Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman joins Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi at Yahoo Finance's 2026 Invest conference to discuss why he feels Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) is a more speculative bet than Visa (V). While sharing his favorite risk/reward stocks.
I come from the school of thought of you, you know, crunching, working on discounted free cash flow models and valuations and multiples. I mean, how do you even go about valuing a business that is, that is losing billions, might have to raise more money and is free cash flow negative?
Well, actually, I think Anthropics on the cusp or it might even be at a place in terms of its operating profitability where it's, you know, real operating profitability and that their investments, I think they can make the argument, their investments in compute, uh, are about, well, I think the issue is if Anthropic doesn't stay in the lead position, then the real questions about the business model.
So the capex they have to spend is really real. I think it's just, it's also a cash flow model, it's just a much more complicated one to build than a widget company that sells 5% more widgets next year than than the year before.
So it's, I would just say a much more complicated question and there's a much wider range of outcomes, uh, and, you know, it's a more speculative bet than buying, for example, Visa, a company we own.
Well, that's I want to ask you because what's, I guess, what is the most attractive or attractive stocks in your portfolio right now?
So, in terms of risk reward, our favorite, my favorite position is uh two stocks. It's uh Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Uh these are stocks that have been completely discarded uh this year. Uh the history goes back a while, uh but in in fact, we've owned these stocks since for 13 years on the bet that they would eventually be released from conservatorship and uh be privatized again.
