Shah Capital Withdraws Proxy Campaign Against Re-Election of Directors at Novavax’s 2024 Annual Meeting
May 20 2024 - 6:35AM
Shah Capital Management, Inc. (together with its affiliates, “Shah
Capital,” “we” or “our”) collectively beneficially owns ~7.9% of
the outstanding common stock of Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX)
(“Novavax” or the “Company”), making it
a top three and
largest non-index stockholder, today issued the below
statement to stockholders regarding its intended efforts at the
2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders scheduled for Thursday, June
13, 2024, 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time (the “2024 Annual Meeting”):
***
Fellow Novavax Stockholders:
As a long-term strategic investor, we have been engaging with
the board of directors of Novavax (the “Board”) for over a year in
an attempt to unlock value on behalf of all of its shareholders, so
it is heartening that our campaign has begun to deliver positive
results. We long advocated for Novavax to explore potential
strategic partnership opportunities and believe that the Company’s
recent announcement of its entry into a co-exclusive licensing
agreement with Sanofi is a long-awaited step in the right
direction.
It is unfortunate, however, that it took our campaign to
galvanize the Board into action. In our view, the Board presided
over numerous enormous strategic errors, including colossal
marketing failures in 2023-2024 season, no clear understanding of
AI technology to effectively improve vaccine research efforts both
on time and money, questionable regulatory management, and ongoing
operating losses plus the massive dilutive share issuance at low
price in 2023. It is also regrettable that the Board took so long
to execute 50%+ cost cutting in light of massive prior losses that
we asked for back in March 2023, taking them a year to follow
through on the cuts.
However, we do accept that decent progress has now at last been
made and that is why we have determined to withdraw our proxy
campaign against the re-election of directors at Novavax’s 2024
Annual Meeting. But that does not mean that our engagement is at an
end. We will continue to closely monitor the Company, including its
operations, especially marketing, as we believe significant
additional value remains to be unlocked at Novavax.
We also continue to believe that Novavax would benefit from the
addition of a stockholder representative in the boardroom, one of
the main reasons why we believe the Company ended up in such poor
shape, and it is important that this be addressed.
We also reiterate our position that Novavax must adopt an
aggressive and patient-driven sales and marketing strategy
capitalizing on numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers showing
lower efficacy and safety profile of competing vaccines.
At the heart of our campaign was our desire that Novavax’s
scientifically proven protein-based vaccine franchise play a major
role globally resulting in sustained profitable growth and we will
be watchful of their progress. We thank thousands of fellow
shareholders who supported Shah Capital in our campaign and who
shared our concerns about the direction of the Company. Together,
we have helped to deliver real change at Novavax.
Sincerely,
Shah Capital Management, Inc.
***
About Shah Capital:
Shah Capital is a global investment firm
employing a focused investment philosophy with an emphasis on
turnarounds and special situations.
Media Contacts:
Citigate Dewe RogersonShah Capital team |
shahcapital@citigatedewerogerson.com |
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