The hedge fund manager William A. Ackman moved on Monday to sell his roughly 18 percent stake in J.C. Penney, nearly two weeks after he resigned from the board amid an unusual public battle with his fellow directors.
Penney filed a prospectus with regulators giving notice that Mr. Ackman’s firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, plans to sell its 39.1 million shares. The company, which will not receive any proceeds from the sale, did not list an expected selling price.
Shares in Penney closed at $13.35 on Monday, valuing the stake at about $522 million. Pershing first began buying stock in the retailer three years ago at an average price of about $21.06, about 37 percent higher than where it trades now.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Ackman declined to comment beyond the prospectus.
The stock sale came six days after the retailer announced its latest quarterly earnings. Under an agreement with Penney’s board, Mr. Ackman could not begin disposing his stake until then because he still possessed some material information about the company’s finances.
By selling his stake, Mr. Ackman will wash his hands of a drawn-out and ultimately disappointing investment in Penney. He first emerged as a big investor three years ago, believing that the retailer could be turned around with new management. To that end, he enlisted Ron Johnson, the celebrated architect of Apple Inc.‘s retail strategy.
But Mr. Johnson’s tenure proved to be disastrous, with numerous initiatives â€" eliminating discount sales, a pricey renovation of Penney’s stores â€" serving only to drive away existing customers while failing to bring in new ones. Earlier this year, the board fired Mr. Johnson and brought in his predecessor, Myron Ullman III, on an interim basis.
Earlier this summer, Mr. Ackman again grew anxious that Penney was on the wrong track, fretting about executive appointments by Mr. Ullman that the hedge fund manager believed did not follow established procedures. Concerned that the board was becoming fractured, he later publicly called for the replacement of its chairman, Thomas Engibous, with Allen Questrom, a former Penney chief.
The two sides negotiated a truce: Mr. Ackman would step down, while Ronald Tysoe, a retail veteran, would join the board, with another new director to follow soon afterward.
Yet as Mr. Ackman sells off his position, other investors appear to be betting that Penney is on the verge of a turnaround. The investment firm founded by George Soros now owns a roughly 9 percent stake, while Perry Capital recently unveiled a 7.3 percent stake.
And Hayman Capital, a firm run by Kyle Bass, reportedly has both bought up shares and made a bullish bet on the retailer’s debt, according to news reports.
