Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital Management’s founder and head, during an appearance before Congress.
Pershing Square USA has officially withdrawn its IPO and will now explore “a better transaction structure.”
Pershing Square Capital Management founder Bill Ackman announced the news on Twitter/X, after reports earlier this week pointed to a dramatically reduced value for the offering. According to that coverage, the IPO’s expected valuation had decreased from approximately $25 billion to around $2 billion.
As mentioned, the listing would have involved Pershing Square USA in particular; technically, it’s Ackman-managed Pershing Square Holdings (LSE: PSH) that possesses a 10 percent stake in Universal Music Group.
“Over the last seven weeks,” Ackman indicated in a statement, “we have met with many institutions and family offices, and held numerous town halls for Pershing Square USA, Ltd. While we have received enormous investor interest in PSUS, one principal question has remained:
“Would investors be better served waiting to invest in the aftermarket than in the IPO?
“This question has inspired us to reevaluate PSUS’s structure to make the IPO investment decision a straightforward one. We will report back once we are ready to launch a revised transaction,” the 58-year-old hedge fund manager concluded.
Responding to a commenter who questioned the announcement’s timing, Ackman elaborated that he’d “made the decision to withdraw the IPO this morning” upon identifying the aforesaid “better transaction structure.”
“The press reports from last week saying that we were cancelling and/or postponing were false at the time they were written,” he continued. “We were scheduled to price the offering this coming Monday, but we changed course this morning.”
In any event, Pershing Square USA had been expected to begin trading next Tuesday, August 6th, and amid uncertainty throughout the wider market, it isn’t the only entity that’s changed IPO plans.
Originally anticipated for the summer, StubHub’s $16.5 billion listing has reportedly been delayed until September at the earliest. (A new deceptive-pricing lawsuit against the ticketing platform certainly isn’t helping the timetable.)
Meanwhile, Deezer yesterday disclosed a share-buyback program, Believe is in the process of exiting the public market altogether, and Hipgnosis Songs Fund has delisted after a well-documented rollercoaster for investors.
Besides Spotify stock’s massive gains – shares cracked another 52-week high of almost $360 a pop this morning – Universal Music stock’s double-digit dip is perhaps the most significant music-space market shift of recent weeks.
Following the release of solid Q2 earnings (and an acknowledgement of a streaming-growth slowdown), UMG plummeted by north of 20 percent. Though a rebound may be in the cards, it hasn’t arrived yet; shares fell another 2.76 percent during today’s trading to €21.53 apiece.
