Bill Ackman Sees an AI Bargain in the Company That Owns the New York Stock Exchange

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square disclosed in its 2Q26 letter to shareholders that it initiated a new position in Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE | ICE Price Prediction), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. The letter argued that ICE shares had fallen over the year before the purchase while the earnings multiple contracted sharply, and that investors overestimated both the threat AI poses to the company’s data and mortgage technology businesses and the danger perpetual futures pose to its exchanges.

Pershing initiated the position after the letter’s quarter-end date, so the decline and the multiple describe the purchase context as of that period. ICE closed at $161.26 on September 4, up 7.62% over the past month but down 6.41% over the last year.

Why the Business Gets Stronger as Markets Automate

The New York Stock Exchange is the recognizable entry point, but in most cases it sits within futures, clearing, and data. Automated participants still need a regulated venue to trade on, a price feed to trade against, and a clearinghouse to stand behind the trade.

ICE’s second quarter carried the point. Recurring revenue reached $1.35 billion, up 8%, and Fixed Income and Data Services net revenue grew 8% to $645 million. Management raised full-year recurring-revenue guidance for that segment to 7% to 8%.

CEO Jeff Sprecher said “AI is making our data more valuable, not less”, describing ICE’s proprietary pricing as “data that cannot be scraped or synthesized”. The new ICE Model Context Protocol server feeds that governed data into client AI workflows with permissioning and audit trails intact.

Ackman’s Conditional Return Case

Pershing’s expected return rests on two legs: earnings growth from the recurring, data-heavy businesses, and a recovery in the multiple that compressed during the drawdown. ICE beat consensus for a fifth straight quarter, posting adjusted diluted EPS of $1.9 against a $1.84 consensus.

Capital return supports the per-share math. The board authorized up to $4.0 billion in repurchases effective July 1, 2026, and management plans to raise the baseline quarterly buyback from $350 million to $400 million.

The pending $5.7 billion acquisition of Market Access at $167 per share extends ICE’s fixed-income network. Sprecher described the combined platform as a “global fixed income network” that connects retail and institutional liquidity and evaluates pricing, execution, and clearing through a single connection.

Peer Context and Where the Thesis Can Break

CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) reported record market-data revenue of $238 million, up 20% year over year. Nasdaq (NASDAQ:NDAQ) grew index revenue 38% to $271 million and listed SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) in an $86 billion IPO, the largest in exchange history. CME is up 6.05% year to date and NDAQ up 0.4%, versus ICE at 0.26%. That valuation gap is the setup Pershing likes.

Three vulnerabilities stand out. A prolonged weak mortgage market would keep the segment’s GAAP operating margin near the 8% reported last quarter, delaying the realization of operating leverage from Aurora adoption.

Competitive pressure on fixed-income execution and data pricing is real, and management said Market Access has faced declining market share. The old multiple may never come back on Pershing’s timetable, in which case returns depend entirely on earnings compounding.

Is ICE Stock a Buy?

Pershing’s thesis is grounded in cash flows already visible on the income statement. If AI accelerates demand for governed, regulated data and ICE integrates Market Access on schedule, the recurring-revenue engine keeps compounding whether or not the multiple re-rates quickly.

Against CME’s higher growth rate and Nasdaq’s faster AI monetization, ICE is the value play in the group. For a retirement-focused investor researching market infrastructure exposure through cycles, ICE screens as the value name in the group on Ackman’s logic, with the mortgage cycle as the risk worth monitoring.

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