(Reuters) – Starboard Value has nominated four directors to the board of consumer products maker Kenvue, months after the activist investor criticized lackluster performance in a core segment.
Starboard’s nominees, include its chief investment officer Jeffrey Smith, a regulatory filing showed on Wednesday.
Smith has previously said there is an opportunity to improve revenue growth and margins at Kenvue’s skin health and beauty segment, which houses brands such as Neutrogena and Aveeno.
Sales in the segment have shown year-over-year declines for the past five quarters.
“We believe stockholders deserve a Board that demands accountability and is committed to taking proactive measures,” the hedge fund said in the filing.
Starboard, along with its affiliates, owns about 22 million shares, roughly a 1.1% stake, in Kenvue.
The hedge fund said it had initially reached out to Kenvue in December with its nominations, and has connected several times with the company’s board chair Larry Merlo since then to discuss the same.
Kenvue, spun off from Johnson & Johnson in 2023, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Starboard’s other nominees, first disclosed in the filing on Wednesday, are former Bed Bath & Beyond executive Michelle Millstone-Shroff, Cara Robinson and Bindu Shah. Robinson and Shah have previously held executive roles at Unilever and Sephora, respectively.
Kenvue’s current board has 11 members, each of whose term is set to expire at the company’s annual meeting later this year. The hedge fund said it will support the election of seven of Kenvue’s nominees.
As of last close, shares of the company were down over 20% since their debut on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2023. Kenvue has a market value of $39.90 billion.
The company is expected to report fourth-quarter and full-year results on Thursday.
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Sneha S K in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
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