The billionaire investor Mr. Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management was one of the largest stock holders of Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Ackman has perceptively made his position in Valeant far more important by raising its stake from 5.7% to 9.9% recently. Now, Pershing is the second largest shareholder in Valeant followed by Sequoia Fund led by Ruane, Goldfarb and Cuniff.
As per CNBC report, Pershing revealed its new holdings in an updated Schedule 13D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Ackman announced the move in a Monday afternoon news release. The good news is that during after-hours trading, shares in the company soared more than 2% right after the news broke.
Valeant is the well-known drug company that has recently gone through a federal investigation. The scrutiny was done due to some of its doubtful pricing practices. Valeant has faced serious share issues when a further scrutiny report by Citron Research published alleging Valeant fraud for doing channel stuffing. However, Mr. Ackman has been always vocal about his support for this drug company and defended Valeant against criticisms.
According to NY Times, Mr. Ackman also held a three-hour conference call and webcast for defending his investment in Valeant along with answering investors' questions on 30th October. Moreover, due to Ackman's investment in Valeant, this year the hedge fund has gone down 24 percent. During a recent telephonic conversation with Pershing investors, Mr. Ackman expressed his disgust by saying that the news media is betting against him.
After all these mayhem, the stock has progressed from a low of $70 per share last week to $87 per share on last Monday as Mr. Ackman bought up shares recently.
According to NASDAQ sources, the several funds of Pershing Square now possess more than 34.12 million shares in Valeant.
Pershing also stated that after gaining prominent position in Valeant, they would like to conduct discussions with other shareholders and relevant parties.The motto of the discussions would involve the betterment of the company including operations, strategies, assets, financial conditions and other structural parts.
As Valeant's stock has dropped down 60% over the past couple of months, the company is also trying to retain the staffs by offering stock incentives and cash.
However, despite what Citron claims, Ackman boldly commented that he still believes in the Valeant's business model. Ackman expects the situations of Valeant to be changed soon, especially after making the decision of raising Pershing's stake in it.
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