Billionaire investor William Ackman has built a new stake in railroad operator Canadian Pacific CP-T, returning to one of his most profitable investments as rail firms eye a boost from the drive to cut carbon emissions and as manufacturing is brought back to the United States and Mexico from abroad.
Ackman’s hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management reported owning 2.8 million Canadian Pacific shares at the end of Dec. 31, 2021, according to a regulatory filing on Monday. That would value the stake at roughly $280-million at the stock’s closing price on Friday, a fraction of Canadian Pacific’s market value of about $92-billion.
Pershing Square had asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to delay disclosing its holding on a recent regulatory filing so that it could continue accumulating more stock. Ackman had told investors earlier this year that he had an undisclosed new position in the portfolio.
It is not clear from the filing how much Ackman owns as of Monday.
With this new stake in Canadian Pacific, Ackman is going back to a company that had been one of Pershing Square’s biggest winners, earning the firm some $2.6-billion on its investment.
Pershing Square first began buying into the railroad in September 2011, but was forced to sell in 2016 to pay back investors who were pulling out cash as the fund faced losses.
Six years on Canadian Pacific is being run by Keith Creel, who took the top job in 2017 after his mentor Hunter Harrison left Canadian Pacific to run rival railwy CSXa Corp CSX-Q.
Creel engineered a major win last year when Canadian Pacific acquired Kansas City Southern KSU-N after a protracted battle. The U.S. Surface Transportation Board still needs to give the deal full regulatory clearance.
The merger would set Canadian Pacific up as the first rail company to have a network that extends from Canada to Mexico.
Your time is valuable. Have the Top Business Headlines newsletter conveniently delivered to your inbox in the morning or evening. Sign up today.