This small shoe company has been targeted by Bill Ackman's protege. An activist investor is looking to overthrow the board. But the hedge fund should have a tough time convincing shareholders given Deckers' progress. The question to ask is not whether Deckers Outdoor ( DECK ) is a turnaround company, but rather who can turn around the footwear maker -- management or a new team?...
Amazon is a moonshot company. One that keeps ‘fooling’ investors, but is this its Apple moment? Will Bezos become his own activist investor? Amazon ( AMZN ) is the master of everything. They own the retail space, are a dominant force in data storage, have hits in hardware and are quietly a logistics master. But the real prize -- and it’s not AWS -- it is Prime. That’s what could make Whole Foods interesting -- effectively turning it into a Costco ( COST ) like membership model...
Teva could be a great activist target. There are a couple catalysts here. The biggest being a breakup? Teva Pharmaceuticals ( TEVA ) is in the dumps. It’s officially on the activist investor radar. At decade lows, it’s hard not to be tempted by Teva. Generic drug pricing pressure and poor earnings are crushing the company. A great opportunity, perhaps, for an activist investor? The big thesis is to get Teva to get its debt load under control...
The gross margin can give an indication of how sound the business model is of these leading discount retailers. Costco’s low-cost pricing strategy reveals its revenue is covering its operating costs by a much slimmer margin at 13.3 percent than that of its competitors. Costco’s prices are 17 to 19 percent lower than Amazon’s in both its e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores, according to a recent comparative study...
Activist investor Elliott Management has shown its hand in the NXP buyout battle. Qualcomm fended off fellow activist investor JANA Partners a couple years ago. This time they won’t get "out" so easy. The Qualcomm ( QCOM ) and NXP Semiconductors ( NXPI ) battle gets a bit more heated. Elliott Management had previously placed its bet and now it’s upping the ante. Elliott now has a 6% stake in NXP and is publicly pushing for a higher buyout price from Qualcomm...
There is the promise of marked upside if Dow and DuPont change their breakup strategy. Activist investors have been pulling the strings for years on this. But it could be time for Dow and DuPont that stand their ground. There’s been fresh activist investor pressure from Dan Loeb’s Third Point on Dow ( DOW ) and DuPont ( DD ), hoping to get the two to review post-merger plans. The companies recently hired McKinsey to review its post-merger spinoff situation...
The company is also rolling out a $21 billion share buyback plan. The buyback ... The issue for Loeb will be Nestle's corporate governance . He's going ...
Activist investor Nelson Peltz and his Trian Partners has got a win at General Electric (NYSE: GE ), and now might be ready to take on its largest investment ever - Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG ). Trian owns a $3.3 billion stake in P&G, while its GE stake is about $2 billion. The P&G stake is the biggest position in any company that Trian has ever taken...
Will CMG be the next VRX for Bill Ackman? Ackman’s Pershing Square hedge fund has already positioned itself to dump its CMG stake. However, CMG is finally showing signs of life. Chipotle (NYSE: CMG ) is now one of the major focuses of activist investor Bill Ackman after Pershing Square dumped its Valeant Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: VRX ) stake. Ackman showed he has the patience to wait out a turnaround, as exhibited with VRX. However, Ackman is cleaning up his portfolio.
Activist investor Bill Ackman has been little help for CMG. Instead, CMG needs to be its own activist with marketing spend and food safety investments. Ackman has board seats but no apparent long-term plan. Chipotle (NYSE: CMG ) is still too cheap. Or is it? The stock is down almost 50% from its 2015 high. And instead of hitting $1,000 a share as many analysts expected, we're now closer to $100. The fast casual restaurant can't seem to "recover" from the 2015 e-coli outbreak...
Summary CSX is battling back against Bill Ackman protege Paul Hilal. The rail company has bought itself some additional time - calling a special meeting to allow shareholders to vote on the activist’s proposal. The likely path is that CSX "goes around" the activist to bring in rail expert Hunter Harrison. CSX (NYSE: CSX ) is pushing back at activist investor Paul Hilal's Mantle Ridge, which owns 4.9% of the railroad company...
BMY has fallen on hard times of late, one of the weakest performers in healthcare. However, activist JANA Partners is quietly lurking. What will be the catalyst for JANA to finally get more involved? Bristol-Myers (NYSE: BMY ) has activist investor Barry Rosenstein and his JANA Partners as a shareholder. JANA hasn't announced any plans, or even considered the stake activist. Still, JANA could be playing wait-and-see...
Johnson & Johnson is at a $317 billion market cap. Which means it might be too big to grow, having underperformed for years. The only question is will a major activist step up or will JNJ become its own activist? It appears that it wil take a major activist to shake things up at the $300 billion-plus market cap healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ ).
If high levels of insider selling is bad, what about high levels of insider resigning? Jack Dorsey continues to consolidate his power as CEO to run Twitter as a glorified chatroom. Twitter needs a new CEO, otherwise it’s a $12 stock. Again, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ) needs a new CEO. As I've noted , ideally, Jack steps down (or gets fired - more likely) from TWTR in 2017 and runs Square (NYSE: SQ ) full-time. By all accounts, there's no buyout coming. But who can oust Jack Dorsey?
There’s no doubt that TWTR has been yearning for an activist for months. However, it might have to settle for something a bit different. Can CEO @jack become the activist we all need? Shares of Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ) are kicking around $18 a share and are well off the $25 we saw at the height of the buyout talk. Still, TWTR is trading at 5x sales, which is more like a "growth" or social media story. Yet, TWTR is much more of a media company...
Buffett has been taking it on the chin of late. First Wells Fargo, now DaVita Health. Is Apple next or will he be the savior activist investor Carl Icahn wasn't. For the last two years, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) stock has been a so-so stock for many investors, underperforming the S&P 500 after years of outperformance ...
