Activist Holdings Landec (LNDC) Legion Partners reported a stake in the fruit and vegetable and biomaterials firm of 1,501,545 shares. That figure accounts for the addition of 381,554 shares from Nov. 21, 2019, to Jan. 8, 2020, at prices ranging from $9.60 to $11 apiece, giving Legion a nearly 5.2% interest in Landec. Legion noted that it made the investment because Landec’s current stock price is much lower than its intrinsic value.
Legion believes that Landec “trades at a significant discount to the sum of its parts,” as the combination of food and pharmaceutical-drug development is “an odd combination…that will never achieve full and fair value.” As such, Legion believes that the Curation Foods unit should be “optimized and divested” to drive shareholder value closer to what Legion sees as fair.