Pershing Square Holdings (PSHZF US) $45.15

Pershing Square is a well-known hedge fund run by Bill Ackman that invests in a concentrated portfolio of stocks. Incidentally, Bill was a big supporter of Donald Trump. We own the Pershing Square closed-ended hedge fund vehicle incorporated in Guernsey, that trades in the US under code PSHZF US, having bought in May 2023. The position is up 34% since, though it has pulled back recently from a ~$US56 high in June to ~$US45 today.

While we own PSHZF US, and therefore have exposure to the underlying shares, we also own Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG US) and Alphabet (GOOGL US) separately. Two big additions have been made to the Pershing portfolio recently, namely an increased weighting in Brookfield (BN US) and an outright addition in Nike (NKE US). Nike has been on our radar for some time, and you can read our past opinions (here), though we think they still have multiple challenges before turning the business around. This is a huge consumer brand globally with a market capitalisation of $US110bn, which completely upended their traditional distribution strategy, and the change didn’t work – this will take time to rectify.

Brookfield (BN US) is a large global asset management firm with a broad range of investments across real estate, infrastructure, renewable energy, and private equity. They’re big in Australia with a focus largely on utilities & energy, having bought AusNet services in 2022 for $18.7bn (along with the Canadian Pension Plan). Pershing has held BN for a while; however, they’ve increased their weighting more recently. We like this play and view it as an investment in rising asset prices globally. In the International Equities Portfolio, we own Blackstone (BX US) for this reason, with the shares now up over 80% since we purchased in 2022, though we think there is plenty more upside to come.

• We own PSHZF US listed in the US and remain comfortable in the holding. We see value in understanding why they are investing in certain areas, and keep across this through their quarterly investor webinars, the next being this coming Friday morning (2 am our time) – holders can register here.