Bill Ackman: Here's What the Market is MISSING

One of the most provocative and [music] interesting investors in the country. 全国最具煽动性、[音乐] 也最有趣的投资人之一。 A legendary activist investor. 传奇维权投资者。 Pershing Square CEO and founder Bill Ackman. Pershing Square CEO 兼创始人 Bill Ackman。 Taking [music] a short position and going public with it is a pretty serious business. 建立 [音乐] 空头头寸并公开表态，是件非常严肃的事。 Interestingly, [music] some of the best businesses in the world are trading at the lowest multiples. 有趣的是，[音乐] 全球最优质的一批公司，正在以史上最低的估值倍数交易。 We're kind of the rebirth of the closed-end [music] investment company universe. 我们可以说是封闭式 [音乐] 投资公司这一物种的重生。 What did you think of Zara, the CEO of OpenAI? 你怎么看 OpenAI 的 CFO Zara？ I'm sorry. 抱歉。 CFO. CFO。 Felt like the CEO. 感觉更像 CEO。 Yeah, I I was 是的，我 Stop with that stuff. 别说那些了。 Uh actually, I was super impressed. 说实话，我印象非常深刻。 Uh made me a lot more bullish on OpenAI, and I thought Right? 让我对 OpenAI 更看好了，我当时就在想，对吧？ I thought she should be CEO of OpenAI. 我觉得她应该来做 OpenAI 的 CEO。 [laughter] [笑声] That's what I thought. 我也这么想。 I think Sam should be 我觉得 Sam 应该 I think Sam should be chair. 我觉得 Sam 应该做董事长。 I think he's much better. 我觉得他那个角色更合适。 a question I wanted to ask her that we didn't get time, which was what's it like working with Sam? 有个问题我本来想问她，但没来得及，就是和 Sam 共事是什么感受？ I mean, that could have been like the hours in the documentary. 那话题够拍好几小时纪录片了。 [laughter] [笑声] I wanted to kick this off at 我想以此开场 So, thank you so much for being here. 非常感谢你来到这里。 We've tried a number of times to get you to All-In, and it's great to to finally have you. 我们试了好几次邀请你上 All-In，终于盼到了。 You obviously are a legend doesn't need much of an introduction. 你是公认的传奇人物，不需要太多介绍。 Lately, in the the last number of call it years or months or quarters or what have you, it seems like your investment philosophy may be changing. 最近这几年，或者说几个月、几个季度，感觉你的投资哲学似乎正在发生变化。 Your model, where you've been activist and you've entered positions and exited positions, and lately you've talked a lot about more kind of permanent long-term holdings. 你过去以维权为主，进进出出仓位，但最近你谈到了很多关于更长期、更永久持有的想法。 Would love to hear a little bit about if that is actually a change and how your evolution in your investment model has kind of changed over over time. 很想听你说说，这究竟是不是一种转变，以及你的投资模式是如何随时间演化的。 Uh sure. 好的。 So, I would say the biggest change over time is an appreciation for the importance of I would call business quality. 我说，这些年来最大的变化，是我越来越重视所谓的「商业质量」。 Long-term, durable, protected, non-disruptable growth, I would say. 就是长期、持久、有护城河、不容易被颠覆的增长。 Early days, you're smaller, more liquid investor, you don't have to think as long-term. 早期你规模小、流动性更强，不需要想那么长远。 As you become a bigger, concentrated investor, 随着你成为规模更大的集中型投资者， [snorts] [哼声] and over time you learn the importance of durable kind of growth. 随着时间推移，你会越来越理解持久增长的重要性。 That's the most important factor. 那是最关键的因素。 Uh I would say I'm as activist as I've ever been um but more of it's on Twitter than it than uh I would say in the corporate context. 我觉得我的维权劲头一如既往，只不过现在更多是在 Twitter 上，而不是在公司治理层面。 And the reason for that is when I started in uh Pershing Square no one sort of knew who we were. 原因在于，Pershing Square 成立之初，没什么人认识我们。 And so I actually one of our first investments was Wendy's International. 所以我们第一批投资之一是 Wendy's International。 Wendy's owned Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee and donut chain, and the value of Tim Hortons was more than the entire value of Wendy's. Wendy's 拥有加拿大咖啡甜甜圈连锁 Tim Hortons，而 Tim Hortons 的价值比整个 Wendy's 还要高。 We had this very simple idea: buy Wendy's, spin off Tim Hortons, double our money. 我们有一个非常简单的想法：买入 Wendy's，分拆 Tim Hortons，翻倍退出。 And uh we bought 10% of the company and I called the CEO and he didn't return my call. 我们买入了公司 10% 的股份，打电话给 CEO，他没回我。 And I called him again, he didn't return my call. 我再打，他还是没回。 I literally couldn't get a return phone call. 我就是打不通一个电话。 That was the beginning. 那就是起点。 Uh so we actually I called a friend who worked at Blackstone and Steve Schwarzman agreed to write a fairness opinion on what Wendy's would be worth if we spun off Tim Hortons. 于是我联系了一个在 Blackstone 工作的朋友，Steve Schwarzman 同意写一份公允意见，说明如果分拆 Tim Hortons，Wendy's 将值多少钱。 We kind of mailed it in, filed it publicly, and 6 weeks later they spun off Tim Hortons. 我们把文件邮寄过去，公开备案，6 周后他们就分拆了 Tim Hortons。 And then the CEO finally called me back and uh he thanked me uh and he had gotten fired uh and and uh but he thanked me cuz he had a huge exit package and and and he was very happy. 后来那位 CEO 终于回电话了，他感谢了我，说他被解雇了，但因为有一笔丰厚的离职补偿，他非常高兴。 But so in the beginning we couldn't get a return phone call, so we had to and we were small, so we had to go to a conference and we had to, you know, do presentations and go on CNBC. 早期我们就是打不通电话，所以只能去参加会议，做路演，上 CNBC。 What happens over time is you join boards of directors, you become known as an investor, you know, we're kind of a constructive shareholder. 随着时间推移，你加入了董事会，变成一个知名投资人，算是一个建设性股东。 Um I know pretty much every CEO in the S&P 500 either directly or one person removed. 标普 500 里几乎每一位 CEO，我要么直接认识，要么隔一个人就认识。 And you know, maybe I age I've aged a bit um but you build kind of a reputation and today we buy a stake in a company sometimes they'll put out a tweet saying you know, we welcome Pershing Square as a shareholder, but they open the door for us. 也许我年纪大了，但你积累了口碑，今天我们买入一家公司的股权，有时他们会发推特说「欢迎 Pershing Square 成为股东」，门已经为我们打开了。 You know, in the beginning we had to bang down the door and today so we we get very deeply involved in our companies if it's needed. 早年我们得使劲敲门，现在我们在需要的时候会深度介入所投公司。 [snorts] [哼声] Uh other companies we own, there's no nothing for us to do, just be the you know, just clap. 而对于我们持有的其他公司，没什么需要我们做的，就是在旁边鼓掌就好。 Hm. 嗯。 So you are you are considered a value add investor. 所以你被认为是增值型投资者。 Yeah, but we only want to add value. 是的，但我们只想在真正有价值的地方发力。 I 我 The conversation last night was kind of an interesting one. 昨晚那场对话很有意思。 You know, the best investments are one where you don't need to join the board and do anything. 最好的投资，是那种你不需要加入董事会、不需要做任何事的投资。 Well, that may be in a startup, but in a mature business, it may be 这在初创公司也许成立，但成熟企业可能就不一样了…… No, I think in in the public company context, one of the valuable things we can do, that you know, the problem of being a public company today is kind of the very short-term nature of markets, analysts, etc. 不，我觉得在上市公司的语境下，我们能做的最有价值的事情之一，正是针对今天公司上市的痛点：市场、分析师的极度短期化。 And obviously to run a business, a business is a, you know, a good one is a forever thing. 而经营一家企业，好的企业是要做一辈子的。 And you want to make decisions in the context of decades sometimes or certainly three, five years. 你需要以十年为单位做决策，或者至少三到五年。 And how can you do that when someone's asking about the tax rate in the second quarter? 当有人在问第二季度的税率时，你怎么做到这一点？ Um and having a big shareholder on the board, where you can kind of test ideas out with the big shareholder before you expose them to the public, where the big shareholder can say, "I'm supportive of this initiative even though it's going to hurt earnings in the next few quarters." is a helpful thing. 有一个大股东在董事会，你可以在公开表态之前先跟他测试想法，让他说「我支持这个方向，哪怕接下来几个季度会影响盈利」，这是有帮助的。 I just want to connect this last conversation with Sarah to this. 我想把刚才和 Sarah 的对话和这个话题联系起来。 Um are you an investor in the AI complex? 你在 AI 领域有投资吗？ And how do you underwrite business model quality from what you see on the outside and in the entire complex? 从外部视角，你如何评估整个 AI 生态的商业模式质量？ I mean, yes, effectively we're an investor. 从某种程度上说，我们确实是 AI 的投资者。 We're 我们 Actually today we own Microsoft, we own Meta, we own Amazon. 目前我们持有微软、Meta 和亚马逊。 Uh actually I think you're either directly or indirectly you're invested in AI. 所以直接或间接地，你都已经投了 AI。 Yeah. 对。 Or it's a threat. 要么是机会，要么是威胁。 So you have to you have to understand it. 所以你必须搞懂它。 Um how do I think about AI in a business model context? 我怎么从商业模式角度看待 AI？ model quality, yeah. 商业模式质量，对。 Look, when you're a concentrated investor or an investor generally and you're long-term investor, the most important and most challenging thing to do is determine what's the risk of disruption. 作为集中型投资者，或者说作为长期投资者，最重要也最困难的事，是判断被颠覆的风险有多大。 What's the risk of two guys, two women from Stanford in a garage, you know, coming up with something? 两个斯坦福毕业生在车库里鼓捣出点什么的概率有多大？ That risk I think has gone up uh dramatically. 我认为这个风险已经大幅提升了。 This is the greatest era in history to to build a business, right? 现在是历史上最适合创业的时代，对吧？ There's unlimited access to compute, you know, certainly for a startup, uh unlimited access to capital, uh and a lot of incredible talent, which means that the probability of your being disrupted has gone up enormously. 算力无限供应，对初创公司来说当然，资本也无限供应，顶尖人才也是，这意味着你被颠覆的概率已经大幅提高了。 So the hardest thing you have to do as an investor is understand, you know, and and that's really where we spend most of our time. 所以作为投资者，最难的事情就是理解这个，我们大部分时间都花在这上面。 in a moment like this then? 在这样的时刻该怎么办？ Do you swing towards the chaos or do you reposition to things that are maybe more durable and defensible from AI where the destructibility is less? 你是冲进混乱，还是转向那些更持久、更能抵御 AI 冲击、颠覆性更小的领域？ What's interesting about markets is people always bring their eye to the new new thing. 市场的有趣之处在于，人们总是把目光投向最新的新事物。 Um and the new new thing is sort of chips and semiconductors and energy and that's where, you know, uh the shorter-term capital's going. 现在的新事物是芯片、半导体和能源，短期资金都往那里涌。 What tends to happen is really high-quality things get left behind. 结果往往是，真正高质量的东西被冷落了。 Um and the same thing really happened, you know, I was I was there in 2000, you know, when the in the in the in that sort of bubble. 同样的事情确实发生过，我在 2000 年亲历了那轮泡沫。 This is, you know, this is different. 这次不一样。 I'm not saying this is um but there's some analogies and the analogies are people got excited about internet stocks and Berkshire Hathaway traded at the lowest valuation 我不是说这是泡沫，但有些相似之处：当时大家疯抢互联网股票，而伯克希尔·哈撒韦跌到了 I think it ever traded at in its history as people said, "Okay, that's all old stuff." 我认为是其历史上最低的估值，因为大家说「那都是老东西了」。 I think a similar thing is happening today in a in a sense to Amazon and Meta, Microsoft. 我觉得今天亚马逊、Meta、微软也在发生类似的事情。 Those are the ones that 那些是 These are these are old-fashioned companies 这些是老派公司 in kind of this, you know, the open AI 在这个，所谓的 OpenAI 时代里。