CEO & Founder, Pershing Square
Bill Ackman on the IPOs that could make or break markets
AJ Bell's Head of Markets, Dan Coatsworth, speaks to Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square, about the big forces shaping global markets right now.
Ackman explains why IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI could be critical for market momentum – and whether they'll fuel further gains or risk investor fatigue.
He also discusses whether Alphabet's huge fundraise could be a signal markets are nearing a peak, and shares his views on geopolitical risks, including how the Iran conflict is impacting markets and when it might end.
Plus, Ackman reveals whether Anthropic might be considered as an invest...
About Bill Ackman
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square, has been active in media appearances discussing his investment strategy, the launch of a new U.S.-listed closed-end fund, and his views on the market. In April 2026, Pershing Square raised $5 billion through the IPO of Pershing Square USA (PSUS), a closed-end investment company, and also listed Pershing Square Inc. (PS), an alternative asset management company. Ackman described the IPO as "the beginning of a journey" and stated that the capital would be deployed within weeks, as he believes it is a good time to invest. He also discussed his ambition to transform Howard Hughes into a "modern-day Berkshire Hathaway." Ackman has stated that he is finding "a lot of really cheap stocks in a market that's hitting new highs," attributing this to investor focus on AI and semiconductor stocks, which he said has led to companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon being overlooked and trading at attractive valuations. He described his firm as "high quality durable growth investors" and noted that while Pershing Square has underperformed the S&P 500 in the short term, it has compounded at a higher rate over longer periods. Ackman has also commented on geopolitical risks, predicting the Iran conflict would be resolved in "weeks," and has advocated for policies that give more Americans access to retirement savings and ownership in capitalism.
Transcript (19 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
And you have companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and others that need to raise large amounts of capital. If one of them fails, or one of the early ones fail, it's going to have an impact on those businesses, going to have an impact on AI investment, and it could have an impact on the economy.
Oil price has been relatively high since start March because of what's going on in the Middle East. And as we're recording this, there's no sign that we're actually going to get a resolution, a peace deal. Does that sort of just point to heightened risks that we could get economic damage, we could get potentially businesses and consumer sentiment could weaken? All of this is what would naturally be bad for the stock market over time. Are you worried about the current situation or do you think actually we're getting closer to the end of the Iran war?
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Bill Ackman0:50
I think we're getting closer to the end of the Iran war. I think it's weeks as opposed to many months away from resolution. I could be wrong on that. It is somewhat of an overhang. It's certainly contributing to inflation. Higher energy prices are something the consumer notices and can reduce demand. So there are lots of risks in the world, which is why we like to invest in these very dominant companies where maybe they'll grow slightly less quickly in a slower GDP world, but the nature of their businesses and their market positions are such that we think they'll do well in almost any economic environment. They'll do better in a stronger market, they'll do better in a world with less inflation, but they'll do just fine in a challenged world. That's why we own them.
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Interviewer1:46
What could actually cause a market correction? And do you think that could actually happen this year?
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Bill Ackman1:51
For sure. It's absolutely possible. There's a lot of expectation and hype in some of the names you mentioned, companies going public, etc. SpaceX, if that's an unsuccessful IPO, I think it will be very disappointing for markets. And you have companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and others that need to raise large amounts of capital. If one of them fails, or one of the early ones fail, it's going to have an impact on those businesses, it's going to have an impact on AI investment, and it could have an impact on the economy. So it's actually important for markets that SpaceX is a successful IPO.
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Interviewer2:30
We've had Alphabet raise some significant sums of money. And we're getting these really big IPOs with SpaceX and Anthropic's coming up. I just wondered if you thought this is kind of top-of-the-market signals when there's lots of massive amounts of money sloshing around.
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Bill Ackman2:49
When Alphabet is issuing equity, they have to believe that their share price is at a level where the cost of that equity is relatively cheap. We bought Alphabet at 15 times earnings and we exited at 30 times earnings. The earnings compounded at a high rate. It's one of the best investments we made in our history. We exited in the last quarter, and we exited really based on price, not based on the company's progress. They're consuming a lot of capital in the AI arms race, and I think they felt they could issue it at an attractive price. That certainly is a signal with respect to Alphabet that the price is not cheap. Interestingly though, despite the market hitting new highs, we have found it easier to construct a portfolio of some of the highest quality businesses in the world offering some of the most attractive rates of return on a risk-adjusted basis on a go-forward basis than we've seen in our career. This is among the unique moments in our career where stocks look incredibly cheap. Microsoft is trading at kind of COVID levels in terms of its valuation. Similar to Meta, Uber I think at an extraordinary value at something like 17 times earnings. So we think it's a target-rich environment for our strategy.
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Interviewer4:19
If markets did start to crash tomorrow, you obviously have these names you've just been mentioning. Do you think because they're on more reasonable valuations that they would fall by much less than the market, or do you expect everything will be caught up with a bit of contagion to start with?
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Bill Ackman4:38
If there was a legitimate market crash, generally all stocks go down in that circumstance. But Microsoft at 21 times earnings, Uber at 17 times earnings, it's hard to imagine those stocks getting materially cheaper on a sustained basis. And their earnings, Uber's earnings are compounding at something like in the mid 30s. So if the stock stays flat for a year, the multiple will go from 17 times to something like 12 or 13 times. Extraordinarily cheap prices. Uber is pretty aggressively buying in its shares. We'll make more in the long term if the stock is cheap in the short term.
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Interviewer5:13
Do you look at your portfolio and say that we always need to have something in there that would be resilient if we did have a market pullback, a more defensive style investment?
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Bill Ackman5:24
Maybe other than one investment in the portfolio, the vast majority of our companies have extraordinarily strong balance sheets, and they're really not exposed to a financial crash. We don't own any banks or businesses that are highly capital markets dependent. Most of the companies we own generate enormous amounts of cash. Most of them have been buying in their own shares over time, and a lower stock market is kind of good for them in the long term. So the inherent nature of our strategy is very defensive in that we're buying very well-capitalized companies that, if the stock market shut for 10 years, let alone crashed, we'd do fine 10 years from now.
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Interviewer6:10
If we do see a market crash, how are you actually protected in hedges? Because you have form in using financial engineering to try to offset what things are going on elsewhere.
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Bill Ackman6:23
There have been three black swan type events in markets in the history of Pershing Square. In each case, we had a different kind of hedge in place. During the financial crisis, we hedged by buying single name CDS. COVID crisis, investment grade CDS. When the Fed jacked up rates when inflation spiked, we made money on interest rate swaps. Today, we don't have a hedge in place. We only hedge if we perceive a market risk that we think is material and we can find an instrument where the payoff characteristics are sufficiently asymmetric to justify the investment. Plenty of risks in the world. We haven't identified a specific black swan risk that's going to cause... I would say the biggest risk to markets are really more based on the success of a handful of IPOs that will affect market sentiment. I think of those as less fundamental. Also, we have not identified an asymmetric way to hedge that risk. Volatility happens to be quite high generally, and it's harder to find asymmetric hedges in a world with higher volatility. But the best hedges we start with owning very well-capitalized companies that aren't dependent on issuing equity in order to deliver attractive returns over time. I think the big risk to companies today are businesses that are dependent on constant access to the capital markets. I would put the open AI's of the world in that category.
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Interviewer8:01
SpaceX and Anthropic and OpenAI all clearly would need continuous money. Surely there must be a point where investors get tired of keep backing them. What happens in that situation?
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Bill Ackman8:19
I would say it's a risk, but Anthropic has apparently reached the point where they're even positive. I've never seen a business grow as quickly as they have over time. Frankly, I don't have to invest in Anthropic. So it's interesting intellectually. A failure of one of these IPOs could have a big impact on market sentiment but is unlikely to have a big impact on the fundamentals of the companies we own.
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Interviewer8:49
You have a company like Anthropic, it's growing incredibly fast. AI seems to be embedded very rapidly into consumer and business lives. There seems to be a perception amongst many people that Anthropic's Claude is the best quality AI platform to use. As an investor, does that not interest you at all?
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Bill Ackman9:15
It interests me, of course. We are enterprise customers of Anthropic and we think we have a very good product. As of this moment in history, they seem to be the leading model, but we're at a place where the open source models are better than models of 6 months ago. For the vast majority of use cases for many people, a free open source model to plan their next vacation or what restaurant they want to go to or even to look up symptoms of some problem is sufficient. You don't need to use Claude to solve many of those issues. So I think AI is fascinating. We're spending a lot of time thinking about it, thinking about the implications of AI for the companies we own, thinking about the disruption risks. But we don't have to invest in the Anthropic IPO or necessarily have a particular view on it.
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Interviewer10:17
Bill Ackman, thank you very much for joining us. It's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you. Thank you very much for your time.
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Bill Ackman10:23
Appreciate it.