↑ Read the latest from the desks · fresh intelligence, published daily✦Quiet reading✦No ads, ever✦Ad-free articles read by humans today …↑✦Boards engagement today … people · … AI✦Corporate brand & media services✦Made in Virginia Beach since 1997✦
Starboard monetized software gains, rotated **$850M+** into auto retail and frozen foods where margin leverage is clearer than in cloud.
$850 million
at year-end—and exited Autodesk during the first quarter
$155
The fund disclosed ownership of roughly
3.1 million shares
in its prior filing
$274
implying Starboard harvested a
Starboard Value liquidated its entire Salesforce position—worth approximately $850 million at year-end—and exited Autodesk during the first quarter, according to a 13F filing disclosed Friday. The activist fund simultaneously opened new stakes in CarMax and Lamb Weston, signaling a tactical rotation from high-multiple software to operational-turnaround plays in retail and consumer staples.
The Salesforce exit closes a position Starboard built beginning in Q3 2022, when shares traded near $155. The fund disclosed ownership of roughly 3.1 million shares in its prior filing. Salesforce closed Q1 at $274, implying Starboard harvested a 76% gain before the stock's recent compression. The Autodesk exit follows a similar pattern: Starboard entered in early 2023, pressured management on margin expansion, and left after shares climbed from $195 to $265. Both moves conform to Starboard's stated discipline of exiting positions within 18 to 24 months once operational targets are met or momentum stalls.
The new CarMax position matters because it marks Starboard's first meaningful auto-retail exposure since the fund's 2019 Darden campaign. CarMax trades at 0.4x sales and 9x forward earnings, depressed by elevated wholesale inventory costs and a 22% year-over-year decline in used-vehicle unit sales. Starboard's entry price likely averaged near $68, below the stock's $82 five-year median multiple. The Lamb Weston stake is more opaque but fits the fund's pattern of targeting mid-cap industrials with margin headroom. Lamb Weston's EBITDA margins compressed 340 basis points year-over-year to 21.7% as potato costs spiked and restaurant traffic softened. The stock trades at 11.2x EBITDA, a 15% discount to its three-year average.
Allocators tracking activist capital flows should note that Starboard's software exits predate recent compression in cloud-infrastructure multiples but align with a broader hedge-fund rotation out of growth-duration exposure. Salesforce's forward revenue multiple contracted from 6.2x in January to 5.4x by March 31, and Autodesk's multiple fell from 12.1x to 10.8x over the same window. Starboard's pivot into CarMax and Lamb Weston suggests the fund is hunting margin-expansion narratives in sectors where input-cost normalization and operational leverage are clearer than in software, where revenue growth is decelerating and margin gains are priced in.
Watch for Starboard to file Schedule 13Ds on CarMax or Lamb Weston within 60 days if either position exceeds 5% of shares outstanding. CarMax's $10.2 billion market cap implies a 5% stake would require roughly $510 million, well within Starboard's deployment capacity given the Salesforce liquidation. Lamb Weston's $9.8 billion cap sets a similar threshold. Also monitor upcoming earnings calls: CarMax reports Q1 results on June 20, and Lamb Weston's fiscal Q4 is scheduled for July 17. Any Starboard board-representation demands or margin-improvement proposals would likely surface in proxy filings between now and early September.
Starboard's 13F now shows 18 positions totaling approximately $3.2 billion in disclosed long equity, down from 21 positions and $3.6 billion at year-end. The concentration increase—top five holdings now represent 62% of the book versus 54% prior—indicates the fund is tightening conviction as it rotates capital from realized gains into new campaigns.
Branded by POPS4 · proof in 60 seconds
For the principal
Starboard's exit timing on Salesforce and Autodesk before multiple compression suggests discipline worth mirroring in your own growth-duration exposure.
For the operator
Monitor CarMax and Lamb Weston for Schedule 13D filings within sixty days; any Starboard board push would clarify the operational-improvement thesis.
For the house
We hold no named-account exposure to CarMax or Lamb Weston; evaluate co-investment if Starboard files activist intent and margin targets become public.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.