Activist Stocks: Jana Partners Entering Beast Mode With Qualcomm

You’ve no doubt heard the news by now, Jana Partners has made a big bet on Qualcomm. Reportedly, owning over $2 billion in stock, which is still less 2% of the company. Assuming this is true, this is Jana’s biggest bets ever.  Qualcomm would make up some 19% of the fund’s portfolio.

Notice from the table above that Qualcomm overtakes Walgreens as Jana’s largest holding:

The basic idea is to split the company up, forming two separate businesses — a chip making business and a patent licensing player. We saw similar calls for Broadcom to spin out its cellular parts business back in 2013 to no avail. However, no activist got involved...