Bill Ackman’s buys: six stocks enter the Pershing Square portfolio
The US fund manager has deployed capital into new investments.
13th August 2026 11:27
by Dave Baxter from interactive investor
Bill Ackman, manager of Pershing Square Holdings, pictured in California in May. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images.
Bill Ackman added six new positions to the Pershing Square Holdings Ord (LSE:PSH) investment trust in the first half of this year, as well as selling out of Universal Music Group NV (EURONEXT:UMG) and Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
The manager noted that gains from the S&P 500 in the first half of 2026 had been concentrated among those companies providing the “picks and shovels” for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, with many other companies delivering little in the way of return.
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But Ackman argued that this had created “a highly attractive environment for Pershing Square to deploy capital into new investments”, with the team investing in a handful of companies.
As such, Ackman has added payment processors Visa Inc Class A (NYSE:V) and Mastercard Inc Class A (NYSE:MA) to the portfolio, as well as S&P Global Inc (NYSE:SPGI) and Intercontinental Exchange Inc (NYSE:ICE), both of which operate financial exchanges and provide financial data. He has also invested in Alcon Inc (SIX:ALC), an eye-care company, as well as returning to Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX), which he briefly held in 2022 before exiting.
The Netflix position proved disastrous back in 2022, with the team selling out at a big loss after just a few months, warning that they had “lost confidence in our ability to predict the company’s future prospects with a sufficient degree of certainty”. The sale came after Netflix announced plans to introduce adverts to some of its offerings and clamp down on account sharing.
The trust has struggled as of late | |||
Fund/index | Six-month share price total return (%) to 12/08/26 | One-year return (%) | Five-year return (%) |
| Pershing Square | -10.8 | -6.2 | 61.5 |
| S&P 500 | 14.6 | 20 | 77.9 |
Source: FE Analytics. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Meanwhile, he sold out of Universal Music Group and Alphabet in the first half of this year, and then exited a position in Hertz Global Holdings Inc Ordinary Shares (New) (NASDAQ:HTZ) in July.
Writing in the Pershing Square interim report, Ackman argued that the new additions were “simple, predictable, and free cash flow-generative, with strong competitive positions, minimal financial leverage and capital markets dependency, and are run by excellent management teams”.
They sit alongside names such as Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta Platforms Inc Class A (NASDAQ:META), Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE:UBER), Brookfield Asset Management Ltd Ordinary Shares - Class A (TSE:BAM) and Restaurant Brands International Inc (NYSE:QSR) in the portfolio.
Churn and burn
The first half of 2026 continued a rough spell for the trust, with it registering a 23.9% share price loss versus a positive return of around 10% for the S&P 500. And like a handful of other struggling managers, Ackman has been very active with portfolio changes.
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Plenty of talk has been dedicated to Terry Smith’s decision to overhaul his portfolio, while Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund I Acc (B7FQLN1) manager James Thomson highlighted the first half of 2026 as the most active period in the fund’s 25-year history.
Some of Ackman’s recent decisions do set him apart from other managers. He has bought into some of the AI hyperscalers in recent times, on the basis that markets are overly concerned about their recent spending.
One example is Meta, whose shares slumped by 15% in the first half of the year.
“The company’s share price remains pressured by its substantial ramp in operating expenses and capital expenditures funding its AI initiatives,” Ackman said.
“We view Meta as one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI, which is driving higher engagement through better content recommendation, greater ad monetization through improved targeting, and meaningful product innovation in consumer and business agents.”
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