Billionaire Bill Ackman disclosed Friday his hedge fund made a major bet on ride hailing giant Uber, helping boost shares of the San Francisco-based company to their highest level in months as part of a whirlwind week for Uber stock.
Bill Ackman now owns more than 1% of Uber.
Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management owns 30.3 million shares in Uber, having begun accumulating that stake in early January, the billionaire posted to X late Friday morning.
Pershing is the owner of a 1.4% Uber stake worth $2.3 billion as of 1:30 p.m. EST.
Shares of Uber jumped nearly 3% following Ackman’s announcement, extending its Friday gain to 9% and vaulting the stock to its highest intraday share price since Oct. 30, 2024.
Uber stock is up 14% this week, tacking on about $20 billion in market capitalization, a massive turnaround after shares tanked 8% Wednesday after the company reported earnings, before gaining at least 8% each of the last two trading sessions.
Uber trades at a “massive discount to its intrinsic value,” making it an “extremely rare” investment opportunity for a company of its size, Ackman explained.
Uber was the top-performing major stock Friday, moving against a broader selloff linked to tariff and inflation agita. Uber’s rally easily outstripped the returns of the other 100 S&P 500 companies worth at least $100 billion, with AI-focused government contractor Palantir checking in as the next-best performer with a 4% gain.
Ackman’s assessment of Uber reflects the growing consensus that the long-time cash-burning business has actually grown to be one of the cheapest big stocks compared to its bottom line. Uber trades at 18.7 times its free cash flow last quarter, a fraction of other notable technology stocks like Tesla (397 price-to-free-cash-flow), Palantir (168) and Nvidia (62). Uber generated $6.9 billion in cash in 2024, more than double its $3.4 billion in 2023. That capped a massive turnaround from Uber’s first four years as a public company, as it burned nearly $9 billion in cash from 2019 to 2023.
Ackman is worth $9.3 billion, making him the 291st-richest person in the world, according to Forbes’ most recent estimates.
Pershing Square had $18.6 billion of assets under management as of last April, with stakes in other American companies including Google parent Alphabet and Chipotle. Ackman is among the most outspoken individuals in finance, with 1.6 million followers on Elon Musk’s social media platform. A Jewish Harvard University graduate, Ackman was one of the most instrumental voices in the pushback against Ivy League universities for their handling of anti-Israel campus protests, a saga that culminated in the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay early last year. Last July, Pershing Square pulled plans for a New York initial public offering to become Ackman’s equivalent of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, a move that reportedly came due to weaker-than-anticipated investor demand. Previously a supporter of Democratic causes, Ackman endorsed President Donald Trump in July, donating more than $100,000 to pro-Trump groups.