Pershing Square Holdings (PSH) — portfolio review PSH
The three reasons
- 1
Returning to roots: smaller investment-centric team, reaffirmed core principles, growth from returns not AUM
- 2
Idea engine intact — ADP, Hilton, Nike, S&P Global sourced in 2017; ADP up 18% already
- 3
PSH NAV discount ~22% is closing via $300mm tender + open-market buyback + FTSE inclusion
Primary demands
- Close PSH's discount to NAV via $300mm tender offer and ongoing buyback
- Remove PSH's 4.99% ownership limit at April 2018 AGM to allow greater capital return flexibility
- Continue driving margin expansion at ADP (from ~19% to 35%+ Employer Services operating margin)
- Support recruitment of world-class CEO at Chipotle to unlock turnaround
- Execute announced separation of Platform Specialty Products to close sum-of-parts discount
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (7)
Notes
Annual portfolio-review deck (London investor meeting Jan 29, 2018) rather than a single-target activist thesis — follows a rough year (2017: -4.0% vs S&P +21.8%) and the Valeant wind-down. Cover slide uses PSH logo not PSCM. Organized as: Chairperson's Intro → 2017 Performance → Business & Org Update ('Returning to Our Roots' — staff cut from 70→45) → position-by-position walk (ADP, QSR, MDLZ, HHC, CMG, FNMA/FMCC, PAH, NKE, HLF) → Exited positions → PSH Discount Management (tender + buyback). Each active position follows a two-slide pattern: thesis recap + annotated share-price chart with campaign-event callouts — a clean replicable template worth cataloging. Visual style is classic Pershing institutional (navy/blue headers, Arial-style sans, table-heavy) — functional but not 'Ackman CP 2012' tier. Not adversarial: tone is reflective, almost post-mortem in places ('Experience is making mistakes and learning from them'). Notable slide 18 (org evolution with AUM + headcount + VRX collapse annotation) and slide 32 (ADP share price with proxy campaign timeline) are the strongest storytelling artifacts. ADP deck itself (2017) is the primary activist material; this 2018 deck references it as a follow-up campaign update.