Photo Credit: Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman, Senate Democrats / CC by 2.0
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has raked in roughly $1.5 billion in the sale of a 2.7% stake in Universal Music Group ahead of a US secondary listing.
Ackman announced the sale on social media, while Bloomberg reported “an offering of about 50 million Universal Music shares at €26.60 each,” citing a source close to the deal.
“We decided to sell a portion of our UMG position today,” wrote Ackman on X, the former Twitter. “UMG has substantially outperformed the rest of our portfolio (other than the GSEs) year to date in light of its extremely strong recent results. After the sale, it will still be our largest position at about ~17% of the portfolio.”
“[Lucian Grainge] and the UMG team have done a superb job growing the company,” he added. “We believe UMG is one of the best businesses we have ever owned. Late last year, we exercised our registration rights in order that UMG obtains a listing on a major US exchange later this year, which we believe will be extremely beneficial to the company.”
“In a world of uncertainty, owning a royalty on music with the best management team in the industry is a blissfully comfortable and profitable place to be,” he concluded.
Pershing Square owns a 7.6% stake in UMG’s outstanding shares after buying a stake from Vivendi in 2021. This was before UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange the same year. According to Ackman, UMG will still account for around 17% of Pershing Square’s portfolio, down from approximately 27%.
Ultimately, UMG will be a dual-listed company this year, with the US exchange listing slated to occur by September. Ackman announced his plan late last year to take UMG public to a US exchange by selling a portion of Pershing Square’s stake. That decision came after the attack on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam, which led to Ackman de-listing Pershing Square shares from the Amsterdam exchange, urging that UMG do the same.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.