Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed Friday that his activist investment company had purchased approximately $2 billion worth of shares in Uber.
Uber's shares are about 1pm east time on Friday after Ackman wrote X's stock on his company Pershing Square Capital Management to reach around 1% of its $16.113 billion market capitalization. They traded more than 9% higher. .
“I started taking jobs as @uber in early January. Today we own 30.3 million shares.” Ackman wrote to X on Friday.
In his X post on Friday, Ackman hinted at Uber's chaotic management under controversial co-founder Travis Kalanick, and praised current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi .
“While it was a great business, Uber was struggling with unstable management,” the billionaire hedge fund manager wrote.
“Since he joined the company in 2017, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has done a great job transforming the company into a highly profitable cash-generating and growing machine,” Ackman said.
“We consider Uber to be one of the most managed and top quality businesses in the world,” writes Ackman. “Amazingly, it still offers a huge discount on its intrinsic value.”
Ackman writes, “The preferred combination of this attribute is extremely rare, especially for large cap companies.”
“We need to share more about our thoughts about the company right away.”
Under the Khosrowshahi watch, Uber was published in May 2019 at one of the biggest IPOs in history, but its stock initially struggled, debuting at $45 per share, with concerns about profitability IPO prices have been lowered for a long time.
Since then, Uber has been rebounding and consistently making profits. Stocks have been surged recently, above $75 as investors gain confidence in long-term growth.
Ackman said he was intrigued by Uber for the first time when Edward Norton, an angel investor and actor who first scooped up the company's stock, showed him the app.
Norton, the star of hit films such as “Fight Club,” “Primal Fear,” and “25th Time,” was friendly with Karanick, and earned the distinction to the actor as being the first Uber passenger in Los Angeles. .
“I met Travis… when did I come back? [Uber] It was like this funky little experiment in San Francisco and I was very impressed with what he was doing. ” The “completely unknown” actor told ABC Late Night host Jimmy Kimmel 2014.
“As someone who had years of antipathy and the occasional physical battle with a New York taxi driver, I asked him to take it to New York City. I begged him.”
This post is being asked for comment from Norton and Uber.
Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009, helping to turn it into a global ride giant, but his aggressive leadership style led to rapid expansion and controversy.
His tenure was marked by scandals that included reporting toxic workplace culture, a fight for regulations and errors in a well-known sexual harassment case.
Despite his exit, Kalanick is believed to have played a key role in the transport revolution, and Uber remains one of the most influential high-tech companies in the world.
