Bill Ackman’s hedge fund is having a good year, but it has sold out of two big losers: Chipotle and Nike.
Pershing Square Holdings, Ackman’s publicly traded fund, was up more than 17 percent as of November 18, thanks largely to huge gains on the Fannie and Freddie mortgage giants, which have climbed close to 200 percent on Trump’s plan to release them from the government’s hands.
But a few other holdings have been drags this year.
Chipotle is Exhibit A. Ackman finally sold his remaining shares in Chipotle Mexican Grill after it released third quarter earnings, his firm disclosed in Pershing Square’s call to investors on Thursday. The stock has fallen 50 percent this year, and its IRR from the time Ackman bought it in 2015 to when the fund exited was only 16 percent, compared with 15 percent for the S&P 500, analyst Anthony Massaro said on the call. But the hedge fund still profited: Pershing Square had already sold 85 percent of its initial 10 percent stake, giving it $2.4 billion in profits and an IRR of just under 22 percent.
When Pershing Square first took its stake, Chipotle was suffering from a tainted food crisis. Ackman installed a new CEO and the stock took off. But after that CEO left last summer, Chipotle seems to have lost its footing.
Nike has been an even bigger loser. Pershing Square sold its remaining options in Nike in November, taking a cumulative 30 percent loss on the investment, which was first made in the spring of 2024, Massaro said on the call. For comparison, the S&P 500 was up 33 percent during the same time period. Pershing Square lost more than $600 million on the bet.
Another of this year’s losers is Universal Music Group, whose share price earlier last week hit $21.50, a 20 percent decline year-to-date. Ackman, who served on the board of directors of Universal for years, had hoped that moving the stock’s listing to the New York Stock Exchange from Amsterdam, where it is now, would boost the shares. But he told investors that due to the government shutdown, “the SEC was unable to kind of fulfill any sort of request for a U.S. listing… which we think created potentially further technical headwinds.”
Ackman for years focused largely on consumer stocks like food companies, but he has shifted into more of a tech focus since 2023. These holdings — Amazon, Alphabet, and Uber — are also surging this year, in part because they all have an artificial intelligence component to their business and are benefiting from the AI mania dominating the stock market’s surge.
Pershing Square bought Amazon, a longtime hedge fund darling, for the first time this year, when the stock slipped during the tariff meltdown in April. The stock is up about 30 percent since then. The hedge fund bought Uber in January and Google in 2023.
But Fannie and Freddie — which Ackman has held onto since 2013 — are the big winners of 2025. For years the prize was an eventual government sale of these enterprises. But Ackman has now changed his tune.
“The businesses are in a position to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange,” he told investors. “Importantly, we think they should stay in conservatorship.”
Earlier this year Bill Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie, said the U.S. government was looking to sell around 5 percent of the two mortgage finances in a public offering.
Ackman said he has been asking the Trump administration to hold off on an IPO, which could dilute current shareholders’ winnings. A relisting on the NYSE before Christmas is now what Ackman wants. “There are literally millions of small shareholders who are cheering for the president to save them,” he said on the call.
