Barron's Article28 Dec 2020 19:11
Home Investing Barron's Markets
Bill Ackman Has Had Another Blockbuster Year. His Fund Is Still Cheap.
Published: Dec. 28, 2020 at 12:57 p.m. ET
By Andrew Bary
2
Email icon
Facebook icon
Twitter icon
Linkedin icon
Flipboard icon
Print icon
Resize icon
Referenced Symbols
CMG
-0.48%
LOW
-0.04%
SBUX
+1.96%
HLT
+1.22%
PSTH
+0.38%
SPX
+0.93%
Bill Ackman BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bill Ackman is ending a second blockbuster year in a row, but investors still aren’t won over, as Ackman’s large overseas closed-end fund, Pershing Square Holdings continues to trade at a large discount to its net asset value.
That could mean an opportunity. The fund offers a play on both a concentrated equity investment portfolio, including stocks like Chipotle Mexican Grill (ticker: CMG), Lowe’s (LOW), Starbucks (SBUX), and Hilton Worldwide Holdings (HLT), and Ackman’s big special-purpose acquisition company, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings (PSTH), that appears to be on track find a target company in the first quarter.
Shares of Pershing Square Holdings (PSH. the Netherlands) trade around $33.75, a 25% discount to the most recent weekly net asset value of $44.73 on Dec. 22. The NAV discount is likely a little wider now given the appreciation in some of the fund’s holdings since Dec. 22. U.S. listed closed-end equity funds trade at discounts averaging nearly 10%.
Advertisement
The shares mainly trade in Europe on Euronext and the London Stock Exchange, where the fund was recently added to the FTSE 100 index thanks to its rapid appreciation in 2020. The shares are also lightly traded in the U.S., on the “pink sheets” under the ticker PSHZF.
The fund’s net asset value was up 67.5% after fees year-to-date through Dec. 22—well ahead of the S&P 500’s total return of about 16%--and the fund’s shares have returned 75% in 2020 reflecting a narrowing of the net asset value discount that has topped 30% during 2020. That followed a 58% gain in NAV in 2019. The fund has traded at a persistently large discount to NAV in recent years.
Ackman’s performance was helped by a $2 billion investment coup during the pandemic selloff in March involving a short bet on corporate bonds that protected his portfolios, including Pershing Square Holdings. Barron’s has written favorably on Ackman’s fund and on his investment score.
“Ackman is an exceptional money manager and he has learned from his mistakes,” says Bryn Torkelson, chief investment officer at Matisse Capital, which runs the Matisse Discounted Closed-End Fund Strategy (MDCEX), a mutual fund whose largest position is in Pershing Square Holdings. “When you buy funds at a deep discount, good things often happen.”
Ackman had a poor stretch from 2015 to 2017, when Pershing Square Holdings’ net asset value fell about 30% and trailed the S&P 500 by around 60 percentage points.
The investor, however, is back in a big way. He raised $4 billion in June for his SPAC, Per