Ackman Laments: “Worst Year Ever”

Keep your chin up Billy Albert. You’ve made billions of dollars over the past decade, own a $100 million apartment in NYC just for shits and giggles, and you do it for the sex.

Don’t let 2015 get you down, a year when you doubled and tripled down in a biotech stock gone mad,  played with dynamite sticks in a pyramid scheme short sale that Carl Icahn keeps afloat for the sake of his entertainment, and having an all in all bad time of it playing Gordon Gekko this year.

Calm yourself and harness the superiority of your genetical make up, outstrip your pathetic peers and make 2016 the best year ever.

Ackman laments in a letter to shareholders:

“If the year finishes with our portfolio holdings at or around current values, 2015 will be the worst performance year in Pershing Square’s history, even worse than 2008 during the financial crisis.

Ackman emphasized his firm’s low redemption levels.
“Our net redemptions were nominal at $39 million or 0.2 percent of capital for the third quarter, and $13 million or 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter,” he said in the letter.
The firm’s Pershing Square Holdings fund dropped 19.7 percent during the first 11 months of the year, marking a sharp contrast with last year’s 40 percent gain when Ackman ranked as one of the $3 trillion hedge fund industry’s biggest stars.
As a so-called activist investor who tends to make only a handful of concentrated bets and then pushes management to perform better, the 49-year old Ackman has seen much of last year’s profits eaten away as his bets on drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Platform Specialty Products tumbled in the third quarter.
Still, Ackman, who oversees money for state pension funds, endowments and wealthy investors, said the portfolio’s intrinsic value increased even as its mark-to-market value, which reflects the daily stock price, has declined “substantially.”
Ackman said again in the letter that he is sticking with Valeant – which surged 16.41 percent on Tuesday – saying, “We do not believe that Valeant’s long-term earnings prospects have materially changed.”
As of early November, Valeant’s stock price had plunged 70 percent from its peak in August. But the stock has since recovered some ground as Ackman and other large investors bought more shares. In the last weeks Ackman used over-the-counter options transactions. He said in the letter that if the stock price rises to $165 or more by January 2017, “We will make more than 10 times our net investment over this period.”

 

Oh shit. Ack-attack is gonna turn his VRX shit hole into a 10 bagger. I’m long, wearing 3-d glasses, and got my popcorn ready for rapid consumption.

Here is Billy Albert’s shareholer letter in its entirety.