Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has exited its entire Alphabet stake and built a new position in Netflix, marking a significant portfolio shift disclosed in the hedge fund’s second-quarter 2026 investor letter. The move signals a strategic recalibration after Ackman raised $5 billion in new capital through a combined public offering of two Pershing entities in late April.
Pershing Square purchased 3.15 million Netflix shares in the second quarter, representing 4.9% of the fund’s total portfolio and valued at over $934 million, according to the firm’s interim report filed in mid-August. The Alphabet exit was complete by the same period, ending a long-standing major holding after Ackman had trimmed the position significantly in the first quarter.
The Netflix investment comes four years after Ackman suffered a costly exit from the same stock. In April 2022, Pershing Square sold its 3.1 million Netflix shares for a reported loss of approximately $400 million after the company missed subscriber guidance and the stock plunged 35%. At the time, Ackman said he lacked the appetite for the volatility ahead.
Netflix Has Won the Streaming Wars
In their Q2 2026 letter, Ackman and Pershing Square Chief Investment Officer Ryan Israel laid out a detailed thesis for the Netflix return. They argue that Netflix has “effectively won the streaming wars,” citing the company’s more than 325 million subscribers—nearly twice the combined base of Disney+ and HBO Max.
Ackman and Israel addressed two major investor concerns head-on. On artificial intelligence, they wrote that “concerns understate the cost of generating long-form, high-quality video, which remains among the most compute-intensive AI tasks.” They added that Netflix’s large subscriber base allows it to amortize content costs more efficiently than competitors, and that AI will improve its content recommendation and ad-targeting capabilities.
Regarding short-form video competition from social media platforms, Ackman and Israel contended that time viewers reallocate to platforms like TikTok will likely come from traditional television or lower-quality streaming services rather than from Netflix, which they characterized as “utility-like.” The fund also highlighted Netflix’s financial strength, noting that the company converts close to 90% of earnings into free cash flow.
The Netflix purchase was part of a broader portfolio overhaul. Pershing Square also took new positions in Visa, Mastercard, S&P Global, Intercontinental Exchange, and Alcon—companies that had sold off due to concerns about AI disruption. Ackman and his team raised $5 billion in new capital through the April offerings and deployed 85% of those funds by mid-June, giving them significant firepower to execute this strategy.
The Alphabet exit marks the end of a major conviction that Ackman had held for years. He had built a $1.1 billion stake in Google’s parent company in 2023, but trimmed it by 95% in the first quarter of 2026 before exiting completely by the second quarter. The proceeds from that sale, combined with the newly raised capital, funded his pivot into Netflix and the other five new positions.
Sources
- Motley Fool — Ackman’s Q2 2026 portfolio moves, Netflix thesis, and new positions in six stocks
- Yahoo Finance — Pershing Square’s Netflix stake size and Ackman’s statement that Netflix has won the streaming wars
- Reuters — Ackman’s new investments including Netflix, Visa, Mastercard, and other holdings
- Forbes — Details of Ackman’s 2022 Netflix loss and current return to the stock
- MarketWatch — Ackman’s prior Netflix exit in 2022 and reasons for the $400 million loss
- Benzinga — Pershing Square’s Alphabet exit and new Netflix position
