Uber surges after Bill Ackman reveals $2B stake in company, credits actor Edward Norton
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed on Friday that his activist investment firm has bought up approximately $2 billion worth of shares of Uber — sending the ride-share company’s stock surging.Uber shares were trading at more than 9% higher at around 1 p.m.Eastern Time on Friday after Ackman wrote on X that his company, Pershing Square Capital Management, has a stake in the app that amounts to around 1% of its $161.13 billion market capitalization.“Beginning in early January, we began acquiring a position in @Uber.
Today, we own 30.3 million shares,” Ackman wrote on X on Friday.In his X post on Friday, Ackman alluded to Uber’s chaotic management under its controversial co-founder Travis Kalanick and praised the current chief executive officer, Dara Khosrowshahi.“While a great business, Uber suffered from erratic management,” the billionaire hedge fund manager wrote.“Since he joined the company in 2017, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has done a superb job in transforming the company into a highly profitable and cash-generative growth machine,” according to Ackman.
“We believe that Uber is one of the best managed and highest quality businesses in the world,” Ackman wrote.“Remarkably, it can still be purchased at a massive discount to its intrinsic value.”Ackman wrote that “this favorable combination of attributes is extremely rare, particularly for a large cap company.”“We will have more to share about our thinking on the company shortly.”Under Khosrowshahi’s watch, Uber went public in May 2019 with one of the largest IPOs in history, but its stock initially struggled, debuting at $45 per share and falling below its IPO price for an extended period due to concerns over profitability.
Since then, Uber has rebounded, becoming consistently profitable — with its stock recently surging past $75 as investors gain confidence in its long-term growth.Ackman said that he first became intrigued with Uber when actor Edward Norton, an...