Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Just Bought Netflix and 5 Other Stocks. Here’s What Investors Need to Know.

Say what you want about the stock market being overvalued, but billionaire investor Bill Ackman is putting money to work.

Fresh off a $5 billion raise through the combined initial public offering of Pershing Square USA, a closed-end fund, and Pershing Square Inc, the management company making investment decisions for all associated Pershing funds, Ackman did not waste much time.

In a post on the social platform X on June 15, Ackman stated that 85% of the new capital had already been deployed, and now we know what Ackman was buying.

In Pershing Square Holdings’ interim report, the company initiated new positions in Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and five other stocks. Here’s what investors need to know.

Image source: Getty Images.

The Netflix thesis and other buys

Pershing’s new buys include Netflix, Visa, Mastercard, S&P Global, Intercontinental Exchange, and Alcon.

Fund managers’ official second-quarter fund holdings don’t need to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) until after the market closes on Aug. 14, so we don’t know the exact size of the new positions, but all purchases were made in the second quarter.

The Pershing interim report, written by Ackman and Pershing’s Chief Investment Officer, Ryan Israel, says the fund scooped up Netflix shares following its 50% decline after the stock hit all-time highs in June 2025, and de-rated from 40 times forward earnings to 21 times.

The trouble for Netflix started after it got involved in a bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery, which it ultimately walked away from, collecting a $2.8 billion termination fee in the process.

The company is the undeniable winner of the streaming wars, but has since seen its shares come under pressure as engagement metrics have slipped and concerns have grown about competition from artificial intelligence and short-form content on social media platforms.

“In our view, time reallocated toward short-form video is far more likely to come from share donors like linear TV or lower-quality streaming services than from a utility-like service such as Netflix,” Ackman and Israel stated. “On AI, we believe concerns understate the cost of generating long-form, high-quality video, which remains among the most compute-intensive AI tasks.”

Ackman and Israel added that if AI compute costs remain high, Netflix has a distinct advantage because it can amortize content investment across the largest user base in the streaming sector. Furthermore, AI will help Netflix improve content recommendation capabilities and ad targeting.

Buying stocks of companies that sold off on AI fears was a theme in Pershing’s other investments.

Visa and Mastercard sold off earlier this year due to fears that agentic AI and stablecoins could create more efficient payment routes that would save consumers money on transactions, as well as regulatory concerns about capping credit card interest rates.

S&P Global is a financial data and analytics firm that sold off amid concerns that AI could replicate its offerings more cheaply.

However, once again, Ackman and Israel believe concerns are misplaced. “Each of SPGI’s benchmark franchises is a high-margin, IP licensing business with a formidable competitive moat inside an oligopolistic market structure,” they wrote.

Pershing’s other buys included Intercontinental Exchange, an operator of global exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange, as well as multiple clearing houses, and Alcon, a global leader in ophthalmology.

The constant in Pershing’s new purchases

Based on the new purchases, it’s clear that Ackman and his team, which previously bought many stocks benefiting from AI, are now moving into areas that investors have sold due to fears of AI disruption.

They are not the only ones who see opportunities in this large group of stocks.

I’ll stress that nobody can tell you what’s going to happen with AI and which businesses it can truly replicate at a lower cost in the future. But right now, I do think it’s likely that many software and tech companies with large user bases can navigate the new world if they adapt to AI and leverage it in their businesses.

I think the risk-reward proposition is favorable for stocks like Netflix, Verizon, and Mastercard.

Netflix has the resources to add more content, whichever way the wind blows, as you’ve already seen the company take steps in that direction by integrating podcasts onto the platform.

Companies have been trying to disrupt Visa and Mastercard for decades to no avail. The massive global networks they’ve built would take a herculean effort to replicate.

Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Mastercard, Netflix, Visa, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool recommends Intercontinental Exchange. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.