Bill Ackman’s Secret Plan to Become the Next Warren Buffett

Описание: Download ALL of Buffett's famous writings here: https://www.pages.investorcenter.co/b...

Wall Street's loudest activist investor just went quiet. And that should terrify his competitors. Bill Ackman isn't chasing the next hostile takeover. He's building something bigger—a machine designed to compound wealth for fifty years, using a blueprint Warren Buffett wrote in 1967. But here's the twist: Ackman's adding a weapon Buffett never had. Today, he reveals both keys: the engine and the vehicle. Listen closely.

Ackman just described the holy grail of businesses: ones that grow and churn out cash forever, yet hardly need any new investment to do it. In his words, it's like owning a toll road. You take a slice of every car's fare, but other people built the highway. Instead of pouring money into factories or fleets, these companies sit at the choke points of the economy and simply collect fees.

Take Tim Hortons. Marcus Chen opens a franchise in suburban Toronto. He writes a $487,000 check for equipment, signage, and build-out. His life savings. His risk. Tim Hortons corporate? They take a 5% royalty on every double-double sold. When Marcus's location does $1.1 million in year one, headquarters collects $55,000. Their capital investment to earn that? Virtually zero.

Do the math: if 100 new franchised stores open, franchisees invest $50 million total. Tim Hortons collects $50K per store. That's $5 million a year extra coming in, basically free. For Tim Hortons' owners, it's the closest thing to free money: a perpetual annuity that grows as more stores open. This is what Ackman calls a "growth royalty." It's not just coffee shops.

Hilton Hotels earns fees on over 7,000 hotels worldwide while owning only a tiny fraction of them. The rest are owned by franchisees and property investors. This asset-light model helped Hilton's value skyrocket. Private equity firm Blackstone made $14 billion in profit by taking Hilton down this road.

Universal Music Group invests in finding and marketing artists, but they don't build CD factories. When you stream a song, UMG collects a royalty from Spotify or Apple Music. They didn't lay the fiber cable or manufacture the phone. They just own the rights. UMG generates billions in cash flow with far less capital tied up in physical assets.

Even tech platforms fit this mold. Ackman points out that Uber is essentially a 20% royalty on transportation. Uber built the app and network, but drivers buy the cars and pay for gas. Uber takes roughly a 20% cut of every fare. If Uber's platform doubles in users, revenue can double without buying a single car.

But here's the catch: How do you know which toll roads will keep collecting forever?