Bill Ackman's Pershing Square USA starts trading well below IPO price

Bill Ackman's long-awaited push into public markets debuted Wednesday, marking a scaled-back but still ambitious step toward building a Berkshire Hathaway-like investment platform.

The Pershing Square Capital Management founder's combined initial public offering raised $5 billion, pricing at the low end of expectations after marketing a deal that initially targeted between $5 billion and $10 billion. The haul is a far cry from earlier ambitions floated two years ago to raise as much as $25 billion.

The transaction created two separately traded entities on the New York Stock Exchange: closed-end fund Pershing Square USA Ltd., which began trading under the ticker PSUS, and asset manager Pershing Square Inc., listed as PS. The dual structure allows investors to gain exposure either to the underlying portfolio or to the management business itself.

PSUS opened for trading at $42, well below its IPO price of $50. It was last around $40.90, down 18%. PS, meanwhile, began trading at $24 and traded around $23.50.

"Hedge funds are sort of known for managing money for rich people. And now we have the opportunity for someone with $50, could be a long-term shareholder," Ackman said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Wednesday. "Usually, the retail gets cut massively back, the institutions are favored. We did the opposite."

The offering was structured to appeal to both institutional and retail investors and notably omitting performance fees. Investors in PSUS received bonus shares in Pershing Square Inc., tying the two vehicles together while maintaining separate trading.

The listing gives public investors their first direct stake in Ackman's investment platform, which runs a concentrated portfolio of 10 large-cap names including Amazon, Uber and Brookfield as of the end of 2025.

Track record and macro hedging

Central to Ackman's pitch is Pershing Square's long-term return profile. Since inception in 2004, the firm has generated cumulative net returns of more than 2,600%, far outpacing the roughly 836% gain in the S&P 500 over the same period, according to roadshow materials.

Another key selling point is the firm's history of macro hedging — a strategy Pershing Square credits with generating outsized gains during periods of dislocation. In early 2020, the firm made one of its most high-profile trades, spending about $27 million on credit protection tied to investment-grade and high-yield indexes as the Covid pandemic roiled markets. The hedge returned approximately $2.6 billion within weeks, a roughly 93-fold gain that helped offset losses elsewhere in the portfolio.

Buffett inspiration

Ackman took a concrete step toward a long-held ambition of building a publicly traded vehicle modeled on Berkshire, the conglomerate run by Warren Buffett for decades. The activist investor has repeatedly pointed to Buffett's evolution — from running partnerships to overseeing a permanent capital vehicle — as the blueprint for Pershing Square's future.

The firm has emphasized the advantages of permanent capital — a structure that reduces the risk of forced selling during market stress and allows for longer-term positioning. Ackman has contended that such flexibility is critical to compounding returns over time, echoing the model that helped transform Berkshire from a struggling textile business into one of the world's largest investment vehicles.

Ackman said he plans to adopt elements of Berkshire's shareholder culture, including hosting annual meetings where investors can engage directly with management.

"We're going to have investor days. We're going to have an annual meeting, Berkshire Hathaway style, where people come, and they ask questions," Ackman said.