Starboard Value Sells Majority of Its Stake In Unwired Planet Inc. (UPIP) to MAST Capital Management

The patent licensing company has had numerous executives in charge over the last four years and is now hoping that its freshly-appointed CEO, Boris Teksler, will be the one to increase shareholder value. It is believed that Boris Teksler, who had previously served as head of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Patent Licensing and Strategy, will bring more dynamism in the company. Considering that the newly-appointed CEO is to be paid an annual salary of $1 million and receive options that represent 4.5% of the company’s equity if exercised, it is quite clear that Boris Teksler is expected to deliver significant results. Unwired Planet struck a major deal with Ericsson in 2013 through which the patent licensing company acquired a few thousand patents from the Swedish telecoms giant in exchange for a portion of future royalties. Therefore, Unwired Planet owns a massive amount of assets that could potentially generate substantial licensing revenues in the future. However, there is a high number of pending court cases in the United States and abroad, which hinder the revenue potential of the company. As a result, everyone expects that Boris Teksler will inject new energy and will come up with new approaches of how to realize the value of the company’s intellectual property assets.

Interestingly, MAST Capital has been building a stake in Unwired Planet for the last couple of months and its transaction with Starboard is not the first one. In May, Derek C. Schrier’s Indaba Capital Management agreed to sell to MAST a total of 5.50 million shares at a price of $0.88 per unit. Following the sale, Indaba owns an activist stake that contains 6.57 million shares of Unwired Planet, which represent 5.85% of the company. Indaba has engaged in communication with the company’s management and the board of directors in the past and last year appointed a director to the Board. Another shareholder of Unwired Planet is Mark Kingdon’s Kingdon Capital, which owns 6.54 million shares as of the end of March.

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