By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Band-Aid and Tylenol maker Kenvue attracted the attention of another activist investor in the second quarter, with Sachem Head Capital Management reporting that it bought into the stock.
Sachem, run by Scott Ferguson, said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it owned 10.6 million shares in the consumer healthcare company on June 30.
According to the filing, Kenvue was the firm’s fourth biggest holding at the end of the quarter after Twilio, Talen Energy and Seagate Technology Holdings.
Sachem Head declined to comment. The firm is known to quietly push for changes behind the scenes at certain companies, although it mounted a noisy proxy fight at US Foods Holding three years ago.
Kenvue, which was spun out of Johnson & Johnson and now has a market value of $40 billion, has faced some of the industry’s most prominent activists, including Starboard Value, Third Point and Toms Capital Investment Management, in its two years as a publicly traded company.
In July, Kenvue’s board fired CEO Thibaut Mongon, laying the path for what investors said they hope and expect will be the eventual sale of the company.
Investors have long complained about Kenvue’s sluggish share price, which drifted down 1% this year, closing at $21.06 on Thursday.
Starboard was among the first to publicly press Kenvue to review how it positions its brands and how they are priced to help boost performance. The hedge fund settled its proxy fight with the company in March when Kenvue agreed to appoint three new directors, including Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith.
Starboard, in a filing on Thursday, said it cut its Kenvue investment by 5.10% to 21 million shares.
But Toms Capital Investment Management, which has urged the company to consider strategic alternatives, raised its holding during the second quarter to 16 million shares, from 14.4 million shares at the end of the first quarter.
Third Point, run by billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, bought into Kenvue during the first quarter but made no changes in the second quarter, to own 8.5 million shares on June 30.
Investment managers are required to tell regulators how much stock they owned in U.S. companies at the end of each quarter in 13F filings. While the filings are backward looking, other investors watch them closely for hints on trends, including suggestions of which companies activist investors might be targeting.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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