Ackman’s 2,644% Compounder Goes Public — But Long-Term Investors Should Look Past the IPO Flop
When Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square USA (PSUS) debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in late April, it dropped 18% on its first day of trading, falling from its $50 IPO price to close at $40.93. By any short-term measure, the launch was a flop. But for patient investors who understand what they’re actually looking at, the stumble may matter far less than the underlying track record it’s attached to.
Since 2004, Pershing Square’s flagship fund has delivered a 2,644% net return — compared to 836% for the S&P 500 over the same period. That’s not a rounding error; it’s roughly 3x the index over more than two decades of compounding, through two financial crises, a pandemic, and an ongoing war premium baked into global energy markets. Ackman’s long-stated ambition is to build something in the spirit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway: a publicly traded, permanent-capital vehicle that lets ordinary investors ride alongside a disciplined, concentrated portfolio manager without hedge fund fee structures. PSUS charges no performance fees — a meaningful structural difference from the traditional “2 and 20” model that extracts wealth from investors before they ever see a dollar of compounding.
The portfolio itself is worth examining. Core positions include Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Hertz, and Uber — a mix of durable franchise businesses and turnaround situations that reflects a fundamentals-first, high-conviction philosophy. These are not momentum trades; they are multi-year theses. Ackman’s track record shows he’s willing to sit in positions for years and absorb short-term pain. His 2020 bitcoin bet and his 2022 interest rate short are examples of swings with long setup periods followed by decisive action — a temperament that aligns well with long-term investors rather than quarter-to-quarter traders.
So what does the IPO stumble mean for long-term investors? Closed-end funds frequently trade at discounts to net asset value — especially in their early days, before a track record of distributions and transparency builds institutional confidence. An 18% discount on day one is uncomfortable but not unusual in this structure. The more relevant question is whether Ackman’s investing edge — demonstrated over 21 years and multiple market cycles — will translate into a format accessible to $50 retail investors. If it does, PSUS could compound quietly for years from exactly the point when the crowd walked away. Investors who ignored Berkshire’s “boring” early years after its public listing in the 1960s learned that lesson the expensive way. History doesn’t repeat, but it does suggest that a 21-year track record at 3x the S&P deserves more than a day-one price tag to define it.
