy, we we invest in the largest companies in the world, kind of large-cap, mega-cap companies, mostly based here.
Uh we're tiny in the context of the capital markets. We manage money in a concentrated fashion, but with 25 billion of capital, couple billion dollars per investment, that's small in the context of the market we invest in. By the way, and and, you know, this this is quite unique. As you point out, there's not really another structure that's listed like this.
How are you thinking about it though in terms of having a listed structure, both Pershing Square and PSUS, that it is centered around you and your very small team, which I know is is you see that as as a benefit to you. Does it change how you communicate? Does it change what you put on social media, because it could impact share prices?
It does. Well, I guess legally is one question, but but beyond that. Well, actually, I believe it or not, I've been very constrained on social media. I don't Maybe you find that a surprise. But, with respect to talking about Pershing Square, uh there are a lot of limitations up until this moment in time.
Now, we have an SEC-registered entity. Our existing uh offshore closed-end fund, we're not allowed to talk about it in America. Right. And this is where I spend the vast majority of my time. So, it's something we can't talk about. The beauty of this entity is we're going to be able to, you know, we make an investment, we can say today we bought a 10% stake in company ABC.
Here's why we own it, ticker symbol PSUS. And invest- we can keep very close touch with our shareholders. And one thing that Elon Musk has done very well over a long period of time is he built a base of followers uh that, you know, were very supportive of Tesla over time. It reduced the cost of Tesla stock.
And that's been a competitive advantage that Tesla's had over time. We have already a very large base of followers uh in the capital markets. Um they haven't had a way to invest with us until now. It does sometimes make for more volatility though, when a post can potentially move around share prices.
Sure. How do you think about that? I mean, we're only going to post stuff that's true. I think that's I think that's a good rule to to stand by. Yes. At the same time, you know, you you've been pretty early in some major dislocations in this market. Be it COVID, be the inflation that followed, and some really successful hedging strategies behind that.
Do you Do you see any dislocations like that at the moment in hedging strategies you'd want to deploy? No. Actually, I think we're in a pretty We're heading into a very good place. Um obviously, we have a war still underway, but I think we have by far the upper hand. I think the uh Iran has been, you know, denuded of military uh capability, and I think it's only a matter of time.
Uh administration, I think, this move of closing the strait, I think, was a kind of a kung fu grip type move on the part of the president. And I think it's putting a huge pressure on Iran. Uh so, I think we're going to get this resolved in the relative short term. I think that's really the biggest overhang on the market, right?
You know, the you know, we close the strait, obviously, has an impact, you know, some whatever, four percentage points or something of oil on a daily basis can can can move a market, and that has an impact, causes inflation in the short term. But, I think it's a short-term phenomenon. And I think once we're through it, I do see, you know, Federal Reserve that should be able to reduce interest rates.
We have massive uh you know, uh AI spending. We have massive energy spending. We have a a tax bill that's driving investment. Every day, there's however many deals that are being announced. Um you have an administration that's very supportive of of transactions, as opposed to an FTC would which would stop everything.
So, there's I think you're going to see lots of reasons to be bullish on markets generally. You're pretty early in this call, posting on X that any dips would be short-lived, and they were. I didn't say any dips. I I I was very I basically called the recent bottom. Let's put it that I thought stocks were getting stupidly cheap.
So, I actually sort of called it out. It didn't even sell off 10%. I feel like some people feel uncomfortable with that. I think oil today is trading somewhere around 116, and stocks feel unbothered. You See, you can't think about stocks. You're thinking about stocks from an index perspective. Okay.
The index is like looking at the surface of the ocean. Uh I mean, sorry. The index is like looking at uh inside the ocean, but the surface is moving around a lot. And what I mean by that is there are, you you know, a lot of stocks uh there's enormous disparity in term there's enormous volatility. Uh we have a lot of earnings coming out in the next 24-48 hours.
And you see you could see massive moves in different directions. There's so much capital leveraged short-term focused tightly risk-managed, which means stop losses and things like this. And the result of that is that our capital markets you can see massive moves in share prices. If you have the ability to be long-term every once in a while, you know, the price of a really high-quality company gets stupidly cheap because someone gets con you know, is forced to sell because of a bad print for the quarter or a guidance change.
Really something that doesn't actually have any material impact on the long-term business. And those are the kind of dislocations we take advantage of. But the dislocations it sounds like are over. The stupidly cheap moment has has come and passed. Is that fair? I would say we're above stupidly cheap bottom, uh but I still think there are a lot of very high-quality Like the way we we sort of model each of our companies we build a model.
And we were our kind of go forward next 3-year IRR was something north of 30% at the bottom. You don't see that with really high-quality companies. It's probably now in the mid-20s. It's still a very high rate of projected return for some of the best businesses in the world. And uh that's suggestive to me the market's cheap.
Or at least it's cheap. Some of the This is a case where the highest-quality companies are cheap. I'm not saying that energy companies are cheap today. Sure. So, you have to avoid value traps essentially in this market as as it stands. That's I think that's a generally good idea. any market. Fair enough.
I you know, in this sort of quest to build a Berkshire Hathaway uh type model. So, you've listed these two. Let me let me clarify cuz I think it's a little confusion. So, we're building an asset management firm that has some of the similar attributes to a Blackstone or KKR. But it's extremely in investment-centric.
We're going to grow this business principally by compounding as opposed to raising lots of funds. Mhm. So, that's one. Buffett was not in the asset management business. Buffett was building a corporation over time. We have a company called Howard Hughes Holdings. Uh we bought a incremental stake in about a year ago.
Uh I became executive chair. Our CIO Ryan became CIO. The full Pershing Square team became available to the company. And that's the company we talked about about building a modern Berkshire Hathaway. And the first step we took was we signed an agreement to buy a company called Vantage Holdings. That deal's going to close in the next, you know, call it 60 days.
Something like this. Um and we're going to manage the assets of that insurer. And we're going to uh work with management to make sure they underwrite very high-quality profitable insurance business. Mhm. If you look at Berkshire over the last 60 years, it's built most of its value running becoming effectively an insurance holding company.
That's what Buffett has built over time. And it was his successful management of the assets. So, when you heard Buffett buying Apple it wasn't Buffett buying Apple. Wasn't even Berkshire buying Apple. Was the Berkshire insurance subsidiaries buying Apple. And we're going to do the same thing. We're going to manage this So, the goal of Howard Hughes is to build a long-term diversified holding company akin to what what Buffett has done uh over a long period of time.
And in sort of defining what what, you know, your various holdings and and your investments look like and what they're not, I know one distinction you've made very clear cuz there have been these nerves around retail funds, but it's been really centered around BDCs and private credit. You've really drawn a distinct line that these are not This there's no exposure there.
I wonder if part of that though is skepticism of the asset class itself. Is there any skepticism of that asset class? Of private credit generally? Yes. Um look, anytime you have an asset class grow very very quickly with a lot of participants competing you know return you either have to accept lower returns or more risk.
That's the only way you can kind of grow in that environment. And there's like everything else there's a continuum of of quality in terms of sponsorship. I don't think there's inherently something wrong with private credit. I think the one thing I would say is it investing in illiquid assets uh you really should have very long-term capital or permanent capital.
And here you are on your quest to to obtaining more more permanent capital. There's so much capital is managed where the underlying asset is long-term. A company a stock is a long-term asset. Right. The vast majority what's caused the stock market to behave the way it does is the vast majority of asset management firms have very short-term money.
They have money that can leave in a in a minute an ETF. They have money that can leave overnight in a mutual fund. Or even a hedge fund. You know, our when we bulk of our assets were hedge funds about half the money could leave every year. It's hard to be a long-term investor if your money can leave overnight.
So, one of the uh arguments for that though of being able to redeem is just you're accountable to shareholders. How How do you keep that? How do you keep accountability to shareholders when they're not able to redeem assets out of the fund? They but your shareholders have more liquidity than they do in any fund cuz they have a stock that trades and they can buy and sell over time.
What what needs to go right on the flywheel cuz if you do have any sort of discount to NAV, does that make it more difficult to list other vehicles like this? We're going to focus on doing great job for the PSUS shareholders. And if we do a great job, we communicate to them well, we deliver the kind of performance we have over time we deserve to trade at a premium as opposed to a discount, right?
Again, the the average closed-end fund the best sec the best-performing closed-end fund of the last 8 years generated a 14 and a half percent return. At a time we generated a 24.9% return. That's a huge disparity. And by the way, that fund trades at a 15% discount. I mean sorry, 15% premium. Do you think you could trade at a premium?
Here's my argument, right? Businesses that earn the kind of return that we've generated over time trade at two to three times book value. Should we trade it at a discount to book value? Makes no sense. We have a tax advantage, right? We have a favorable corporate structure, much more flexible, much more tax-efficient liquid, listed on New York Stock Exchange.
I mean put aside I don't know what happens in the first couple days after an offering you know, um but with good shareholder communication keep people informed, good performance, this can become a core holding. And by the way, the the bulk of of this entity is sold to very long-term holders. Right. Um and so uh now with so much of the stock held by long-term holders, it's the marginal buyer and seller that will move the price around.
Um so By the way, are you as excited as everyone else is about getting to hear from you quarterly now when you give quarterly updates? Or do you wish it was semi-annually? No, no, I'm very happy to do uh uh I enjoy communicating. Uh and I certainly enjoy communicating with people who've who've entrusted their um you know, future to us.
Yeah. Um we actually operate you're not as aware of this, but today we do quarterly conference calls for our existing vehicle. Sure. We're now going to be able to do them onshore. Yes. We'll be able to answer questions from shareholders the way that you would want those questions to be answered. Very much so looking forward to that, Bill.
Thank you so much for your time this morning. We appreciate it. Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of Pershing Square.
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