Overview
- Pershing Square, which filed its quarterly 13F Friday, reported owning about 5.65 million Microsoft shares valued at roughly $2.09 billion at the end of Q1.
- Microsoft shares rose about 3% to 4% intraday Friday after Bill Ackman announced the position and called the company a core holding.
- Ackman said he began buying in February at about 21 times forward earnings and argued the market underprices Azure, the M365 suite with Copilot, and Microsoft’s OpenAI stake.
- He backed Microsoft’s roughly $190 billion 2026 data center budget as necessary to drive future revenue, pushing back on worries about margins and AI payback timelines.
- Pershing funded the buy by selling Alphabet, which people familiar say was fully exited in Q2, as other major holders moved in different directions including TCI reducing Microsoft and the Gates Foundation Trust disclosing a Q1 sale of its final 7.7 million shares.