Activist hedge fund firm JANA Partners, which in the past has engaged in campaigns to force change at companies including Whole Foods and Frontier Communications, recorded a 31% gain for 2023, according to a report by Reuters.
The report cites an investor in the fund as revealing the Benchmark Series A fund’s double-digit gain for the year, which comes on the back of a small loss in 2022 and marks the fourth time in five years the fund has outperformed the S&P 500.
Campaigns at Freshpet, where four new directors were added to the company’s board, and investment in software company New Relic, which was sold to a private equity investor after JANA joined the board, helped boost returns. The firm is also currently pressing for a review of operations and options at broadband provider Frontier Communications, including a potential sale of the business.
JANA, which has focused exclusively on activism since closing its event-driven funds in 2019, looks to partner with company executives in a bid to drive returns and is known for offering guidance and suggestions to target companies even if it has no board representation.
Over the past five years, the firm’s Benchmark fund returned an average 21.5% annual return, ahead of the annualised returns of both the S&P 500 (15.7%) and the Russell 2000 (10%).
