Visa and Mastercard, by contrast, sit near the top of their 52-week ranges. Visa closed at $364.15 on August 14, placing it in the upper 12% of its 52-week range of $293.89 to $373.97. The stock is up more than 20% from its year-to-date low. Mastercard traded at $559.73 on August 12, between a 52-week low of $464.52 and high of $601.77 — a round trip that saw shares fall 17% to the mid-$470s in June before recovering.
Pershing Square's investment thesis on the card networks centers on their capital-light "toll-taker" model, collecting roughly 20 basis points on a typical transaction for authorization, merchant acceptance, fraud protection, and dispute resolution. Ackman estimates cards still represent only about half of addressable consumer spending globally. Value-added services now generate approximately 30% of Visa's revenue and 40% of Mastercard's, growing two to three times faster than core payment processing. Pershing Square estimates Visa trades at roughly 23 times forward earnings with projected 16% annual earnings growth over the next three to five years.
The hedge fund explicitly acknowledges risks it is betting against: stablecoin-driven disintermediation, agentic AI reshaping consumer commerce, and renewed regulatory scrutiny of payment economics. Ackman's view is that the market is pricing in disruption faster than the disruption is materializing. For S&P Global, softer guidance in the ratings segment and AI-related uncertainty have compressed the valuation multiple, though the Microsoft AI partnership embedding S&P Global data into Microsoft 365 Copilot may support its role in data-heavy workflows.