Automatic Data Processing, Inc. ADP
The three reasons
- 1
Employer Services margins are 1,500-2,000 bps below potential vs. Paychex and peers
- 2
ADP is a lethargic sleeping giant losing share in Mid-Market and Enterprise to cloud HCM rivals
- 3
Optimal management drives EPS from $5.90 to $8.70 and shares to $221-$255 by 2021 (101-132% return)
Primary demands
- Elect three new directors to the ADP board (William Ackman, Veronica Hagen, V. Paul Unruh)
- Form a Board Committee to oversee a transformation plan
- Redesign management incentives and compensation to align with transformation objectives
- Fix corporate structure, business unit silos, matrix structure, and corporate bloat
- Accelerate investments in best-in-class enterprise HCM product and back-end systems
- Improve sub-segment disclosure (revenue, clients, retention, bookings, profitability by segment)
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (9)
Notes
Signature Pershing Square proxy-fight deck (168 pages) for 2017 ADP annual meeting, seeking three board seats (Ackman, Hagen, Unruh). Core argument is a margin-gap / operational-underperformance thesis rather than a sum-of-parts: ES should earn 35%+ margins based on Paychex and sub-scale peer benchmarking. Heavy use of CEO-quote juxtaposition (Rodriguez claims 'balanced' competition while Ultimate's Scherr says 45-50% of new units come from ADP). 'Sleeping giant' framing on p.7 and 'The Time is Now' cover set the SCQA. Closing ask on p.143 is explicit proxy vote solicitation ahead of Sept 8 record date. Pershing ultimately lost the vote in Nov 2017. Visual style is clean but classic McKinsey-lite rather than Canadian Pacific 2012 tier — no editorial typography, limited custom data-viz.