저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
Ackman는 자사를 고품질 durable growth 투자자로 규정하며, 최근 조정으로 Microsoft(약 40% 하락), Meta, Amazon이 매력적 밸류에이션에 도달했다고 주장. 반도체·AI 쏠림 속에서 구기술주가 저평가됐다는 논리. Hertz는 관세·used car 가치 상승 수혜와 턴어라운드 베팅으로 주가 약 2배 상승했고 장기 보유 의향. Universal Music 인수 제안은 Bolloré의 지배구조로 철회, 자본은 다른 곳에 재배치. Pershing Square 올해 약 10% 하락 vs S&P500 상승, 과거 대비 장기 초과수익 강조. Howard Hughes는 부동산에서 보험(Vantage 인수)으로 전환하는 버크셔식 모델 추진.
다듬은 글
Amazon, Meta, you know, these are Microsoft businesses we've admired for for many, many years, but kind of never got to a price that we found them compelling. Now, each of them are at prices we find compelling. And I think that it's a bit you know, the the excitement of SpaceX, if you will, and and what's going on sort of semiconductor stocks,
you know, the AI energy play, people sold old tech, and I think people think of Microsoft as old tech, but we think they are incredibly well positioned. Now, I'm very pleased to be joined by Bill Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square, manager of the London listed investment company Pershing Square Holdings.
So, Bill, thank you very much for joining us. I hope you're well. Good to see you. Thank you. Um I wanted to ask you how you might describe yourself as an investor. I just If you look at your portfolio, you've got a mixture of turnaround stories, you've got some unloved names, but you've also got some sort of real cash compounders that aren't particularly on cheap ratings.
So, would you say that you are at heart a value investor or an activist investor or or something else? Uh sure. So, fundamentally, we're uh value investors, but not by maybe a conventional measure how some people think of value investors. Some people think of value investors as people only buy low PE stocks or stocks trading discount to book value, things like this.
Value is the you know, what's value of financial assets? The present value of the cash it generates over its life. You know, growth plays a very meaningful role in that. Uh we describe ourselves as, you know, high-quality durable growth investors. Um but, you know, in terms of your characterization of our portfolio, I would say the we own some of the highest-quality durable compounders at amongst the lowest valuations they've traded at in in their respective histories.
I I think it's quite a it's a good moment to be owning durable compounders while the market's eye or the attention is taken to the maybe the the AI race, um chip chip companies, semiconductor uh manufacturers, etc. Yeah. I mean, so I mean some of the names in your portfolio I want I want I just want to ask you about Hertz to start with.
Obviously this is this is a real sort of turnaround story. So what I mean can you just sort of talk through what what gives you the you first of all what you know gets a stock like that on your radar and then what what what's it need to show for you to be sort of happy enough to to start to make an investment in it?
Yeah, so I what I was just describing is the vast majority of our capital is invested in these very high quality durable growth companies. Hertz got on the radar actually at a time we were looking how do we hedge the risk of Trump putting tariffs in place. This is pre the liberation day tariffs. And you know what company would be a beneficiary of tariffs?
And Hertz kind of came across our came into view. Um you know the interesting thing about the business is Hertz is really two companies. It's an asset owning company. They own a lot of cars. Uh finance with a lot of securitized debt. And then they have an operating business of renting those automobiles.
And the asset heavy part of the business got them into trouble because of a kind of a a bad strategic decision to go go long Teslas uh basically and and they they suffered the the big decline in residual values of Teslas as as Elon reduced the price. That's what forced the company into a kind of a very challenging position.
The stock crashed. The time of our investment the stock was around $3 a share. And it was a very levered bet on either asset prices of used cars increasing and their operating business kind of turning around. And we thought both were good bets. Uh the tariffs made uh used cars much more valuable because they became much more competitive against obviously new cars which helped the residual value of their auto portfolio.
Um and when you have a levered collection of cars and the car value goes up that creates excess value that then reverts to the benefit of the company and the company had a built very small market cap because of the destruction of value that had taken place. And then a new management team was put in place uh replacing the one that made some of the mistakes.
And we felt they had a uh ambitious but credible uh turnaround plan and the stock offered a kind of a levered bet on that kind of outcome. And we're willing The vast majority of our investments are in companies with uh you know, very strong balance sheets, very dominant market positions and uh you know, very little financial risk.
Whereas Hertz offered a fair amount of financial risk and a lot of the balance sheet constraints. But an asymmetric upside in the event that they were successful in in executing a plan. And we felt we could help them on the balance sheet side. And so that was the basically the thesis behind the investment and the stock is up maybe you know, approximately two times or just shy of two times since our original investment.
What what's the point at which you say, you know, job done, we're just going to we're going to sell out now? Or do you actually you think you might want to stick around for a while? It's too early and we think the company's making good progress. There There's sort of a blue sky upside in that if you if follow the sort of autonomous vehicle space, the proliferation of companies obviously and competing [clears throat] in that space.
But what the way most of the world don't have is the infrastructure as they scale to maintain, [clears throat] clean, you know, all the things one needs to do when you have a large car fleet. Hertz has enormous experience in that regard. And so that infrastructure you could see a world in which it becomes very valuable to the autonomous vehicle fleets of the world.
That that sort of significant incremental upside. But putting that aside, you know, our view uh at the time of our investment, this was, you know, potentially six, sevenfold, you know, something approaching a $20 stock. Today the stock's, you know, five, six dollars a share. We still think there's significant upside and the financial risk is is been reduced dramatically by some good decisions on the part of management.
See, you've also got stakes in Meta and Amazon. I mean, this is sort of the complete opposite the idea of a Yeah, these are not turn around stories. Yes, the share prices might have had a a slight pullback recently, but like that this is nowhere I would say not not so slight a pullback. Microsoft's down something like 40% from the highs, which is, you know, brought it into a very, very compelling valuation.
And Meta, you know, something similar. So, you know, so do you got Meta, Amazon? You got Do you got Have you got stake in Microsoft as well then? So. We do. Yeah. So, what I mean, what for these these big tech companies, why why now to get involved in it? Because if you if you look at some of the other names in your portfolio, you're very much you know, you seem happy to go into lots of different industries, but you think that, you know, one would have thought tech names are already, you what you know, priced out of your the type of things that you would normally look at?
You look at Amazon, Meta, you know, these are Microsoft businesses we've admired for for many, many years, but kind of never got to a price that we found them compelling. Uh now, each of them are at prices we find compelling. And I think that it's a bit, you know, the the excitement of SpaceX, uh if you will, and and what's going on sort of semiconductor stocks, uh you know, the AI energy play, um people sold old tech.
And I think people think of Microsoft as old tech, but we think they are incredibly well positioned uh for the AI era. Um you know, happy to go into whatever degree of detail you want. You know, Meta's a little bit of a different story, but we're you know, Meta's growth rates uh have accelerated dramatically uh as they are a huge beneficiary of AI and kind of serving, you know, ads to their, you know, customers um on which the the advertiser getting much higher returns, which obviously is uh and people are spending more time uh on, you know, their you know, Instagram, Facebook, and you know, WhatsApp, etc., which is you know, so the business is doing extremely well, and and the stock price is cheap, and and the combination makes it an interesting.
So, we're we care about business quality less than we care about business sector. So, we're happy to own a one and tech company if we think they're in a a very strong defensible position, and the price is right. I mean, something like Amazon is I think people sort of have moved on from just thinking about it as a retailer.
It's very much tech first sort of thing with cloud computing stuff. But obviously, still in a a highly competitive sector or you know, broad sectors and stuff. What what what gives you the confidence now to that Amazon's still got the ability to fight off competition and to to be the very long-term winner?
Yeah, so I think Amazon is one of the most dominant companies in you know, in history. Uh you know, you look at their position in kind of online retail. They are the dominant company. They maintain very high growth rates. They they you know, have offer incredible service to the customers. You know, local you know, you can get stuff delivered now in a couple of hours, which is really pretty remarkable for a pretty large basket of goods.
They're expanding into kind of, you know, rural areas, and there's, you know, tons of runway for the company on [clears throat] on their retail side of the business, and they've never really pushed price at all. They've always pushed, you know, faster delivery, lower cost for the customers, and and so that's an an amazing moat.
And then, you know, half or so of the business is is kind of the cloud computing business, where you know, there's you know, not infinite, but near infinite demand, and the one number one player in that space. Um and they continue to grow at a very high rate at a time when there's enormous demand for compute.
And a lot of companies don't want to spend the capital themselves. They'd rather outsource to the cloud. So, we think they're very well positioned in kind of both halves of the company. What I just I to ask you about your plan for turning Howard Hughes into sort of a a Berkshire Hathaway type entity.
Can you sort of I I guess for someone watching this video perhaps you don't not that familiar with what Howard Hughes about the history and what and what and you could you could talk about how you want to reposition it? Yeah, sure. So So Howard Hughes is a maybe let's go to the Buffett analogy. You know, Berkshire Hathaway analogy.
Buffett took bought a cheap stock which was a textile company discounted book value. Um and he ended up with half of it. And so he stuck in a in a challenged business in a challenged industry at a at a very attractive price. What he did was over time he liquidated the textile business, took out all the you know, the cash flows and eventually sold off the assets.
And he took the capital and he reinvested in a higher return business which is principally insurance and that over time and other industries. We're taking a very much higher quality business than a textile operation, the real estate company that it that sort of will self-liquidates over time. It's a while there are some kind of incombursing assets, the bulk of the assets are land and kind of residential land lots that are sold to home builders, condominiums that are sold as they are completed.
And the business generates a lot of cash. Instead of reinvesting the cash going forward into real estate which is a lower returning asset class, we're redeploying the capital into insurance. Um we acquired a company last week called Vantage which is a specialty insurer reinsurer. It's a great platform to build a Berkshire Hathaway style insurance operation.
Vantage uh at the moment we acquired it invested all of its assets in fixed income securities. Didn't really have investment capabilities. They outsourced all that to you know, Goldman Sachs or BlackRock. We're taking over the investment of the Vantage assets. So the idea there is to build a profitable insurance company that writes profitable risks and manage the assets akin to the way that Berkshire has over time and that's enabled Berkshire to compound its equity at 20% per annum over 60 years, and that's our ambition.
I mean, what So, do you how how long is sort of a a time frame are you looking before you can sort of make a a judgment to say, "Yeah, this is this is definitely working." Is this a a real slow burner situation? Yeah, I think we'll we'll we'll judge our success in the insurance operation, you know, uh over time, um but, you know, I think every investment you should look at it on a multi-year basis, or at least the kind we make.
We're not short-term traders. If you're a short-term trader, you should be judged in the short term. If you're buying, you know, businesses and compounders you want to own for years, I think the the measuring period is a period of years. Yeah. I mean, so Pershing tried to buy Universal Music, but that the deal was rejected, and and you've gone on to actually sell down the the the shares that you already owned in this business.
I'm sure you must be disappointed, but I I To me, looking at the situation, it seemed to be as soon as you had this sort bid rejection, um you you appeared to sort of walk away quite quickly. Normally, with takeover situations, you know, the bidder might come back and say, "Actually, we'll we'll offer a little bit more." or something, but I'm just wondering why why did you sort of say, you know, "Clearly, this is this is not going to work for us.
We'll just move on and put the proceeds, you know, that we had in invested in Universal to to into something else?" Two principal reasons. Uh one, it's a calculus we do on occasion we call return on invested brain damage. Different from other such um public If this were a traditional public company, we would absolutely have pressed forward.
Uh but, it's a controlled company. Uh the Bolloré Group owns 28 plus percent of the company. It takes a 2/3 vote in Amsterdam uh for a change of control transaction. So, this is not a transaction you can do without the uh consent of the Bollorés, and they, you know, uh I guess rejected us pretty in We were surprised uh um because we had quite constructive engagement with them prior to the rejection.
But you know, we respect their decision and this is a time where there are many very or certainly a number of a sufficient number and wish to construct a very high quality portfolio. So we were we had very good uses for the capital from Universal Music Group. So we could have continued to bang on the door, you know, you know, adjusted our proposal to make it maybe more compelling, uh but uh wasn't clear to us we could get to you one of the challenges we had with Universal over time was that was the Bolloré Group as a controlling shareholder and in light of their response, we just didn't feel comfortable being a shareholder as in a minority position there.
Okay. Um Pershing Square Holdings has underperformed the S&P 500 over the last 1, 3, 5 years. If you if you look at it in pound sterling terms, I I just wondering what you know, why should someone actually sort of back you if a simple S&P 500 tracker fund has actually provided better returns? Well, so in pound terms, you know, we we manage this capital and we think we should be judged on dollar terms, because you can hedge your your dollar risk if if you if you choose to do so.
But if you look at Pershing Square over, you know, long period of time, we've massively outperformed the S&P. There are certainly short periods of time where we've underperformed and a big part of our underperformance in the uh well, again, putting putting aside the translation to pound terms, you know, we've underperformed this year and that's you know, the markets are up.
My S&P's up whatever 7 or 8% and we're down something in order of 10% and there will be periods where we're substantially underperforming the S&P because we manage a concentrated portfolio that's different materially different from the S&P. That's enabled us to outperform, but it means there's going to be periods of time where we underperform.
Those periods generally are the best times to invest with us cuz we're you know, why are we underperforming? Because we own uh we don't own chip stocks and and uh semiconductor companies and and energy, which is what has driven the S&P, you know, pretty dramatically in the last short period of time.
And where we're deploying capital is in businesses that have underperformed the S&P. Uh you know, the Microsofts, the Amazons, the Metas of the world um you know, are are we think extremely cheap at you know, kind of current valuations and therefore will pay off over time. So, there will be periods of time um and they've generally tended to be short with one two-year exception uh almost a decade ago uh where we've uh underperformed and then, you know, generally thereafter we we've we've outperformed, which has enabled us to compound you know, uh if you look at the Pershing Square strategy over time and even if you look over the last uh you know, almost you know, eight eight nine years you know, we've compounded at something like, you know, 22% per annum, the S&P compounding at 14%.
So, it's been about a eight 900 basis point period of per annum of outperformance for you know, a a fairly sustained period of time uh you know, since we've been uh a public company. But, this year uh we're you know, almost uh you know, at 15 1600 basis points underperforming. But, I would make the case that's the time when you want to put capital with Pershing Square when we're underperforming cuz it means our holdings are trading uh at at deep discounts to kind of the high flyers of the market.
Well, Well, Bill Ackman, thank you very much for joining us. It's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you. So, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.
Comments 0