저자: AryaRadnia · 외국인
요약 보기
빌 애크먼의 2025년 1분기 신규 포지션(Visa, Mastercard, Netflix, S&P Global, ICE, Alcon 등)을 밸류에이션과 성장률 관점에서 분석. Visa·Mastercard는 PER 하락 대비 성장률이 높아 저평가로 보고 'A+' 평가. Netflix는 PER 23 수준으로 과거 평균(약 40) 대비 낮아 추가 상승 여지를 언급. S&P Global은 성장 둔화 속 프리미엄 밸류에이션, ICE는 안정적 해자 대비 성장 낮음, Alcon은 밸류에이션 낮고 안정 성장으로 긍정 평가. 개별 종목의 1~3개월 가격 방향 예측은 명시되지 않음.
다듬은 글
Welcome back. My name is Arya, and I'm not wasting your time. So let's get straight to the point. Bill Ackman is probably my favorite investor of all time. It's either him or David Einhorn, whom I respect immensely. They are both fantastic investors. It is clear that David Einhorn has performed better in recent years.
Nevertheless, I still consider Bill Ackman one of the greats. I think he definitely deserves a place in the hall of fame. People criticize him for buying Netflix shares and many other things he has done over the years, such as the Herbalife story. Nevertheless, he is one of the best. And today we learned that at the end of March, Bill Ackman opened six new positions.
One of them, which I already mentioned, is Netflix. He re- entered the position on Netflix. So in today's video, I wanted to look at all these new assets that Bill Ackman had acquired as of the end of the first quarter. Let's analyze them roughly according to the valuation indicators at which he bought them.
Did he get in at a good price? What could he potentially see in these different companies? Especially the two at the bottom of the list, which I think most people haven't even heard of. So we will analyze in detail everything related to this. By the way , for context, if we move on to Fiscal AI, you can find an investor, or in this case a super- investor, and look at their portfolio.
This is data as of the end of the first quarter. Things got a little confusing in later quarters, particularly since his fund now technically owns about a 22% stake in Pershing Square, a public company, and things got a little weird. At the same time, it has added many new titles in recent quarters.
Historically, Bill Ackman has held approximately eight different assets. Recently, I know, he added Meta. He joined Uber a few blocks ago. Brookfield, he sold several different assets. So he's definitely been active lately. Given this, as far as Visa is concerned, it should have acquired these shares between the end of the first and beginning of the second quarter of this year.
So if we were to just drag the chart to that time frame, he would essentially have bought Visa at an earnings multiple of 26 to about 32. I'm guessing he bought them probably earlier in that quarter. So, as to whether I think this is a good investment by Bill Ackman, I would lean more towards the answer of "yes," it's a good buy.
If you look at the last decade, Visa typically trades at a price-to-earnings multiple of around 33. However, as I just showed, it has recently fluctuated between 26 and 30. And at the same time, it cannot be said that the growth rate of the business has changed significantly. Over the decade, their average annual income growth rate was about 12%.
And recently they have even accelerated this pace. A few quarters ago, yes, two quarters ago, they were up 17%. Recently, this indicator has been in the low to mid- second-tenth percentile range. They have grown by 14% over the past 12 months. At the same time, I believe that this is happening at a time when the business is at a historical maximum in terms of margin indicators, or at least close to it.
As you can see, the operating margin is approximately 60%, which is largely consistent with historical data. However, there has been a slight decline recently. But in any case, I'm suggesting that this is not a cause for concern. So the business is trading at a below- average valuation with above- average growth rates, at least compared to the past decade, as a business that probably has a wider "moat" today than it did a decade ago, simply because there are more cards in the network, more banks, and more locations around the world that accept Visa cards.
This is a company that has now technically become even more integrated into the global economy. You can argue with me about concerns about stablecoins and so on. I always come back to the fact that ultimately it's a matter of aligning the interests of these two companies, Visa and Mastercard. And the consumer's incentive ultimately is that they want to pay with their Visa or Mastercard because they want to get credit card bonuses, and it's that simple.
So I assume Bill Ackman did a similar check to arrive at a similar thesis, looking at past growth and valuation combined with the fact that technically the business has not only not gotten worse over the past decade, but has probably gotten better over that period. And just so you know, I'm not just talking nonsense.
If you look at my tweets from around the time Bill Ackman was probably buying the stock, I was n't writing about Visa, I was writing about Mastercard because that's a business I owned before and follow a little more closely . It was trading at a ten-year low in terms of valuation. Mastercard's price-to-free cash flow multiple bottomed out at 22 back in 2016-2017 .
And recently, in early June, it was trading at 23 to the price of free cash flow. And what happened to the stocks since the day this tweet was released on June 3? The stock went up about 20 %, and it was actually very lucky, I couldn't have chosen that date intentionally, of course, but it was the bottom from the day the tweet came out .
That was literally the bottom for the stock, and it has only been rising since then. So everything I've been saying about Visa lately, I would actually say about Mastercard as well. The issue of incentive alignment: this is a business that, you know, even today, over the last decade, if you look at the valuation, is trading at a discount to its historical valuation of 37 times earnings.
And yet , if we factor in the company's growth over that period, they're currently growing at 16%, and over the decade their average revenue growth rate was 13%, right? That is, it's literally the same situation as with Visa, just with slightly different numbers. This is a lower-than-average P/E multiple with above- average growth; you will probably get a pretty good result buying on this schedule.
So , for both Visa and Mastercard, I definitely give Ekman an "A+" rating for this investment . I definitely agree with them. I think these are very undervalued companies, very high-quality businesses, and they're a good addition. So, really quickly, before we move on to his next investment—Netflix.
I wanted to mention the platform in front of you that we used throughout the video. This is Fiscal AI, which in my opinion is the world's best stock research platform. This video is sponsored by them. There is a free trial in the description below , as well as a 15% discount on any paid plans. This is a site that I use in literally every one of my videos, and I use it off- camera for all of my stock research needs.
So be sure to try it. So, let's move on to the third investment of our friend Bill Ackman—Netflix. Ladies and gentlemen, this is quite an interesting case, because if you don't know, Bill Ackman had a difficult history with this stock. He initially bought it amid subscriber losses in 2022, when Netflix lost its audience.
As a result, the stock fell by 75% over the next few months. If you follow financial Twitter at all, you've seen a chart showing that Bill Ackman bought shares at $400, and a quarter later, literally three months later in April, he sold them at $200, losing about $500-600 million. And he should have doubled his position, because in the end the stock went up.
This chart is actually very outdated. The stock eventually rose to almost 140. Now, with the split factored in, the stock is still worth almost double his original purchase price, which would actually have outperformed the market if he had bought them in 2022 and held them until today. So the story with this is quite interesting.
This is something he is constantly ridiculed for on the internet, which I generally disagree with. First, all investors make mistakes. But more importantly, when assessing his mistakes, it's worth considering that he made 8-10 times more at Chipotle in just seven years. It is also worth considering each of his successful moves, such as buying Google shares, from which he earned almost three times more in the last three to four years.
If one of his seven stocks didn't make a profit, why are we focusing on just that one? I do n't know. This is a pretty toxic culture that I see online, especially in the financial segment . Anyway, this is beyond the scope of today's video , but regarding Netflix: if you remember, a few weeks ago we did a review of their earnings report.
In short, the results were very optimistic. Either way, if the multiplier remains the same , you will get an excellent return of over 22%. And then more importantly, it becomes interesting if the multiplier starts to grow from that point , and if we go back to the metrics again, the reason I just love this platform is the ability to toggle the median line and, you know, maybe not look at it over that period.
But over the last, say, 3-4 years, you can quickly see that historically the company has had an average earnings multiple of around 40. And today it's trading at 23. I'm not even suggesting that it should go back to 40, but even if it were to go from 23 to 25, 27, or 30, then suddenly you have not only incredible growth in the core business, but also an expansion of the multiplier, which should provide excellent returns on the stock.
However, while my predictions and my opinion suggest the stock is currently undervalued, it wasn't necessarily as cheap as it is now over the last quarter. Technically, Bill Ackman could have bought it in the range of around $100. I'm guessing he probably didn't buy at those prices, but maybe got in after the drop on the reporting or something like that.
But at the same time, you never know for sure, because until he tweets about it , you never know his actual cost base or the price at which he entered the company. Even assuming it's in the 80s or something like that, that still gives you a P/E ratio that should be too expensive, probably around 30.
Even in that scenario, the organic growth rate of the business, where profits are likely to grow by more than 20%, should provide good returns for the stock going forward. And you know , this time they are in a much stronger position. I have the same thesis regarding advertising for Netflix, where they first tied economics to the direct number of hours watched for business.
Whereas before, you know, whether I watch one hour of Netflix a month or 100 hours, Netflix still charges me the same $15. But now, if I'm on par with ads and watch 100 hours of Netflix, I suddenly become significantly more valuable to Netflix because of the frequency of ads I'm shown as a more active user of the service, right?
And it's like a new revenue stream that I think can accelerate the growth of this business, which I already talked about in our last video about this, which I'll add at the end if you want to watch. Moving on, ladies and gentlemen, we have S&P Global . My thoughts on this company in general are that it is a slower growing business, but it remains one of the most expansive companies on the planet.
Interesting fact, the business has actually been stagnant for the last 5 years. Isn't that incredible to see? So, in terms of valuing this business, it's a little bit tricky to do because they did that big merger and acquisition that kind of skewed the net income and earnings per share (EPS) numbers a little bit.
There were a whole bunch of random one-time acquisition costs that somehow showed up on the income statement . So things get a little confusing, but I'm using the forward P/E, which generally looks acceptable here. Overall, the business is trading at around a forward P/E of 27, which is certainly a big premium, especially for a fairly slow- growing business.
And recently they were trading at 22 times earnings, and to see those business valuations, you have to go back all the way to the COVID recession and maybe a couple of months earlier. And again, if we were to do the same exercise with revenue growth versus P/E, I think I would use EPS and earnings per share instead, because, again, they made that big acquisition.
Over the decade, they averaged about 13% profit growth and 10% earnings per share growth. And recently, they've grown those profits by about 26%, and earnings per share by about 13%. But it is worth noting that historically this is a very cyclical business. So they have ups and downs in terms of debt cycles and so on.
I believe we are in an upswing. So unlike Mastercard, where growth is simply faster. Same with Visa. This business does not necessarily mean that growth here will be consistently higher. What I'm trying to say is that this year revenue growth will be about 13%, and next year it will be about 6%. So, the average value for both of them is about 10%.
Still, growth remains quite healthy, and the stock is trading at a below- average multiple. I think you'll get a pretty solid return on this. For example, S&P Global along with Visa, Mastercard, Moody's, FICO, maybe ASML— this is a very short list of high-quality companies. In my opinion, GE and Safran are two other companies that can be added to this list.
So, you really can't go wrong by investing in such extremely high-quality companies. Speaking of extremely high-quality companies, the next one he acquired was Intercontinental Exchange. This is the company behind the New York Stock Exchange, which is its largest revenue segment— about $8.7 billion .
At the same time, as you might guess, there are data processing services, analytics, and a whole range of related services that they sell, being one of the two largest exchanges in the world. There are a lot of other services they can sell to banks and various financial institutions, right? So, you should understand that this is a business with a fairly wide "economic moat." It is very difficult to compete with such a deeply entrenched stock exchange.
There are literally two of them in the United States . There is talk of opening a third in Texas, but again , it would be very difficult to convince companies to switch to it when these large exchanges have the highest liquidity. There are a lot of regulatory requirements associated with this. As for growth, this is not the best option.
Revenue growth of 7% , trading at a multiple of 21 to earnings, so you can expect about 10% earnings growth. Somewhere like this, taking into account a small share buyback and margin increase, it comes out to about 12% profit growth. So, it looks pretty reliable. It is worth noting that this company appears to have a significant amount of debt on its balance sheet—about $20 billion.
In addition, it is a very high-margin company. Overall, this is a fairly high-quality and very solid business. It just falls short of my expectations for growth rate. It is growing a bit slower, but overall it is a business with a very wide "moat" and , I suspect, it can grow steadily for years. And finally, the last thing on the list, which I actually haven't heard of yet.
This is a Swiss company , so we'll do a little live business analysis . This is a company in the field of ophthalmology. It researches, develops, manufactures, distributes and sells eye care products to professionals and their patients worldwide. The company's surgical segment offers equipment, instruments, diagnostics, as well as other implants and consumables.
Apparently, this is somehow related to eye care. As for profitability, at first glance, this is not the most highly profitable business. The same can be said for growth, maybe they are experiencing a short-term decline in net profitability or something like that. Let's take a look at this. Okay, apparently , yes, their profitability is decreasing now.
So this could potentially distort the P /E ratio. However, even if we look at it, perhaps because of the EV to gross profit ratio. OK. So, based on the EV to gross profit ratio, it appears that the business is trading at a fairly low valuation compared to historical data. At the same time, in terms of growth rates, everything looks approximately at the level of historical indicators.
I think perhaps the hype during the pandemic and the quarters of slowing growth played a role here. So it looks pretty good. Again , this looks like a stable, growing company. I can't say much about the " moat" of the business, but it looks like a decent company. Anyway, having said that, thank you very much for watching.
The video I made about Netflix is on screen now. And at the same time, if you want to watch the video on super investors, where we looked at the first quarter stocks from various super investors, including Bill Ackman, Warren Buffett, Terry Smith, and many others, that video is also on the screen right now. Thank you very much for watching and all the best.
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