Ackman Buys Microsoft Stake; 13F to Disclose
Ackman buys Microsoft and said Pershing Square will disclose the stake in a Form 13F, a catalyst for 13F flows and positioning shifts.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Pershing Square bought Microsoft in Q1 and will list the stake in its March 31 Form 13F.
- Pershing Square USA also bought Microsoft and designated it a core holding.
- Prior 13F for 2025-12-31 showed no Microsoft and roughly $16.0 billion in 11 disclosed U.S. equity positions.
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Pershing Square Capital Management founder Bill Ackman said on May 15 that his funds built a new position in Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) during the first quarter and will disclose the holding in a Form 13F filing for the quarter ended March 31. He cited a highly compelling valuation linked to Microsoft’s M365 productivity suite and Azure cloud platform.
New Stake and 13F Disclosure
Pershing Square began buying Microsoft shares in February after a post-earnings pullback in late January, Ackman said. The stake will appear in Pershing Square’s 13F filing for the quarter ended March 31, which reports the manager’s long U.S. equity holdings. Both Pershing Square Capital Management and Pershing Square USA, a newly listed closed-end fund, have taken positions in Microsoft. Pershing Square USA has designated Microsoft as a core holding.
As an institutional investment manager with over $100 million in assets, Pershing Square must file Form 13F within 45 days of each calendar quarter-end to disclose its long U.S. equity holdings.
Rationale and Portfolio Context
Ackman described the purchase as a value opportunity, saying Pershing Square bought Microsoft at about 21 times forward earnings, below the company’s recent trading multiples. He highlighted Microsoft’s M365 suite and Azure platform, noting Azure’s exposure to rising demand for artificial-intelligence (AI) inference workloads as a key growth driver.
He compared the Microsoft investment to earlier Pershing Square purchases of dominant technology franchises such as Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, framing them as long-duration compounders acquired at attractive valuations after market drawdowns.
Pershing Square’s 13F filing for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, showed large stakes in Alphabet (approximately $2.1 billion), Amazon ($2.2 billion), Meta ($1.8 billion), Brookfield ($2.8 billion), and Uber ($2.5 billion), totaling roughly $16 billion across 11 U.S. equity positions, with no Microsoft holding at that time.
Ackman positioned the trade against investor concerns about AI-driven competition to productivity software and questions about Azure’s AI-related capital spending and economics. He argued these worries underestimate Microsoft’s deeply embedded enterprise franchises and their value.
