Activist investor Jana cuts Frontier bet, liquidates QuidelOrtho, BlackLine
14/11/2024 22:01
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Activist investor Jana
Partners liquidated two positions it built earlier this year
where it did not press for changes and dramatically downsized
its stake in a third company where it pushed for a sale that was
announced in September.
In its quarterly 13-F filing on Thursday, the hedge fund
said that it had sold 5.7 million shares in Frontier
Communications FYBR.O during the third quarter, cutting its
position by 59%.
A day earlier, Frontier Communications shareholders agreed
to sell the company to Verizon in a $20 billion deal, including
debt, that is expected to strengthen Verizon's fiber network.
Jana first publicly pushed Frontier to put itself up for
sale a year ago.
Frontier's stock price has climbed 67.5% in the last 52
weeks and spiked in early September when the Verizon deal was
announced.
The hedge fund also exited its position in U.S. diagnostics
company QuidelOrtho QDEL.O , which it built during the first
quarter, and its position in enterprise software company
BlackLine Systems BL.O , which it built during the second
quarter.
It was unclear earlier in the year whether Jana would seek
changes at these companies and in the end, the hedge fund did
not mount public campaigns.
Jana is currently pushing cybersecurity company Rapid7 to
sell itself and has increased its holding by 34.2% to 3.7
million.
Investors are required to make the so-called 13-F filings
with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to show what
they owned in U.S. companies' stock at the end of the quarter.
While the filings are backward looking, they are closely
tracked for hints on which companies activist investors may
target.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss
Editing by Marguerita Choy)
((svea.herbst@thomsonreuters.com; +617 233 2138; Reuters
Messaging: svea.herbst.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))