Activist investor Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) reported Tuesday that he trimmed his position in Nuance Communications (NUAN, Financial) by 12.77%, and now holds 30,068,833 shares, or 9.88% of the company.
Icahn sold 4,400,000 shares of the company for $20 per share. Nuance provides voice and language solutions for businesses. The stock has appreciated 41% over the past year and traded at $19.63 as of Thursday afternoon.
Prior to this on March 10, Nuance paid Icahn $19 per share to buy back 26.3 million shares, and two members of Icahn’s investing team stepped down from their positions as directors at Nuance. Over the past year, the stock has appreciated 36%, but the company recently posted losses of 4 cents per share in the first quarter of 2016. Lack of improvement in the company’s earnings may be one reason why Icahn is trimming his holding.
Icahn initiated the holding in the first quarter of 2013, accumulating more than 60.7 million shares by the fourth quarter of that year. Nuance is currently the seventh-largest holding in the portfolio, comprising 4.11% of the portfolio.
In October 2013, Nuance named Carl’s son Brett Icahn and David Schechter, who manage the Sargon portfolio at Icahn Enterprises, to the board of directors. This was done after Nuance had reported three consecutive quarters in the red and to avoid a Proxy fight for control of the company.
The company is a leader in speech recognition technology that is used in iPhones as well as customer service calls. As a leading guru shareholder of Apple (AAPL, Financial) with more than 45.7 million shares, Icahn’s purchase of Nuance made sense as an Apple supplier.
Other gurus who hold stakes in Nuance include PRIMECAP Management (Trades, Portfolio) with 4.58% of shares outstanding, Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio) of Renaissance Technologies and Pioneer Investments (Trades, Portfolio).
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