HPE has signed a one-year agreement with Elliott Management in which the activist investor will receive one and maybe two seats on the company’s board. HPE’s stock has declined more than 5% this year, putting pressure on CEO Antonio Neri to turn the company around. The deal leaves open the door to further management changes at HPE or spinning off parts of the company.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has reached a settlement with Elliott Management in which the activist investor group will receive one and possibly two seats on the board, and its appointee will also chair a new subcommittee of the board that will explore strategic options for the company.
Notably, the agreement leaves open the door to the possibility of CEO Antonio Neri losing his job, or breaking up HPE, with parts of it sold to other investors. The danger for Neri: Since 2022, Elliott has ousted 14 CEOs at companies where it got involved.
HPE’s stock was down 0.32% on Wednesday, and has lost 5.75% year-to-date. The S&P 500, by contrast, is up 6% over the same period.
The changes came after Elliott took a $1.5 billion stake in HPE in April and then approached the company, largely to complain about the stock’s underperformance over the years.
The new board member, chosen by Elliott, is Robert Calderoni, who has 30 years of experience in the tech sector and is currently chairman at KLA Corp.
Pat Russo, chair of the HPE board, said in a statement, “We are pleased to welcome Bob to our Board. His perspectives and experiences will complement those of our existing directors, and I look forward to collaborating closely with him as we work together to drive increasing value for our shareholders.”
In the same statement, Jason Genrich, partner and senior portfolio manager at Elliott, said, “We appreciate the positive dialogue we have had with HPE’s Board and see substantial value ahead. We believe Bob’s appointment to the Board and his leadership of the new Strategy Committee will help HPE identify meaningful operational and strategic opportunities for shareholder value creation.”
Neri was not quoted in HPE’s press release. The company declined to comment beyond its public disclosures.
HPE’s new Strategy Committee “will assess the strategies of HPE’s businesses and identify opportunities for additional value creation,” the company said in a statement.
Notably, statements from both Elliott and HPE mentioned “value creation” and “increasing value,” respectively. That is likely a hint that Elliott’s next move will hinge on whether Neri can make HPE stock go up. He has one year to do it—Elliott has the right to add another board member if it is still unhappy by that deadline.
As Fortune previously reported, Elliott and Calderoni are likely to be looking closely at execution issues within HPE. The company failed to impress investors in Q1 when it was forced to disclose it had screwed up the pricing of its own products, and the company generates far less revenue per employee than peers such as Cisco or Dell.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
