Meet Jeff Smith, the hedge-fund investor taking on Pfizer

Starboard’s record isn’t without blemishes. Its campaign against meat processor Smithfield Foods in 2013 fizzled. The hedge fund lost a proxy battle with software maker Box in 2021. And in 2019 it dropped a bid to have Bristol-Myers Squibb scrap its merger with Celgene after failing to win over two major proxy advisory firms.

In total, Starboard has initiated 151 activist campaigns, which have generated an average return of 25%, according to data from 13D Monitor.

Ignore at your peril

More recently, the hedge fund has taken positions in dating app owner Match Group, software company Autodesk, and Starbucks.

Squire said Smith has a reputation as intense but intelligent and candid. Starboard “can be friendly, but if they’re ignored they can also be feared — and they can get tough.”

In August, Starbucks replaced its CEO amid a campaign from Starboard and Elliott Management.

Given Smith’s record of winning corporate concessions — or prying them away by force — Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla may be next in the hot seat. Bourla took over in 2019 and guided the drugmaker through the pandemic, boosting annual revenues to $100 billion in 2022 thanks to sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and the antiviral treatment Paxlovid.

But missteps ensued. Pfizer misjudged future demand for COVID remedies, according to a WSJ report, and revenues cratered. It has since undertaken multibillion-dollar cost cutting campaigns.

For its next act, Pfizer executives wagered heavily on cancer treatments. It shelled out $43 billion last year to acquire Seagen, a Washington-based biotech company focused on developing novel cancer medicines. It expects Seagen’s products to yield $3.1 billion in revenue this year and $10 billion in annual revenues by 2030.

Still, its share price has fallen more than 50% since reaching an all-time high in December 2021.

Starboard’s targets cut across industries, including 23 campaigns in the healthcare sector, according to 13D Monitor. Besides Bristol-Myers Squibb, other prior targets include CVS and medical records and technology company Cerner.

Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment.