Big Bag Bill Ackman Yeets Into Amazon Despite Multi-Month Drop—24.5x Earnings Anyone?

Bill Nye the Amazon Guy…

It’s official everyone, Amazon just got the special Bill Ackman treatment as Pershing Square finally stopped lurking and revealed it had taken a bite out of Bezos’ brink’s truck. The announcement came during Pershing’s Q1 investor call, which, like all hedge fund earnings calls, was 50% market commentary, 50% ego theater. Ryan Israel, their Chief Investment Officer and designated spokesperson for “why we press buy,” said they loaded up on Amazon after the stock cratered earlier this year. The market called it a growth scare… Pershing called it a friggin’ yard sale. 

(Source: Giphy) 

Simply put, the call was light on humility and heavy on talking points. Israel made sure to remind everyone that AWS still controls over 40% of the cloud market. Which is true, and also not new information, but hedge funds love repeating stats like they discovered them. He also said AWS has plenty of runway left, since only a fraction of global IT workloads live in the cloud. To be fair, that’s been true since 2015… but sure, go off. 

However, what actually made this worth paying attention to is the timing. Amazon was in the middle of a multi-month drop after peaking in February. AI panic was hitting full volume. Chinese LLMs were flooding the market. Trump dusted off his tariff obsession, and Amazon was suddenly in the crosshairs. The CEO, Andy Jassey, had to publicly pretend everything was fine, even as they quietly abandoned a plan to label tariff costs on product pages…and after Trump reportedly rage-called Bezos… which he did, presumably in ALL CAPS language. 

(Source: New York Post) 

So Pershing stepped in during the noise and bought in at around 24.5x earnings. Bigly. And it’s also the lowest Amazon’s ever traded on an earnings basis. Bill Ackman heard tariffs, AI collapse, and margin compression and said, “Don’t mind if I do.” Speaking of earnings though, mazon reported decent cloud revenue in Q1 but still missed operating income forecasts. That didn’t matter. The stock bounced anyway. Pershing’s endorsement gave institutional investors cover to pretend they weren’t already holding the bag. Suddenly the narrative flipped from “Amazon is cooked” to “Amazon is misunderstood.” And now Amazon is flying high with a 12.46% MTD gain (although it has since cratered -3.05% during this morning’s pre-market). 

But alas, Israel said Pershing expects Amazon to keep growing earnings per share at 20%+. That projection assumes AWS doesn’t implode (which is a far cry), consumers don’t roll over, and Trump doesn’t escalate things more than he already has. No pressure. And yet, the real reason this made headlines is because Pershing hardly ever touches big tech. Bill Ackman is not Cathie Wood. I know it’s 2025… and we can all identify with whatever the hell we want, but when Ackman buys something, it’s either a long-term conviction… or he’s preparing for a very public activist campaign. As for Cathie, she just ape’s into anything with a pulse.

(Source: Img flip) 

So far though, this move doesn’t look activist. There’s no letter, no board seat demand, no leaked memo about “unlocking shareholder value.” Just a very loud, very public, very calculated long position in a stock that everyone else was too scared to touch two months ago. And investors love it. Amazon shares popped over 2% and closed at $203.05. Again, not because anything changed or AWS blasted Azure… but because Bill Ackman said it’s fine. 

Meaning, Amazon is looking to be back in good graces, because a hedge fund with a history of both huge wins and total implosions said the price was right. Of course, only time will tell what happens going forward, especially during today’s session, but it’s a major catalyst nonetheless. For now, be smart and don’t Cathie Wood into this stock just because Big Bag Bill is yeeting into Amazon. Perhaps you’ve heard of Herbalife? Until next time, friends… 

P.S. Some fat cat executive just sold $9.4 million of their company's stock… a company, mind you, that’s single-handedly responsible for your kid’s sugar rush before 8 a.m. Curious to see why? Click here to join Stocks.News premium and get these insider transactions delivered to you on a silver platter. 

Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon as mentioned in the article.