BackBill Ackman wants to take X public, says ‘interested’ but yet to approach Musk
Ackman said in a televised interview that a foundation linked to his firm Pershing Square has already backed X through an investment of $10 million.
PremiumAmerican hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, an admirer of social media platform X, said he wants to take the company public but has not discussed the same with its owner Elon Musk.
“I think Twitter is a really important platform. He’s made tremendous improvements to the platform and I think it’s a unique, very difficult to disrupt kind of asset and one that could grow into different lines of business," Ackman said, while speaking to CNBC channel on October 3.
Ackman also noted in the televised interview that a foundation linked to his firm Pershing Square has already backed X through an investment of $10 million. The amount was pumped in by Pershing Square Foundation during the Twitter buyout last year.
X, formerly known as Twitter, is “interesting" and has strong business potential, Ackman said, but clarified that he is not aware of how the business is currently performing.
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Musk had acquired the social media platform in October 2022, in a deal valued at $44 billion.
Meanwhile, Pershing Square received approval from the US regulators for a new investment vehicle that targets private companies seeking to raise $1.5 billion or more, and could potentially take them public. The product is a new class of special purpose acquisition companies known as SPARC, where investors buy into the company after a purchase target is identified.
Ackman, while speaking to the Wall Street Journal on October 1, said that X would “absolutely" be one of the options he’s considering to make public through his investment vehicle. He added that Pershing could commit $2 billion to a transaction.
Ackman acknowledged that the social media platform has lost a lot of advertisers, who are likely to return. He added that he has bought stuff advertised on Twitter and that the product and cost structure is “vastly better than it was before."
(With Bloomberg inputs)
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