CLSA Analyst: DuPont's Board Win Over Trian Partners Is A Terrific Outcome For Shareholders

E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co DD was upgraded to Outperform from Underperform by CLSA Americas on April 28, just a few days prior to the proxy vote between DuPont's Board and Trian Partners that took place early Wednesday in which DuPont’s Board won.

Mark Connelly from CLSA Americas was on CNBC recently to discuss how this win by DuPont’s Board would impact the stock in the future.

ISS Did A Beautiful Job

Our upgrade was actually in anticipation that Trian would struggle and so this outcome is not surprising. What ISS (Institutional Shareholder Service) did is they shook roots of the DuPont story. DuPont said that their total shareholder returns story was fantastic. They said that their cost-cutting was fantastic.

“And if you read what ISS said, they did a beautiful job of showing that if you didn’t start in 2008, when the world was practically ending for a lot of companies, the company’s performance looks absolutely lousy”

He continued, “And the cost-cutting as most of us have written, is simply not real. They are taking credit for $375 million of money that is moving from their left pocket to their right pocket, this is accounting fiction, it’s not quite fraud, but it’s accounting fiction.”

Terrific For Shareholders

Connelly was asked about his outlook for DuPont’s stock now that the company’s Board has won the proxy vote. He replied, “Ellen is on the hot seat now. She won, she put two very big names on her board to add to some credibility, ad to her credibility, add to the board’s credibility. They are going to want to see some results. She is going to have to deliver results. I think this a terrific outcome for shareholders.”