Bill Ackman said on CNBC on Monday that he would be interested in a deal to take Elon Musk’s X Corp. public with his investment vehicle but hasn’t spoken to Musk or the company about it yet.
Ackman said he’s a backer of X already through a small $10 million investment through his firm’s foundation.
“I have a lot of respect for Musk,” Ackman said in the television interview. “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.”
Pershing Square received regulatory approval on Friday 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.
He said while the company is “interesting,” he doesn’t have information on how the business is doing and has no idea if Musk or X has any interest in doing a deal with his vehicle.
The remarks come after Ackman said that X, formerly known as Twitter, would “absolutely” be one of the options he’s considering, he said in an interview published Sunday by the Wall Street Journal.
He added that Pershing could commit $2 billion to a transaction.
Ackman acknowledged that the platform has lost a lot of advertisers but said they are likely to return. He added that he’s bought stuff advertised on Twitter and that the product and cost structure is “vastly better than it was before.”
When asked if he’d consider buying an asset owned by a private equity firm instead, he said that it would be an easier deal to do.
“A lot of private equity firms today, they’d love to ring the bell if you will, return capital to their investors, show progress on a business outcome. We’re a very simple solution.”
He’s also looking for a “forever” asset that Pershing could own for a decade and be the largest shareholder.
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