Pershing Square portfolio (multi-holding LP update: MDLZ, VRX, APD, ZTS, CP, QSR, HHC, PAH, FNMA/FMCC, HLF short)
The three reasons
- 1
2015 was -20.5% but portfolio trades at substantial discount to intrinsic value
- 2
Permanent capital base lets us wait for market price and intrinsic value to converge
- 3
Holdings still have company-specific catalysts (ZBB at MDLZ, Versum spin at APD, CP-NS merger)
Primary demands
- Continue 3G-style margin transformation at Mondelez (EBIT margin from ~14% toward Heinz-tier ~24%)
- Close Air Products' ~500-600 bps margin gap vs. Praxair; execute Versum Materials spin-off by Sept 2016
- Execute Zoetis $300m cost-reduction program and operating-margin expansion to ~34% by 2017
- Pursue CP Rail-Norfolk Southern merger for ~US$1.8bn of synergies
- Regulators shut Herbalife as an illegal pyramid scheme
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (9)
Notes
Annual LP update covering full portfolio, not a single-target thesis deck. Post-mortem framing is unusually candid for Pershing: page 16 'Principal Mistakes We Made in 2015' explicitly names Valeant ('we relied too much on platform value', 'did not sufficiently discount regulatory risk at $196 average cost'), Platform Specialty, and CP as trim-miss errors. Page 18 'While We Wait for the Weighing Machine' is the strongest SCQA moment — classic Buffett/Graham invocation to justify staying the course. Herbalife section (pp.87-94) is the only adversarial/short thesis and uses CEO Michael Johnson's recruiting quote as the contradiction device. Mondelez section (pp.20-30) is the cleanest peer-gap + 3G-precedent case and is the most reusable for a swipe file. Deck uses standard Pershing Square blue-and-green institutional template — clean but not editorial-tier.