A Year Later, Ackman Sticks With His Bet Against Herbalife

It has been a little more than a year since William A. Ackman announced a $1 billion bet against Herbalife, the nutritional supplements company, and that wager is still in the red.

But Mr. Ackman, the head of Pershing Square Capital Management, struck a defiant tone on Wednesday, speaking before an audience of investors in the same auditorium where he announced the short position in late 2012. He reiterated his contention that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme â€" an accusation that the company denies â€" but added a fresh twist.

“The company is now a levered pyramid scheme,” he said at the Harbor Investment Conference in Manhattan, a charity event benefiting the Boys and Girls Harbor. “And we like that.”

Mr. Ackman was referring to Herbalife’s recent sale of $1 billion of convertible senior notes, which was intended to help the company buy back more of its stock. The transaction does not significantly affect Pershing Square’s position, Mr. Ackman said, and “on the margin, it’s helpful to us” because Herbalife has taken on more debt, increasing its leverage, in Wall Street parlance.

A representative of Herbalife said the company had no comment.

Mr. Ackman several months ago altered the composition of his Herbalife bet, using put options to protect against a possible “short squeeze,” which can happen when other investors drive up the stock price. Now, he said, his bet is larger than it was originally.

Referring to Herbalife, he said: “If it were to disappear tomorrow, we’d make a lot more than had it just blown up the day after I gave my last presentation â€" although life would be a little easier.”

Mr. Ackman, who was a co-chairman of the conference along with Mark Axelowitz, a managing director at UBS Private Wealth Management, closed the event with a question-and-answer session in which he spoke about a number of his investments, including Procter & Gamble and Air Products and Chemicals. He also had harsh words for Target, which defeated his proxy fight in 2009.

“I think it’s lost some of its magic,” Mr. Ackman said, adding that Target was threatened by the rise of online retailing. “It seems more like a slightly higher end Wal-Mart.”

The Target press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On the Herbalife bet, Mr. Ackman said his firm was “on our way” to breaking even, though he declined to identify the stock price at which that would happen. The stock has fallen almost 17 percent this year through Wednesday.

While his original Herbalife presentation was a three-hour affair, with hundreds of slides, Mr. Ackman dispensed with such formalities on Wednesday, instead taking questions from the audience.

“The last time I gave a presentation in this room it was 340 slides,” he said. “So today I have no slides. Actually, I have no presentation.”