On Thursday, Starboard Value LP, a significant shareholder of Pfizer Inc. PFE, issued a letter to the company’s Board of Directors.
Starboard Value said they had scheduled a meeting with CEO Albert Bourla, Shantanu Narayen, and potentially other Board members on October 16. They plan to share their perspectives and discuss Pfizer’s future direction.
The letter highlights recent press reports that Starboard reached out to the company’s former CEO, Ian Read, and former CFO, Frank D’Amelio, as part of their due diligence process.
Both Mr. Read and Mr. D’Amelio expressed concerns regarding Pfizer’s current trajectory. As former executives and significant individual shareholders with a strong understanding of Pfizer’s stakeholders, they conveyed a shared desire for the company to pursue a more promising course and offered assistance.
The letter states that interaction with the former executives has been limited to this, which aligns with publicly available information.
The letter adds that individuals within Pfizer or their representatives have allegedly contacted Mr. Read and Mr. D’Amelio, threatening legal action, the recovery of prior compensation, and the cancellation of unvested performance stock units unless they publicly support the current CEO.
The shareholder urges the Board to establish a special committee of impartial members to investigate the matter, determine who authorized such actions, and hold the responsible parties accountable.
Concurrently, Pfizer released topline results from the final prespecified overall survival (OS) analysis of the TALAPRO-2 study of Talzenna (talazoparib) in combination with Xtandi (enzalutamide) in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).
Results showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in the final OS in all-comers (cohort 1) and in patients with homologous recombination repair (HRR) gene-mutated mCRPC (cohort 2) compared to Xtandi alone.
At the time of the final analysis, the clinically meaningful improvement in radiographic progression free survival (rPFS) was maintained in both cohorts from the prior primary analysis previously reported and published in The Lancet.
The FDA approved Talzenna in combination with Xtandi for adult patients with HRR gene-mutated mCRPC in June 2023.
The European Commission also approved the combination in January 2024 for adult patients with mCRPC whose chemotherapy is not clinically indicated.
Price Action: PFE stock is down 1.47% at $29.75 at last check Thursday.
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