저자: Dividendology진행자 · 외국인
요약 보기
빌 애크먼이 Visa, Mastercard, ICE, S&P Global 등 금융주를 신규 매수했다는 보도를 다룸. 4개 종목 모두 연초 이후 부진하고 P/E가 5년 평균보다 낮아 저평가로 해석. 주당순이익(EPS) 성장과 밸류에이션 확장이 수익의 두 엔진이라고 강조. Mastercard는 EPS CAGR 약 15.3% 전망, 2025년 자사주 매입으로 FCF의 약 82% 사용. 진행자는 Mastercard를 개인 포트폴리오에 편입해 약 15% 수익 중이라고 밝힘.
다듬은 글
We have some breaking news from the last few days. Wall Street legend and billionaire Bill Ackman just revealed several stocks he recently added to his portfolio. He also released a detailed 30-page report explaining why he added these positions to his portfolio. And while there are, of course, many conclusions, one point was really interesting.
Bill Ackman added four financial stocks. He bet big on financial companies like Visa, Mastercard, ICE, and S&P Global. I've been following Bill Ekman for a long time. About eight months ago, Bill Ackman appeared on Fox Business and announced that he was preparing to add a new stock to his portfolio.
Based on the information he shared in that interview, I predicted in this video that he would add either Meta or Mastercard. Now I'll show you a fragment of that interview. It seems like you are optimistic about the new year. Are you ready to invest new funds in stocks ahead of 2026? Yeah, look, I think the market was interesting.
There were extremely successful companies that made huge profits this year. But there were also stocks that fell sharply in price. So I think this is a very good market for those who are picking stocks. We are investors with a very concentrated portfolio, and we see high-quality companies at very attractive prices.
So yes, we will definitely invest. We are currently about 15% cash and we are looking at a number of very interesting options. So what needs to happen for you to use that 15% cash? Big sale? No. Just finishing up a review of a company we've wanted to own for years , and which is now available at a great price.
Well, something like this. So, I watched the interview, predicted that he would buy Meta or Mastercard, and within a few days it turned out that he had indeed added Meta. Based on my knowledge of Bill Ekman, I was pretty sure it would be one of these two positions. But what's interesting is that now we see that he has actually added Mastercard to his portfolio.
So naturally, we need to answer a few questions. Why did he add Mastercard? Why did he bet so heavily on these financial stocks, which are essentially low- capital-cost businesses, reminiscent of toll highways? These are not traditional financial stocks. They don't look like banks at all. So, here's what we need to understand about all four of these companies.
If we look at their profitability over the last year, each of them has significantly lagged the market. Visa is up about 5.2%, but it's really the only position that's shown growth for the year. MasterCard is still down 3%. ICE fell by 16%, and S&P Global by 26.16%, and if you look at the indicators since the beginning of the year, the results are not much better.
MasterCard is virtually flat, Visa is up 4.2% , ICE is down 4%, and S&P Global is down 19%. Bill Ekman rightly points out in his extensive 30- page document: we should carefully examine potential sources of return when considering our investments. This is something I've talked about a lot in the past and certainly on dividendology.com.
But we must always understand that there are three potential sources of profit for any investment. These are dividend payments, profit growth, and a change in the valuation ratio. And each of them has its own specifics. For example, if you look at dividends, you can see that they are positive in almost every decade if you analyze the sources of S&P returns.
This certainly cannot be said about profit growth and, certainly, about changing ratios. We see decades where earnings growth was negative, or where the valuation multiple was negative. So, dividends are very predictable. They grow year after year. They are more protective in nature. But when it comes to truly outperforming the market, you need profit growth and a change in ratios.
That's why I call earnings growth and expanding multipliers the engines of superprofitability. So, let's look at a simple example. If we go to a spreadsheet known as the Bogle score, we are simply looking at investments through the lens of sources of return. It's a slightly different approach, but the concept is essentially the same.
We look at earnings growth , shareholder returns ( dividend yield plus share buyback yield), and expanding multiples. In the case of MasterCard, if we start with shareholder returns, we see that their dividend yield is low. This is approximately 0.6%. But remember, historically they have grown their dividends phenomenally , showing exceptional growth with a 10-year average annual rate of 16%.
And now, as always, a quick one: If you want to download any of these spreadsheets, as well as access the Ticker Data add-on for Google Sheets that lets you automatically import stock financials into your spreadsheet, be sure to check out Ticker Data at the link in the description. But again, the bottom line is that MasterCard is an incredible, growing dividend payer.
So, with that in mind, if we also add in their share buybacks, their shareholder return is around 3%. They bought back 3% of their outstanding shares in 2025—that's extremely impressive. So, given this, their expected return would already be 3% without taking into account any changes in the valuation multiplier and without any changes in earnings growth.
But what do we know about MasterCard? Well, MasterCard is growing profits at a rapid pace. In fact, if we go into our sensitivity analysis, let's go up here and introduce MasterCard. One of the cool features of Ticker Data is that you can automatically import the average EPS forecast from analysts for the next few years, and MasterCard has a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.3%.
So, this is very rapid profit growth. So let's take that into account for a moment as we consider Bogle's assessment. Let's say they actually achieve 15% profit growth. So, you have: 15% profit growth, shareholder return—3%. Suddenly your expected return is 18% without any change in the valuation multiplier.
So we are talking about very potentially high profits. And that is exactly what he emphasizes. We expect that the main driver of the share price dynamics of the companies in our portfolio will be the growth in earnings per share, which they achieve thanks to high growth rates and long-term sustainable competitive advantages that help maintain and strengthen their market position.
While in the short term, growth in EPS does not guarantee growth in stock prices, in the long term, we expect that long-term growth in EPS and economic profit will lead to increases in the intrinsic value and stock prices of our assets. So, he points out something extremely important. What changes the stock price in the short term?
Well, these are changes in the rating multiplier. It takes time to increase profits by 15%. Even if earnings grow by 15% over the next year, in the short term, within the next week, we could see the valuation multiple fall by 10%, which would of course lead to a negative expected return. But he wisely notes that in the long run, it is earnings growth that pushes stock prices up.
That's why, in essence, whenever you look at stocks like MasterCard that have exceptional long-term performance, carefully examine their earnings per share and free cash flow per share growth. Earnings per share were $3.36 in 2015 and reached $16.55 by 2025. What do you notice in these numbers? During this period, earnings per share increased approximately 5 times.
Look at the stock price—it's actually a 500% increase . The shares moved in line with the company's rising profits. So, yes, in the short term, the stock price is affected by changes in the valuation multiplier, but in the long term, it is the growth in earnings per share. This makes perfect sense, because when we look at the price of the stocks that Bill Ackman says he buys, yes, they have all fallen significantly over the past year, but it's not because of a drop in earnings growth, but because of a change in the valuation multiple.
Here we look at the P/E multiple for all four of these stocks. Each of them has a P/E multiple that is significantly lower than the five-year average. Now let's go back, let's take a closer look at MasterCard itself. What we see here on the Ticker is that five years ago the P/E multiple for MasterCard was as high as 39.
They were trading at a 39 times earnings multiple. Of course, we could sit here and argue about whether this is justified. This is certainly a very high premium, but even then the average P/E multiple for MasterCard was 31.42. Just a few months ago, the P /E multiple dropped as low as 23.6. Now, what we have to remember is that MasterCard has actually shown some growth, especially in the last few months, as we see here.
But given that Bill Ackman disclosed his acquisitions, these were purchases made during the second quarter. In fact, from April, May to June, which, as we can see, corresponded to a price range from just below $500 to above $400 per share. Ironically, if you've been following my portfolio updates, you know that MasterCard is a stock we also added just a few months ago.
We already have about 15% profit on this position, as, ironically, we also added them during the second quarter of 2026 . So a little confirmation of the correctness of your thoughts from successful billionaire investors never hurts. But Bill Ackman wisely realized that both engines of superprofitability were now working for MasterCard.
We have a stock that has the potential to show exceptional earnings growth in the future and has the potential to expand multiples. So, for example, if we see a 20% growth in the valuation multiplier over the next decade, that's about 2% per year. When you combine earnings growth, shareholder returns, and expanding multiples, your expected returns are simply astronomical.
They are extremely strong. If we look at this in more detail and just do a sensitivity analysis, again, let 's assume earnings per share growth of about 15% and let's assume a PE ratio, which by the way is still at a discount of about 18% to historical values, then we're talking about a total return of 15-16%, excluding dividends, over the next 5-6 years.
Again, we focused on MasterCard, but it is worth noting that all four of these companies, while there are some significant differences between them, especially with respect to ICE and S&P Global, are businesses that require little capital and generate a high level of return on invested capital. Why is this so important to understand?
Well, look at MasterCard. When you look at the return on invested capital, you see that it is simply exceptional. From about 48% to about 33% over the last few years. What does this really mean? This means that the returns the company receives from reinvesting in its business are extremely high. There are several reasons why this is so.
But this can only be fully understood by looking at stocks through the lens of capital allocation. This is one of the most important things that all investors should understand. I constantly emphasize this. How can a company allocate its capital? How can they allocate their free cash flow? They can either reinvest in the business, attempt mergers and acquisitions, pay down debt, repurchase shares, or pay dividends.
So, we can actually calculate exactly how MasterCard uses its free cash flow. We already know from looking at the dividend distribution table that in 2025 they used about 16% of their free cash flow to pay dividends. So let's just make a little note about that in our capital allocation. I'll just write down 16%.
We are operating with approximate numbers here. How much did they spend on share buybacks? Again, we can get some insight because we just looked at the Bogle valuation and we see that they reduced the number of shares outstanding from 2024 to 2025 by about 3%. Of course, the price at which the shares were repurchased is of significant importance, and it is impossible to know exactly at what price they repurchased these shares.
But let's say they bought them back at an average price of about $500 per share, and seeing as they bought back 28 million shares outstanding, let's do the math. If we do the math using the valuation model I created, we see that 28 million times 500 is about $14 billion in free cash flow used to buy back shares.
Now compare that to how much free cash flow they generated in 2025, which is 16.9 billion . So, we will write 16.9 billion into our model, and then we need to do the following calculation. What percentage of free cash flow was spent on share buybacks? It was about 82%, almost 83%. So if we go back to our capital allocation table, we suddenly see that MasterCard has used virtually all of its free cash flow to buy back shares and pay dividends.
Sometimes this is a serious red flag, but not in the case of stocks like Visa and MasterCard. Why? Because these are companies that can demonstrate extraordinary growth with very little investment back into the business. They are taking advantage of long-term positive trends . What does this really mean?
This means that more and more people are starting to use credit cards. More and more online payments are being made. They will benefit from huge amounts of commerce. Very soon you will be able to ask your AI agent to book you a plane ticket and a trip to New York. He will cope with everything. He will book a rental car for you.
He will book you a flight . He will book you a hotel. And MasterCard already has the necessary infrastructure to make this possible. They already have a fraud prevention system in place . So again , they need to put very little capital back into the business, which means it's very easy for them to get a high return on invested capital , since they're reinvesting almost nothing .
So, a lot of these companies are different in nature, but they certainly fall under the criteria of stocks that Bill Ackman is looking for, which is of course obvious. That's why he added them to his portfolio. This is something I noticed as early as eight months ago. He even noted in his letter to shareholders that the annual return on investment will be driven primarily by two factors: the growth in the business's earnings per share (EPS) and the change in the earnings multiple, i.e., the valuation multiplier.
So, again, he looks at everything through the prism of sources of profitability. He understands that if he finds stocks that are showing high earnings per share growth rates while trading at a P/E ratio below fair, what will happen? He will be able to benefit from both sources of excess profitability, these efficiency drivers.
So I added MasterCard to my portfolio in the same price range as Bill Ackman. And as we already noted, the share price has increased slightly. In my personal portfolio, it is up about 15%, but the stock is still trading well below its historical valuation multiples, while having very high projected EPS growth rates through 2030.
That's it. This is a detailed analysis of why Bill Ackman added MasterCard to his personal portfolio, but it's clear that he sees the same benefits in all four stocks: Visa, MasterCard, ICE, and S&P Global. I hope this video was a good breakdown of what goes on in Bill Ekman's mind. But of course, if you want a deeper analysis, just read the letter to shareholders for yourself.
You will learn a lot of new things. And it was thanks to a careful study of such documents that I was able to predict 8 months in advance which stocks he would add to his portfolio. And again, as always, if you want to download any of the automated spreadsheets you see in the video and access the automated financial data in your spreadsheet, you can go to tickerdata.com using the link in the description.
So, with all that said, thank you very much for watching and please don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel.
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