Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

Back to today

From X

@marginofdanger 2 clicks

marginofdanger on X

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.

Investor Letters

All letters

Adobe 3Q26 Update

Adobe’s fiscal 3Q26 revenue grew 13%, while ARR growth slowed to 9.3% excluding Semrush.

ADBE $93B
Speedwell Memos 2 clicks

Alarm.com: False Alarm?

Alarm.com, founded after CEO Steve Trundle’s bad home-security experience, has fallen from $105 in 2020 to about $55, testing whether…

ALRM $2.6B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click

Lululemon: The 15-Minute Thesis

Lululemon’s North American sales, margins and legging demand are falling as Alo and Vuori gain share, leaving its brand moat and depressed…

LULU $11B
Hated Moats 2 clicks

The Five Deals That Made Apollo

Apollo Global Management’s five defining deals, from Executive Life to Intel, built a $1 trillion asset manager spanning insurance and…

APO $73B
Net Interest 1 click

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

108 publications

Newsletters 91

YouTube 4

Blogs 12

Seeking Alpha 31 of 172

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

71 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

78 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.