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"While a few months of strong performance is too short a period
to judge our performance, we believe that (Pershing Square
Holdings) is back on track," Ackman wrote in his firm's interim
financial report. Pershing Square Holdings is up 12.7 percent
this year through Aug. 7.
The gains outpace the Standard & Poor's 500 index's 8.1 percent
rise and many rival hedge funds returns and could signal a
comeback for the 52-year-old manager after years of back-to-back
losses that helped shrink the hedge fund's assets to roughly $8
billion, about half of what Ackman managed at the firm's peak in
2015.
Chipotle added 5.6 percent while Automatic Data Processing,
where Ackman lost a bitter proxy fight in 2017, added 5.1
percent, the financial report said. Lowe's Companies, a
relatively new investment, added 1.3 percent. Herbalife, where
Ackman expected the nutrition and diet company's stock price to
drop before he exited the bet earlier this year, hurt the
portfolio with a loss of 3.3 percent.
A number of Ackman's portfolio companies, including burrito
chain Chipotle, home improvement retailer Lowe's and Oreo cookie
maker Mondelez, have appointed new chief executives. "We
initiated our investment shortly after Lowe's announced the CEO
search process," Ackman said in the report, adding that Marvin
Ellison, now Lowe's CEO, "was the leading candidate on our list
of potential CEO recruits."
Ackman's returns are among the most heavily scrutinized in the
$3 trillion hedge fund industry, especially since he has often
publicly pushed management at his portfolio companies to perform
better. This year, however, Ackman is pursuing a lower profile
and has shrunk his firm's size through layoffs to get back to
what he calls his roots of focusing on investments.
Ackman and other Pershing Square executives have used hundreds
of millions in personal assets this year to buy shares of the
publicly traded fund, a step applauded by the board chair. "The
board is pleased to see such a strong commitment from the
Investment Manager," Anne Farlow wrote in the introduction to
the interim report.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Tom Brown)
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