Billionaire Bill Ackman Has 55% of His Hedge Fund's $15.8 Billion Portfolio Held in Just 3 Spectacular Stocks

Bill Ackman is currently overseeing the transformation of Howard Hughes Holdings (NYSE: HHH) into a diversified holding company, acting as its executive chairman. He thinks he can follow the same path to build shareholder value that Warren Buffett took at Berkshire Hathaway, starting with adding an insurance business to Howard Hughes' portfolio. That would give the company additional capital, via float, to start building an investment portfolio of marketable equities and wholly owned subsidiaries.

But it could take a long time for Ackman to get the proverbial snowball rolling at Howard Hughes. Investors who want to follow his investments today have another great option. Every quarter, Ackman and his team file Form 13F with the SEC, disclosing his fund's publicly traded equity positions as of the end of the period.

Combining the positions reported by his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, and Pershing Square Holdco (used to acquire a significant stake in Howard Hughes this year), the total value of the hedge fund's publicly traded equities is about $15.8 billion as of this writing.

More than half of that is held in just three stocks, but Howard Hughes isn't one of them (yet).

1. Uber (19.1%)

Ackman made a huge purchase of Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) at the start of 2025, and it's turned out to be a great investment so far. The company's value has been held down by concerns that autonomous vehicles will displace the need for Uber's platform. But Ackman believes Uber provides a key partner to self-driving carmakers looking to scale and expand operations to new cities.

Uber has partnered with several autonomous vehicle (AV) makers, most notably Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Waymo. Waymo has launched a stand-alone app and operates its own ridesharing service in several major metropolitan areas, but it's partnered with Uber to use its AVs in others. The company is exploring multiple levels of involvement with Uber to see what drives the best results. Ackman believes partnering with Uber will ultimately reveal itself to be the most effective way to scale faster and maximize the unit economics of their vehicles.

In the meantime, Uber is producing excellent financial and operational results. That begins with its relatively strong user growth, which came in at 15% last quarter. With 180 million monthly active users, Uber's scale is helping it expand its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) margin, driven by improvements in its delivery business. As a result, Uber is producing growing free cash flow, totaling $8.5 billion over the last 12 months.

Despite the massive increase in price since Pershing Square first acquired shares of the company, the stock currently trades for just 27 times forward earnings. Ackman expects the company's steady revenue growth, margin expansion, and share buybacks supported by its free cash flow to enable 30% earnings-per-share growth over the medium term. As a result, the current price still looks attractive.

2. Alphabet (18.4%)

Ackman initially invested in Alphabet in 2023. In a similar vein to his investment in Uber, Ackman bought Alphabet on the basis that investor fears that emerging technology would negatively impact operating results were overblown. In the case of Alphabet, he felt investors were overestimating how much generative AI chatbots would hurt the internet search business. He's since taken opportunities to add to the investment, including buying more shares in the second quarter.

Google's financial results have remained strong. Search revenue accelerated in the second quarter, climbing 12% year over year. That's supported by new AI-powered features like AI Overviews, which are now available globally. Management says search results with AI Overviews have increased engagement with Search and produce high click-through rates while monetizing at similar levels as normal search results.

The success has led Alphabet to release AI Mode, which offers a chat-like interface similar to ChatGPT and other chatbots. The company has positioned the new feature within Search and Chrome to increase its engagement.

Meanwhile, growing demand for AI compute has led to significant growth for the Google Cloud business. It surpassed a $50 billion revenue rate last quarter, and it's showing strong operating margin expansion. While the business was roughly breakeven just two years ago, it exhibited a 21% operating margin last quarter. That margin expansion should continue as it scales, as larger competitors have generated operating margins in the 30%-plus range.

The company saw a huge weight lifted off it recently when it received a ruling on the Department of Justice's antitrust case against it. In early September, a judge determined adequate remedies for the company that were much more lenient than anticipated. The ruling also provided significant clarity for Alphabet's operations going forward. That led to a significant bump in the company's value.

Still, the stock trades for less than 25 times forward earnings estimates, making it relatively attractive, especially among AI growth stocks.

Brookfield (17.8%)

Ackman first bought Brookfield Corporation (NYSE: BN) (TSX: BN) in mid-2024, and he's added shares to the position in every quarter since. The asset management company holds investments across real estate, renewable energy, and infrastructure.

Its growing insurance business is a big attraction for Ackman. The company's insurance assets have tripled in two years, from $45 billion to $135 billion. Management expects to reach $600 billion in assets over time, which will make it the conglomerate's largest contributor to distributable earnings, its version of earnings per share, at that point. Just like Ackman's plans for Howard Hughes, management is building an investment-led insurance business, which leverages insurance float to grow the business through strategic capital deployment.

The company also expects carried interest, the income it generates from subsidiary Brookfield Asset Management's private funds, to grow considerably over the next few years. That's because it foregoes recognizing carried interest until it returns all the invested capital to shareholders and delivers a preferred return. Any incremental dollar above that is recognized as carried interest income.

Management says carried interest is now at an inflection point after scaling its fund offerings and returning material amounts of capital. It expects $6 billion of net carried interest income to hit its income statement over the next three years. Ackman suggests that it could boost its distributable earnings growth to as much as 30% starting next year.

The company estimates that its shares are worth about $102 today based on a sum-of-the-parts analysis. It expects that to reach $210 per share by 2030. With the stock currently trading for less than $70, that's a huge margin for error for investors looking at the stock.

Adam Levy has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Brookfield, Brookfield Corporation, Howard Hughes, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Asset Management. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.