Alistair Berg | Digitalvision | Getty ImagesCompany: Pitney Bowes (PBI)Business: Pitney Bowes is a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services to businesses, including more than 90% of the Fortune 500, retailers and government clients around the world. It operates through three business segments: (i) Global Ecommerce, (ii) Presort Services and (iii) SendTech Solutions.Stock Market Value: $666M ($3.83 per share)related investing newsActivist: Hestia Capital PartnersPercentage Ownership: 6.90%Average Cost: $3.59Activist Commentary: Hestia is not an activist investor. Rather, the firm is a deep value investor that will use activism as a last resort. Kurtis Wolf, managing member and chief investment officer of Hestia is a former strategy consultant and notably worked at Relational Investors from 2002 through 2004. The firm is experienced in business strategy and applies its business acumen to deep value and distressed companies to determine which ones have a good path forward. As a result, Hestia often invests in companies that might be misunderstood or not favored by the market, like GameStop, Best Buy and Pitney Bowes. The firm eschews biotech and commodity-driven companies. Hestia’s only prior activist engagement was in 2020, when it formed a group with Permit Capital and ran a successful proxy fight at GameStop.What’s Happening?Hestia has engaged with Pitney Bowes about enhancing the company’s capital allocation, improving operational performance and making changes to the board’s composition.Behind the ScenesPitney Bowes’ SendTech solutions business is the core enterprise that the company is generally known for: postage meters. This is a secularly declining, but not disappearing, business that generates significant cash flow. PBI expanded the SendTech division to include shipping labels, which is a growth business. The sh …
