저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
퍼싱스퀘어가 Howard Hughes(HHH) 신주 900만주를 9억 달러에 인수하기로 함. 자금은 퍼싱스퀘어 운용사(매니지먼트사)에서 조달, 펀드 자금 아님. 회사는 마스터플랜 커뮤니티(The Woodlands, Summerlin 등)를 운영하며 현금창출 단계 진입 중이나 당장은 재투자 필요. 장기적으로 현금이 늘어나면 버크셔식 보험사 인수/설립 가능성을 언급. 경영진 보수는 기본 15백만 달러 + 시총 성장분 1.5% 수수료 구조.
다듬은 글
We are in Los Angeles and we have some news this morning. Persing Square announcing it has agreed to invest $900 million to acquire 9 million newly issued shares of Howard Hughes Holdings. Joining us live from Los Angeles is Persing Square's CEO Bill Aman. You're in town for the Milkin Institute Global Forum.
Yeah, I say for Mike he puts on an incredible conference. And you just came back from Omaha from the Brooksker Hathway annual meeting. So I want to talk about that as well. But this is big news because this is something that has been in the offing now uh for several months. uh you have raised your uh offer and your stake now.
Tell us what's happened and how did this how did we actually get here? So I think it's been in the offing for maybe 30 years actually. Um what I mean to say is you know I I came into this business first book I read was Ben Graham's intelligent investor. The next thing I read was was basically the Birkshire Hathway shareholder letters and it tells you know the story of Buffett buying control of a textile company and transforming it into a very valuable business over a long period of time.
And you know Buffett's been my you know one of my most important heroes certainly in in business and and I would say in life and I always sort of aspired to build a diversified holding company and turn it into you know valuable enterprise and have big shareholder meetings and all that kind of thing.
So, I've been working on this for a really long time now. This specific transaction um you know started actually again a long time ago. We bought 25% of a shopping mall company called General Growth before it filed for Chapter 11. I joined the board and uh part of the way to make that company valuable was spinning off all the ancillary assets into a company called Howard Hughes.
And then that's now 14 years later. Um and that business has it started with a jumble of assets. uh and over time the then management team and and most recently David O'Reilly and team have transformed it into a great business but a business that has really gone unrecognized I would say by Wall Street and uh it's always struck us that it would be a pretty it was actually there was a cover story in Forbes saying that it was going to turn into the next Bergkshire Hathway that was a decade ago.
Well, so the question though is if so you're now going to have almost a controlling stake. Correct. Almost. Correct. It's a little bit actually like Warren Buffett, almost a controlling stake. Correct. The question is when is it going to produce enough cash like a Birkshire effectively that you can then take that cash and go invest it?
So first of all, uh the MPC business, let's just back up. Howard Hughes owns these sort of small cities. They're called master plan communities, but they're not small. Like so for example we own the Woodlands which is about the size of Manhattan right uh we own uh Summerland which is a major you know 20 whatever 28,000 acre small city in in Las Vegas you know populations of like 130 150,000 people and what we do is we own all the land we sell lots to home builders home builders build homes people move in and then the company over time builds the amenities builds the community I call it's a bit like Sim City but in real life and eventually we build high-rise office buildings and you know apartment buildings uh and it's a great business but it consumes a lot of capital because you have to keep building the cities.
Now the cities at a certain point in time get to a level of maturity where they start actually throwing off cash and that's really where we are with Howard Hughes today. Um but there's still lots of opportunities to reinvest the cash in the city. So Howard Hughes as a real estate companies today is not going to throw off a lot of cash to your point.
But five years from now, 10 years from now, it's going to uh produce more cash that it can you generate. Explain how Persing Square is going to be attached to this. Sure. What your role will be, your CIO's role is now going to be effectively involved in this, how you're going to get compensated. Sure.
So, first of all, the 900 million is not coming from the Persian Square funds. It's coming from the Purging Square management company that's owned I own about 45% of it. rest of the team owns about 45% and 10%'s owned by a group of investors. We sold a piece of the business uh almost a year ago. Uh that's the 900 million of capital that's kind of going into the business.
So, it's really the new additions to the uh executive leadership team uh that is investing the capital. So, it's great alignment. You know, you hire a new executive chair, you hire a CIO, it's nice to hear that they're investing, you know, $900 million when they take the seat. We're not getting any uh option or stock or actually personally any uh compensation from the company.
The company uh is getting the benefit not just of Ryan and myself, but I operate with a team unlike Mr. Buffett who's seems like a bit of a one-man band and certainly he was when he he started uh at Berkshire Hathway. You know, I've built a team over time and we work as a real partnership. uh Howard Hughes today couldn't afford to hire the 40 odd Persian Square team members, the eight investment team members.
So, we're going to bring all the resources of Persian Square uh to uh Howard Hughes and we're going to charge a 15 we're going to get paid a $15 million fee and we're going to get paid a incremental fee to the extent that the market cap of Howard Hughes grows at a rate in excess of inflation. we're gonna get a one and a half percent fee on the increase in market cap basically above today's market cap when we finish for a second um and only if the market cap on a per share basis.
So if we issue a bunch of stock to make an acquisition that doesn't increase our fees. It actually reduces the fees as a percentage. What kind of you talked about issuing stock to buy stuff? Yes. Is that how you plan to buy stuff with the stock? Do you is there going to be enough cash and would you ever try to buy for example an insurance company which is something obviously sure Bergkshire's done.
So we're going to start with 900 million of capital at the holding company that is available to make investments. uh it is definitely on our you know if you look at Bergkshire over time a big part Buffett's known as a great investor in stocks and companies but a huge enhancement to his returns over time is that he built a profitable insurance company uh that generated as a result uh free money uh so-called you know float float uh it's and he built that the insurance company was embedded in a diversified holding company and the benefit of putting an insurance company or building one inside a diversified holding company is that it gives you a lot more flexib ibility in what you can invest the insurance company's assets in.
If you're a pure play insurer, you can't take that much risk. You basically buy fixed income securities. So that model has not gone unnoticed by us. I think it's highly likely that we will build or buy an insurance
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