Carl Icahn gets two seats on JetBlue’s board. Here’s how he may help build value

Business: JetBlue is a New York-based airline company serving over 100 destinations across the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, Canada and Europe. JetBlue was incorporated in August 1998 and commenced service on Feb. 11, 2000.

Stock Market Value: $2.36B ($6.96 per share)

Percentage Ownership:  9.91%

Average Cost: $5.57

Activist Commentary: Carl Icahn is the grandfather of shareholder activism and a true pioneer of the strategy. He is very passionate about shareholder rights and good corporate governance and will go to extreme lengths to fight incompetent boards and over compensated managers. While Carl Icahn is not slowing down at all, in October 2020, he reached an agreement with his son Brett Icahn to rejoin the firm as the eventual successor. Brett has said that he plans to employ his father’s favored approach of pushing companies to make changes designed to boost their stock prices, though he hasn’t ruled out friendly bets. This is not a departure from the strategy Carl has succeeded with for many years. He can be friendly (i.e., Apple, Netflix) or he can be confrontational (i.e., Forest Labs, Biogen). Often it depends on the response of management. Brett is an impressive activist investor in his own right, not because he is Carl’s son, but because he has demonstrated a long track record of extremely successful activist investing. Much has been written about the Sargon portfolio he co-headed at Icahn, which at one time totaled around $7 billion and included extremely profitable investments in companies such as Netflix and Apple. The Sargon portfolio significantly outperformed the market with an annualized return of 27%. However, prior to that Brett started in 2002 with…