Billionaire Investor’s Hedge Fund Has 100% of Its Assets in Just 2 Stocks 

Paul Hilal founded Mantle Ridge in 2016. Before that, he spent a decade as a senior partner at Bill Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, where he was involved in passive and activist investing initiatives.

According to WhaleWisdom.com, it has $4.62 billion in assets under management, including $2.1 billion invested in U.S. listed stocks. 

In the final quarter of 2024, Mantle Ridge had just two holdings worth around $1 billion: one existing stock and one new addition.

Here’s why he owns both Air Products & Chemicals (NYSE:APD) and Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR). 

Key Points About This Article:

• Billionaire investor Paul Hilal worked for Bill Ackman for a decade before starting his hedge fund, Mantle Ridge.
• The hedge fund has just two holdings; one is brand new.
• In January, Mantle Ridge led a successful proxy fight against Air Products & Chemicals (NYSE:APD). It led to three board seats and a new CEO. 
• Over 4 Million Americans set to retire this year. If you’re one, don’t leave your future to chance. Speak with an advisor and learn if you’re ahead, or behind on your goals. Click here to get started. (Sponsored)

Mantle Ridge Wins Proxy Fight With APD

The news surfaced that the hedge fund had taken a significant position in the industrial gas supplier last October. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hilal’s firm started accumulating a position in APD stock in March 2024, which was only reported in the Q4 2024 13F holdings report. 

As of Dec. 31, 2024, Mantle Ridge held 4.11 million shares of Air Products, valued at $1.19 billion, accounting for 56.77% of the hedge fund’s portfolio. WhaleWisdom estimates the average price paid for the shares was $307.20. Hilal’s firm owns 1.85% of APD’s stock.  

Hilal sought to discuss possible capital allocation and strategic decisions that Air Products should consider to deliver for shareholders with the underperforming company’s management and board. It also wanted to see it carry out a succession plan for 80-year-old CEO, Seifi Ghasemi, to get someone younger in place. 

The report mentioned above was the first inkling of Mantle Ridge’s involvement. The hedge fund’s first SEC document to reveal its participation was its Nov. 19 proxy statement, seeking to appoint its full slate of nine director nominees at its 2025 annual meeting. Hilal was one of the nine. 

It also included a timeline of the events between Mantle Ridge’s first investment in March and the November filing.

On January 23, Mantle Ridge gained three seats on its board: Hilal, Dennis Reilly, a former CEO of Praxair, now owned by Air Products competitor, Linde (NASDAQ:LIN) and Andrew Evans, a utility industry executive. 

Interestingly, Air Products CEO Ghasemi lost his seat on the board. Two weeks later, Eduardo F. Menezes was appointed CEO, and Ghasemi left the company after 10 years as CEO. Menezes was most recently Executive Vice President of Linde’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) business, which generates over $8 billion in annual revenue and has 18,000 employees in 40 countries. 

APD stock had gained 17% through the first five weeks of 2025. It’s since given back much of those gains. Based on WhaleWisdom’s average price estimate, Mantle Ridge remains underwater on its investment. 

However, the cancellation of three U.S. projects in February, should enable it to focus on the projects that will deliver greater value for shareholders. 

Mantle Ridge’s significant investment in Air Products should look better a year from now. 

The Second of Two Investments

While Air Products is new to Mantle Ridge’s 13F holdings reports, Dollar Tree is not. The hedge fund first acquired shares in the dollar store business in Q4 2021. It now accounts for 43.23% of its assets and represents a 5.63% ownership stake in DLTR. 

It has taken three years for the hedge fund to accumulate the shares it owns today. In Q4 2021, it owned just 100 shares of DLTR stock, while its only other investment was 2.71 million shares of Aramark (NYSE:ARMK), which were valued at nearly $100 million. 

By the end of 2022, Mantle Ridge held 11.37 million shares valued at $1.61 billion, 12.10 million at the end of 2023, and the same amount in 2024 as 2023. The average price paid per share is $139.13, double its current price. 

What is Hilal doing to rescue his firm’s investment? After all, it acquired no additional shares in 2024, despite DLTR losing 47% of its value last year. You would think it would have doubled down.

However, the dollar store industry isn’t doing well in America, primarily because its core customers are hurting financially. Changing the board around and other activist go-to moves won’t cut it. 

Last September, Bloomberg discussed the problems plaguing the dollar store industry. 

“‘We think the dollar store sector is under extreme pressure from both low-income customer weakness as well as incremental share leakage to competitors like Walmart,’ Truist Securities analysts including Scot Ciccarelli wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. They said companies focused on low-income customers ‘have continued to substantially underperform given the cumulative, corrosive impact of inflation,” Bloomberg reported on Sept. 4. 

In November, after 20 months, CEO Rick Dreiling stepped down due to health issues. A month later, COO Michael Creedon, Jr., was named CEO. In February, the company added two retail and consumer goods industry veterans to the board. 

Shareholders can only hope that the strategic review of Family Dollar stores will result in the sale of what has been a significant disappointment since Dollar Tree acquired it in 2015. 

It continues to open Dollar Tree stores, grow same-store sales, and generate free cash flow, which was $390 million in the first nine months of 2024, over three times the amount it generated a year earlier. 

Mantle Ridge can only hope this is the beginning of a turnaround.

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