Icahn: I Believe It'll All Work Out With Freeport-McMoRan

• Freeport-McMoRan Inc FCX’s stock is starting to recuperate.
• Over the past year, it lost more than 75 percent of its value, but has rebounded more than 34 percent in the past five trading sessions. On Wednesday, the stock rose 9.97 percent.
• In a post published Wednesday, Carl Icahn assured he believes everything will work out with the natural resource company’s Board of Directors “to enhance value.”

“We have had a number of contacts with representatives of Freeport over the past few weeks and commend the board for adopting a number of our recommendations,” Icahn said in the statement. Some of the recommendations include trimming the number of directors in the Board to 11, providing his firm with two representatives on the Board, and allowing for representation on the Board of Freeport’s oil and gas subsidiary.

Icahn and his team also think that Freeport shareholder will mostly benefit from their agreement, “which restricts the ability of the company to implement a poison pill” and allows Icahn Capital representatives to resign from the board at any time, free of restrictions.

“To preempt criticism that we were willing to accept only a small minority position on the board,” Icahn continued, “I should point out that in many of the situations just over the last few years, where we accepted only small minority positions, shareholder value has been greatly enhanced.”

A few examples are:

• Forest Laboratories, Inc. FRX
• Hain Celestial Group Inc HAIN
• Hologic, Inc. HOLX
• Mentor Graphics Corp MENT
• Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. TTWO
• Herbalife Ltd. HLF
• eBay Inc EBAY

“I hope and believe that we will work with Freeport’s board to enhance value as we have done with so many others in the past,” Icahn concluded.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.