It's been a tough time for Zendesk, who has been defending himself from Jana since the end of last year, when the investor began shipping to the company, which focuses on ticketing and support services, a series of complaint letters.
Tip: see What are Hostile Takeovers
Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that reports surfaced about what Zendesk At least he's thinking about selling.
Zendesk had serious clashes with Jana when he rejected a takeover offer of 17 billion dollars in February 2022, a deal that, according to an analysis experts said, seemed to undervalue the company. There was also the matter of his $4.1 billion deal to buy Momentive Global, the makers of SurveyMonkey, a deal that Jan was not convinced.
As the investment group wrote in the first paragraph of a letter to the board in February without further introduction: “The facts could not be more obvious to us: the proposed acquisition of Zendesk, Inc. ('Zendesk' or the 'Company') of Momentive Global Inc. ("Momentive") lacks financial and strategic merit, presents substantial execution risk, and is based on highly questionable synergy and multiple pro forma business assumptions, all while appearing to be the result of an impulsive process."
Zendesk did not agree. He believed that adding Momentive and SurveyMonkey would expand the company's business in customer experience and create a path to faster revenue growth.
Regardless, Jana also announced in February that he was creating your own member list for the board of directors. March 2022, filed a notice with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. outlining his complaints regarding the nominations, and has been lobbying Zendesk to hold its annual meeting of shareholders and put to a vote once and for all the candidates of Jana.
Zendesk seemed to be working to defend himself, while Jana accused the company of "a reckless disregard for shareholder capital, an apparent willingness to resort to what Glass Lewis called 'questionable reasoning' when questioned by shareholders, and a 'ready, set and fire' objective." , as well as a history of refusing to engage with interested strategic and financial buyers for the Company,” the investor described in his SEC filing.
If reports that the company is partnering with Catalyst Partners for a possible sale are true, you may have had enough.
Interestingly, Jana has a fairly small stake in the company (less than 3%) for a company that complains so much about how it is run Zendesk, but was able to muster enough supporters to scuttle the deal with Momentive when 90% of voters lined up against the Zendesk. You might believe that based on those results, you could overcome shareholder hostility toward a full takeover.
For now, neither Zendesk ni Catalyst have confirmed their relationship, but given what has been going on with ZendeskIt wouldn't be surprising if it were true.
Investors seem to like the news, with shares rising more than 6,5% on the release of the news.
