comScore’s (Reston, VA) late financial reporting is encouraging a prominent corporate shareholder to try and force the company into calling an annual stockholders’ meeting.
According to The Washington Post, activist hedge fund Starboard Value (New York, NY), which holds about 4.9% of comScore’s stock, filed suit against comScore to force the meeting. In its suit, Starboard alleges that comScore has neglected to hold an annual shareholders’ meeting for two years.
comScore previously stated that its delay in filing financial information was due to an ongoing re-evaluation of “non-monetary revenue.” Repercussions of this situation included delisting by the Nasdaq stock exchange for failure to file regular documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission.After comScore’s 2016 merger with Rentrak, comScore attempted to orient itself toward becoming an alternative provider of TV ratings information. It had recent success with Sinclair Broadcast Group (Hunt Valley, MD), which dropped Nielsen and opted to use comScore for discerning its television ratings.
comScore’s absence of official 2016 revenues forced RFL Communications to bypass it in our 2016 RFL Global Top 50 Research Organizations listing. It was #17 on our 2015 list.
The pressure from Starboard Value imposes new financial pressure on comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni, Chairman Joan M. Lewis and CFO David Chemerow.
