저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
Ackman은 시장 통념과 반대되는 투자가 최고 수익을 낸다고 주장하며, AAA 기업에 대한 공매도(354배 수익)와 General Growth 파산 기업 주식 매수(34센트→31달러, 약 90배 이상)를 사례로 든다. 파산 시 주주 권리가 소멸한다는 통념을 넘어 자산가치가 부채보다 크다는 분석과 이사회 참여로 주주 가치를 회복시킨 경험을 설명한다. 이후 행동주의 투자의 평판 자본과 영구 자본 구조 변화가 리스크 성향을 바꾼 것은 아니라고 말한다. 특정 자산의 1~3개월 가격 방향에 대한 예측은 없다.
다듬은 글
the the best investments are generally ones where everyone else thinks you're wrong. Right? So, we had this company where everyone believed it was the most creditw worthy company in the world. It was as good as the federal government, AAA rated. And actually, the federal government today is not even AAA rated.
It's like double A plus or something. Uh, and we were we bet that a company with a AAA rating was going to go bankrupt. And we made, you know, 354 times our money. Um the inverse of that is in November of 2008 uh a shopping mall company called General Growth, second largest shopping mall company in the country, uh the stock went from $63 a share to 34 cents in like six months.
And the reason why the stock went down 99.5% was they had a lot of debt. Uh they borrowed money in the CNBS market, which is the securitized real estate market. And that market shut down during the financial crisis and um everyone said they're going to go bankrupt because they can't pay off their debts as they come due.
They had 27 billion of debt about 15 billion coming due in the next 18 months and the stock went from you know like a $6 billion market cap to a hundred million market cap and uh my bet was you know the malls had gone from 93% occupancy in 2007 to 95% occupancy in 2008. So the occupancies were up, the rents were up, the net operating income was up, the fundamentals of the company were solid and these were basically class A or the fanciest you know best malls and so the assets were fine and if you now before this company everyone who had invested in a company that had gone bankrupt the shareholders had lost all their money but I didn't understand why that had to be the case you know I read you know book on bankruptcy I called our lawyers I'm like look I think the assets are worth more than liabilities why shouldn't the shareholders be able to make a meaningful recovery and they said, "Look, it can happen, but it never does." Because what happens when a company gets delisted and goes bankrupt is people sell the stock.
Uh distressed investors buy the debt at a discount, and then they work the process through the courts, uh and end up keeping 100% of the company. So, I said, "Well, we're going to do something different." We bought 25% of the company in the market for $60 million, starting at 34 cents a share. I joined the board and then I I helped the board run a process that benefited not just the creditors but also the shareholders and the stock went from 34 cents to ultimately $31 a share.
But it was so again the most contrarian investment you can make buying something is to buy stock in a company going bankrupt, right? Because everyone says it has to go to zero. And if you have do a little bit of work, a little lot of work and have an insight, those are the best examples. You've absolutely changed your style over the years.
You you used to be an aggressive activist. I'm not I'm always aggressive. Always aggressive. Why not be aggressive? Is everyone here aggressive? I assume you're aggressive. You go to this place. You want to be aggressive. You're either aggressive or you're weak. Which do you prefer? You don't publicly short companies anymore.
We don't short stocks. Big mistake. Don't short stocks. And you've achieved a measure of permanent capital in the last few years, which is very important to Persing Square. Yes. um how has that changed your risk tolerance? How's that how has that changed your risk parameters? So our I would say our risk parameters haven't changed, but what's changed is when I first went into this business, uh no one knew who we were and we were telling kind of big public companies that we had a better way for them to run their business or structure their business than they did.
And and the idea was how could someone outside of McDonald's or Wendy's, some of our early investments, have a better insight to how our company should be run or structured if you don't even work here. And so the early days of shareholder activism, companies really pushed back on shareholders who had ideas.
Um, but we had some big early successes. Shareholders did really well. You build what I call reputational equity over time. Uh, you know, when I started Persing, I was 37. Today I'm 58. I'm basically the age of most I'm sort of one one person removed from or one or two people removed from every CEO in America.
I've been on many public boards. Uh so, you know, built a reputation. People can kind of check me out by talking to CEOs that we work with. And the advice they give is you know what you should hear what he has to say. And so we haven't had to barge our way into the boardroom. Uh today we get invited in uh and we can do what we do without having to run a proxy contest. So that that's what's changed. It's not really a change in risk.
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