Ackman Bets Big on Visa, Mastercard, and S&P Global

Pershing Square, led by Bill Ackman, has made significant investments in Visa, Mastercard, and S&P Global. The fund's latest 13F filing shows it acquired stakes worth about $1.1 billion each in these companies as of June 30.

The combined value of these three positions accounts for around 17% of Pershing Square's $19.5 billion U.S. stock portfolio, making them a substantial portion of the fund's holdings.

Visa processed 71.7 billion transactions last quarter, up 10% year over year, with payments volume growing 10% on a constant-dollar basis. Mastercard's second-quarter gross dollar volume rose 8% on a local-currency basis to $2.9 trillion.

S&P Global runs a similar business model, collecting fees for credit ratings and licensing its indices to fund managers. The company's ratings revenue rose 17% year over year in the second quarter, with the transaction piece (fees for rating newly issued debt and bank loans) up 25%. In contrast, S&P Global trades about 20% below its own 52-week high.

Bill Ackman is known to hold a concentrated portfolio, but this quarter saw him open three positions of similar size. The $3.3 billion cluster of Visa, Mastercard, and S&P Global shares one trait: they collect fees on transactions without taking the credit risk themselves.