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It’s not personal — just business.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn didn’t buy a $500 million stake in embattled Herbalife simply to sink an opposing bet by his arch-nemesis Bill Ackman, he said yesterday.
Icahn said he took the 13 percent stake in the multi-level marketer of weight-loss products and nutritional supplements principally because he thought the shares were undervalued.
Of course, jumping into a position that could torpedo Ackman’s $1 billion bet against Herbalife clearly thrills Icahn.
“The fact that I don’t like Ackman is, you could say, the strawberry on the ice cream,” Icahn said in a TV interview yesterday.
Ackman in December made a very public $1 billion short bet on Herbalife shares — calling the 33-year old Los Angeles company “a pyramid scheme.”
Company executives have denied Ackman’s claim.
The company got support yesterday from Icahn — who said in a CNBC interview that he doesn’t agree with Ackman’s conclusion on Herbalife.
Icahn said he researched the company and believes it “is here to stay.”
“It’s a great way to retail products,” said Icahn, who revealed that the average price he paid for his 14 million shares was $36.
Herbalife shares opened sharply higher yesterday on the Icahn news — jumping 17 percent to $44.93, before easing during the day to close at $38.74, up 1.2 percent.
The Icahn-Ackman Herbalife smackdown has captivated Wall Street for weeks because of the certainty of their convictions, the animosity between them — and the speculation that one of them has to be a loser.
The battle sent a third Herbalife investor scurrying for the sidelines.
Robert Chapman, one of the first and most vociferous Herbalife bulls, told The Post he exited his entire stake in the company Thursday night and Friday morning — after Icahn revealed that he jumped in.
“This is a boxing match, and you always want to bet on the guy who just got punched,” Chapman said, referring to Ackman.
The Los Angeles hedgie said the timing of the majority of Icahn’s Herbalife purchases — after the much-publicized TV debate with Ackman three weeks ago — tells him there is a “grudge component” to the move.
Chapman added that he still believes in Herbalife but thinks the shares — which have bounced between $46 and $26 over the last two months — will come under pressure if regulators start investigating the company, which he thinks is likely.
Chapman said that while he does not agree with Ackman, “I expect that [the claim] will attract the attention of regulators some day, and I do not want to be long the day before a significant regulator has commenced an investigation of the company. That being said, I am extremely confident that the results of any such probe will be benign and will vindicate Herbalife,” he said.
Icahn dismissed the notion that regulators would act.
While Icahn, in the filing, said he would help the company explore options, including restructuring and going private, he would not elaborate yesterday.
In a statement yesterday, Ackman said that his conclusion that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme is a “certainty” based on 18 months of due diligence that is “unaffected by who is on the other side of the investment.”