Pershing Square Offloads Its Wendy's Arby's Group Holdings

In an amended 13G filed with the SEC due to activity on April 30th, 2009, Pershing Square Capital has updated its stake in Wendy's Arby's Group (WEN). Bill Ackman's hedge fund has completely sold out of its position. In its previous 13F filing, which disclosed Pershing's positions from December 2008, the fund owned over 45 million shares. Now, it owns none.

Bill Ackman has been quite busy lately, as we just yesterday covered his thoughts on his positions in General Growth and Target. Pershing runs a concentrated portfolio of around 8-10 long positions. Ackman's main focus is currently on his largest position, Target (TGT), where he is leading an activist campaign to elicit change in the company's board. He is also dealing with the bankruptcy of General Growth Properties (GGP), whom he thinks will emerge out of Chapter 11 with shareholders intact. Wendy's Arby's Group was one of Pershing's smaller positions and it seems to be moving on to other projects now. You can view the rest of Pershing Square's portfolio, but be aware that the fund is due to update its filings at the end of the week. We will be covering its new portfolio changes in our hedge fund tracking series, so be on the lookout.

If you haven't had enough of Bill Ackman yet, you can get more on his thoughts from his interview with Charlie Rose and his letter to Target shareholders. Pershing Square employs value and activist strategies to run its portfolios.

Taken from Google Finance:

Wendy's Arby's Group is "the parent company of Wendy’s International, Inc. (Wendy’s) and Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc. (ARG), which are the franchisors of the Wendy’s and Arby’s restaurant systems. As of December 28, 2008, the Wendy’s restaurant system consisted of 6,630 restaurants, of which 1,406 were owned and operated by the Company. As of December 28, 2008, the Arby’s restaurant system included 3,756 restaurants, of which 1,176 were owned and operated by the Company."

Comments

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Watch out for VONAGE Holdings (symbol = VG) looks like a takeover target of Bell Rogers & Telus. Something is cookin' on this mysterious stock....it is making big waves in Canada right now..it is a real good gamble, cheap @ $0.50 cents U.S. trying to reach resistance level of $1.00 soon....I just bought 5,000 shares last week @ $0.50 cents each.....

WENDY'S (WEN) will definite touch $5.25 next week whatever happens because everything is on the upswing now, the last three days is just healthy correction as I considered and profit-taking.
good luck guys...

May 14 12:16 PM