Novavax shareholder Shah Capital withdraws campaign against director re-election

Novavax (NVAX) shareholder Shah Capital collectively beneficially owns ~7.9% of the outstanding common stock of Novavax, making it a top three and largest non-index stockholder, issued a statement to stockholders regarding its intended efforts at the 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders Thursday, June 13. Highlights of the statement include: “…we have been engaging with the board of directors of Novavax 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 (SNY) is a long-awaited step in the right direction…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…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…We will continue to closely monitor the company, including its operations, especially marketing…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.”