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Jeff Smith’s Top 10 Activist Targets and Their Returns Compared to the S&P 500

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In this article, we discuss Jeff Smith’s Top 10 Activist Targets and Their Returns Compared to the S&P 500.

Jeff Smith is arguably the “most feared man” in corporate America, having waged some of Wall Street’s most aggressive and successful activist campaigns. Having served on more than 17 companies’ boards and chairing four underscores his reputation as one of the most successful activist investors in unlocking shareholder value. Smith has become one of the most feared activist investors at the back of Starboard Value LP, a hedge fund he founded alongside two partners in 2011. Given that the hedge fund has targeted hundreds of companies, it underscores its strategy of conducting in-depth analysis to discover stocks trading below their fair value.

In return, Starboard Value LP has always waged activist campaigns and pushed for strategic changes that could bolster the company’s value. Part of the strategy entails pushing for board seats or management changes. The hedge fund is known to agitate for the potential sale of units or the entire business in the race for shareholder value. By targeting IT giants and consumer cyclical stocks over the past ten years, Smith has more than doubled the hedge fund’s assets under management to over $5.5 billion. In addition, the average market valuation of the companies that Starboard Value LP invested in was over $45 billion, up from about $7 billion in 2020.

READ ALSO: Top 10 Growth Stocks in David Tepper’s Portfolio and Billionaire Ken Fisher’s Top 13 Growth Stock Picks.

Over that period, Starboard Value LP established a reputation for making things difficult for executives and directors who disagreed with its change requests and occasionally fired them. Nevertheless, Jeff Smith’s strategy differs greatly from the more confrontational and widely publicized campaigns of fellow activist investors Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman. Following his appointment as Darden’s chair, he and other board members worked shifts to gain a close-up look at the company. Smith learned how to make pizza at Papa John’s restaurants, which he chaired before waging an activist campaign to unlock value.

Starboard Value LP returned less than 5% for investors in 2024, underperforming its peers. The poor performance occurred during a year when corporate America saw a massive upheaval in boardrooms as activist investors fought for change and showed off their muscles like never before. In 2024, activist funds produced an average return of 11.5%. ValueAct Capital Management, a competitor of Starboard Value LP, reported a 21% increase over that time as Sachem Head Capital Management delivered roughly 22% on capitalizing on the artificial intelligence-driven run in the markets.

Amid the underperformance in 2024, Jeff Smith’s hedge fund still stands out as one of the most successful activist hedge funds. Since its inception, the hedge fund has enjoyed an average return of 25.02% on its 152 activist campaigns, outperforming the Russell 200, which averaged 13.65% over the same period. With the current economic outlook in mind, let’s dive into our list of the Top 10 Jeff Smith activist targets and analyze their returns compared to the S&P 500.

Our Methodology

We sifted through financial media reports and settled on the activist investor’s biggest campaigns. We also computed their long-term returns compared to the S&P 500 since Starboard Value LP lodged its campaigns. The campaigns are ranked in chronological order.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Jeff Smith’s Top 10 Activist Targets and Their Returns Compared to the S&P 500

10. GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY)

Position Initiated: December 2021

Value of the Stake: $800 million

Stock Return Since December 2021 to April  2025: 145.24%

S&P 500 Return Since December 2021 to April  2025: 15.74%

Number of hedge funds holding stakes: 52

GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) is a software infrastructure company that engages in the design and development of cloud-based products. It offers domain registration, web hosting and digital marketing services. Activist investor Starboard Value LP acquired a 6.5% stake worth $800 million in the company in December of 2021 on concerns that the company was undervalued.

The hedge fund started agitating for changes, including changes to the board of directors and operational changes aimed at unlocking shareholder value. In 2024, Starboard Value LP piled pressure on the management, urging it to continue moving in the right direction by setting specific and realistic growth targets. Part of the targets entails achieving a 40% growth and profitability for fiscal 2025.

Additionally, the activist hedge fund believes GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) can achieve a free cash flow of $9 per share for fiscal 2025 and $14 per share for fiscal 2026. According to Starboard Value LP managing member Peter Feld, the growth can be achieved by discrete cost savings.

9. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)

Position Initiated: October 2022

Value of the Stake: N/A

Stock Return Since October 2022 to April 2025: 73.45%

S&P 500 Return Since October 2022 to April 2025: 40.82%

Number of hedge funds holding stakes: 162

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a software application company providing customer relationship management (CRM) technology that connects companies and customers. Jeff Smith confirmed a significant stake in the enterprise software maker in October of 2022 while reiterating a considerable opportunity that needs unlocking.

The investment came at a time when Salesforce had dropped 40% for the year on the back of disappointing financial results. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was also under pressure for allegedly overspending and underperforming despite being a leader in customer relationship management software.

Amid the soaring activist pressure from Starboard Value LP and other investors, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) increased its operating margin above 40% in 2023. The improvement came with the company cutting thousands of jobs and moving up its timeline to widen the adjusted operating margin. The improvement came as Salesforce made significant changes to its management team by appointing three new board members to appease Starboard Value LP and other activist investors.

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The $250 Trillion AI Hype is Real. A few years from now, you’ll probably wish you’d bought this stock.

When Jeff Bezos said that one breakthrough technology would shape Amazon’s destiny, even Wall Street’s biggest analysts were caught off guard.

Fast forward a year and Amazon’s new CEO Andy Jassy described generative AI as a “once-in-a-lifetime” technology that is already being used across Amazon to reinvent customer experiences.

At the 8th Future Investment Initiative conference, Elon Musk predicted that by 2040 there would be at least 10 billion humanoid robots, with each priced between $20,000 and $25,000.

Do the math. According to Musk, this technology could be worth $250 trillion by 2040.

Put another way, that’s roughly equal to:

  • 175 Teslas
  • 107 Amazons
  • 140 Metas
  • 84 Googles
  • 65 Microsofts
  • And 55 Nvidias

And here’s the wild part — this $250 trillion wave isn’t tied to one company, but to an entire ecosystem of AI innovators set to reshape the global economy.

It’s a leap so massive, it could reshape how businesses, governments, and consumers operate worldwide.

Even if that $250 trillion figure sounds ambitious, major firms like PwC and McKinsey still see AI unlocking multi-trillion-dollar potential.

How could anything be worth that much?

The answer lies in a breakthrough so powerful it’s redefining how humanity works, learns, and creates.

And this breakthrough has already set off a frenzy among hedge funds and Wall Street’s top investors.

What most investors don’t realize is that one under-owned company holds the key to this $250 trillion revolution.

In fact, Verge argues this company’s supercheap AI technology should concern rivals.

Before I reveal the details, let’s talk about how some of the richest people on the planet are positioning themselves.

  • Bill Gates sees artificial intelligence as the “biggest technological advance in my lifetime,” more transformative than the internet or personal computer, capable of improving healthcare, education, and addressing climate change.
  • Larry Ellison — through Oracle, is spending billions on Nvidia chips and partnering with Cohere to embed generative AI across Oracle’s cloud and apps.
  • Warren Buffett — not known for tech hype — says this breakthrough could have a ‘hugely beneficial social impact.

When billionaires from Silicon Valley to Wall Street line up behind the same idea — you know it’s worth paying attention to.

Even as we admire what Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet, and Microsoft have built, we believe an even greater opportunity lies elsewhere…

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AI, Tariffs, Nuclear Power: One Undervalued Stock Connects ALL the Dots (Before It Explodes!)

Artificial intelligence is the greatest investment opportunity of our lifetime. The time to invest in groundbreaking AI is now, and this stock is a steal!

AI is eating the world—and the machines behind it are ravenous.

Each ChatGPT query, each model update, each robotic breakthrough consumes massive amounts of energy. In fact, AI is already pushing global power grids to the brink.

Wall Street is pouring hundreds of billions into artificial intelligence—training smarter chatbots, automating industries, and building the digital future. But there’s one urgent question few are asking:

Where will all of that energy come from?

AI is the most electricity-hungry technology ever invented. Each data center powering large language models like ChatGPT consumes as much energy as a small city. And it’s about to get worse.

Even Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, issued a stark warning:

“The future of AI depends on an energy breakthrough.”

Elon Musk was even more blunt:

“AI will run out of electricity by next year.”

As the world chases faster, smarter machines, a hidden crisis is emerging behind the scenes. Power grids are strained. Electricity prices are rising. Utilities are scrambling to expand capacity.

And that’s where the real opportunity lies…

One little-known company—almost entirely overlooked by most AI investors—could be the ultimate backdoor play. It’s not a chipmaker. It’s not a cloud platform. But it might be the most important AI stock in the US owns critical energy infrastructure assets positioned to feed the coming AI energy spike.

As demand from AI data centers explodes, this company is gearing up to profit from the most valuable commodity in the digital age: electricity.

The “Toll Booth” Operator of the AI Energy Boom

  • It owns critical nuclear energy infrastructure assets, positioning it at the heart of America’s next-generation power strategy.
  • It’s one of the only global companies capable of executing large-scale, complex EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) projects across oil, gas, renewable fuels, and industrial infrastructure.
  • It plays a pivotal role in U.S. LNG exportation—a sector about to explode under President Trump’s renewed “America First” energy doctrine.

Trump has made it clear: Europe and U.S. allies must buy American LNG.

And our company sits in the toll booth—collecting fees on every drop exported.

But that’s not all…

As Trump’s proposed tariffs push American manufacturers to bring their operations back home, this company will be first in line to rebuild, retrofit, and reengineer those facilities.

AI. Energy. Tariffs. Onshoring. This One Company Ties It All Together.

While the world is distracted by flashy AI tickers, a few smart investors are quietly scooping up shares of the one company powering it all from behind the scenes.

AI needs energy. Energy needs infrastructure.

And infrastructure needs a builder with experience, scale, and execution.

This company has its finger in every pie—and Wall Street is just starting to notice.

Wall Street is noticing this company also because it is quietly riding all of these tailwinds—without the sky-high valuation.

While most energy and utility firms are buried under mountains of debt and coughing up hefty interest payments just to appease bondholders…

This company is completely debt-free.

In fact, it’s sitting on a war chest of cash—equal to nearly one-third of its entire market cap.

It also owns a huge equity stake in another red-hot AI play, giving investors indirect exposure to multiple AI growth engines without paying a premium.

And here’s what the smart money has started whispering…

The Hedge Fund Secret That’s Starting to Leak Out

This stock is so off-the-radar, so absurdly undervalued, that some of the most secretive hedge fund managers in the world have begun pitching it at closed-door investment summits.

They’re sharing it quietly, away from the cameras, to rooms full of ultra-wealthy clients.

Why? Because excluding cash and investments, this company is trading at less than 7 times earnings.

And that’s for a business tied to:

  • The AI infrastructure supercycle
  • The onshoring boom driven by Trump-era tariffs
  • A surge in U.S. LNG exports
  • And a unique footprint in nuclear energy—the future of clean, reliable power

You simply won’t find another AI and energy stock this cheap… with this much upside.

This isn’t a hype stock. It’s not riding on hope.

It’s delivering real cash flows, owns critical infrastructure, and holds stakes in other major growth stories.

This is your chance to get in before the rockets take off!

Disruption is the New Name of the Game: Let’s face it, complacency breeds stagnation.

AI is the ultimate disruptor, and it’s shaking the foundations of traditional industries.

The companies that embrace AI will thrive, while the dinosaurs clinging to outdated methods will be left in the dust.

As an investor, you want to be on the side of the winners, and AI is the winning ticket.

The Talent Pool is Overflowing: The world’s brightest minds are flocking to AI.

From computer scientists to mathematicians, the next generation of innovators is pouring its energy into this field.

This influx of talent guarantees a constant stream of groundbreaking ideas and rapid advancements.

By investing in AI, you’re essentially backing the future.

The future is powered by artificial intelligence, and the time to invest is NOW.

Don’t be a spectator in this technological revolution.

Dive into the AI gold rush and watch your portfolio soar alongside the brightest minds of our generation.

This isn’t just about making money – it’s about being part of the future.

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Space is Limited! Only 1000 spots are available for this exclusive offer. Don’t let this chance slip away – subscribe to our Premium Readership Newsletter today and unlock the potential for a life-changing investment.

Here’s what to do next:

1. Head over to our website and subscribe to our Premium Readership Newsletter for just $9.99.

2. Enjoy a month of ad-free browsing, exclusive access to our in-depth report on the Trump tariff and nuclear energy company as well as the revolutionary AI-robotics company, and the upcoming issues of our Premium Readership Newsletter.

3. Sit back, relax, and know that you’re backed by our ironclad 30-day money-back guarantee.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity! Subscribe now and take control of your AI investment future!


No worries about auto-renewals! Our 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee applies whether you’re joining us for the first time or renewing your subscription a month later!