Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, has built a new position in the software giant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in typical Ackman fashion, he disclosed the stake in his trademark style: a lengthy post<\/a> on X<\/a> on Friday ahead of his firm\u2019s quarterly 13F filing (a required filing for institutional investment managers with over $100 million in assets). He did not disclose the size, but called it a \u201ccore holding.\u201d<\/p>\n Pershing started accumulating shares in February, after Microsoft\u2019s stock fell about 10%<\/a> the day after Q2<\/a> earnings, with a 1% lower-than-expected cloud growth alongside a surge in capital spending. \u201cWe were able to establish our position at a valuation of 21 times forward earnings, broadly in line with the market multiple and well below Microsoft\u2019s trading average over the last few years,\u201d Ackman wrote in the post.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s stock is down more than 15% year-to-date as it fights to prove that its Azure cloud business has enough revenue<\/a> to justify its AI spending. The erosion of its partnership with AI, which was recently restructured to strip Microsoft of exclusive distribution rights, only furthered those concerns.<\/p>\n Ackman sees that restructuring as a pivot to a multi-model architecture that can better suit the needs of its enterprise customers.<\/p>\n He also argues that investors underestimate Microsoft\u2019s 365 productivity suite and its stickiness, saying the suite is \u201cdeeply embedded\u201d in enterprises and \u201cnearly impossible to replicate,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Ackman pushed back on concerns over Microsoft\u2019s $190 billion 2026 capex budget, arguing it as growth investment on a J curve rather than a threat to margins. He also pointed out that Microsoft\u2019s market capitalization does not yet reflect its 27% economic interest in OpenAI\u2014 worth approximately $200 billion at the startup\u2019s most recent funding round valuation, he said.<\/p>\n The Microsoft buy continues Ackman\u2019s pattern of stepping into Big Tech during periods of AI-related skepticism.<\/p>\n \u201cWe acquired Alphabet<\/a> when the stock declined substantially on the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Amazon<\/a> in the weeks following Liberation Day, and Meta<\/a> more recently on the market\u2019s response to the company\u2019s unexpectedly large capex guidance,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, has built a new position in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[53,420,7829,12326,132,1122,320,7828,157],"class_list":["post-40213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-anthropic","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-bill-ackman","tag-google","tag-meta","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}