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Tuesday, September 1, 2026

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I pasted two screenshots from $PS's 424B4. If you look at fee paying AUM, it's $16 bn excl HHH which has a de minimis mgmt fee/carry. Add in $PSUS and you are at $21 bn of fee paying AUM. $PS discloses pro forma mgmt fees of $238 mm but that is net of $91 mm of non-cash amort related to the IPO. So I'm going to give them credit for $329 mm of mgmt fees. Assuming a 65% operating margin and a 20% tax rate, that gives me effective fee paying earnings of $171 mm. $PSH.LN has a 16% incentive fee and $PS is entitled to the performance fees on the first 5% (the team gets beyond that). On $15 bn, this is $15 bn * 5% * 16% = $120 mm or $96 mm after tax. Add up the mgmt fee and performance fee share, and I get $267 mm of expected earnings or $0.67/share. Implies $PS is trading at around ~50x EPS vs. $KKR at 17x, $ARES at 20x, $BX at 21x. Of course you can layer in some minor $HHH economics and it takes down the multiple a couple of turns. But you could also layer in a few years of sub 5% returns and that takes away the performance fee too. Certainly a 50x EPS valuation is pretty common for a fast growing higher ROIC biz. But it's by no means cheap. The question is, how will Ackman raise any money from here? $PSH.LN is at a discount to NAV, $PSUS is at a discount to NAV and $HHH is at a discount to NAV. One thing that will allow $PS to grow into its valuation is great results as that will 1) scale up the earnings (as it's based on % of AUM) and 2) facilitate new investors. Another way to contextualize the valuation is to simply look at fee paying AUM of $21 bn and compare that to the equity value of $13 bn. That is pretty unprecedented in the land of asset managers but reflects in part the permanent capital and the limited float (I think its just the 20mm shares given in the IPO). Could easily see a lot of price pressure once the 380mm non-IPO related investors are free to sell.
@marginofdanger 2 clicks

marginofdanger on X

Ackman's closed end fund $PSUS will begin trading on Wednesday. For every 5 shares of PSUS, IPO investors (only) will get 1 share of $PS (the GP). It sounds like the PSUS offering will be 100mm shares at $50/share or $5 bn. Ackman thought this was going to be a $10 bn offering and he previously was targeting $25 bn or some ridiculous amount. The PSUS IPO investors will end up owning 20mm shares or 5% of PS (based on 400mm pf s/o). I expect that PSUS, like many closed end funds, will settle at a 5-10% discount to NAV, implying a trading price of $45-47.50/share. PS will begin trading as well (via a direct listing) and I anticipate a valuation of $5-10bn, implying that the PSUS IPO investors will get a "bonus" of $250-500mm on the $5 bn IPO or 5-10%. Therefore their loss on the PSUS shares should be mostly offset by the free shares in PS. Given this is a direct listing, I expect WILD price movements in PS stock and would stay far away from that one. I used $10 bn as the high end valuation for PS because that is where investors invested back a year or so ago (predicated upon significant growth in AUM), but I tend to believe that was a high watermark and not realistic given that Ackman can't seem to raise $. In terms of $PSUS, I don't see a compelling reason to own this at 90-95% of NAV. If you put a 15x on the 2% fee, that alone is a 30% drag. Also, Ackman has high volatility and there is no prospect to ever get repaid (and no incentive for Ackman to do so). Like $PSH.LN I would personally only step into $PSUS at a 25-30%+ discount to NAV and probably not in any real size.

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