US LNG exporting giant Cheniere said it has entered into a deal to repurchase about $350 million of the company’s common shares owned by billionaire investor Carl Icahn.
Cheniere will buy the shares at a purchase price of $130.52 per unit, the closing price of the company’s common shares on June 14, 2022.
The operator of the Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi facilities said in a statement the deal is part of its $1 billion share repurchase authorization and it would fund it from the company’s cash on hand.
Cheniere expects the transaction to close no later than June 21.
Icahn exits Cheniere’s board
Pursuant to a nomination and standstill agreement entered in 2015, Cheniere agreed to give Icahn Enterprises one board seat for as long as it continued to hold at least 7,741,412 company common shares.
This transaction will result in Icahn Enterprises’ holdings in Cheniere to be under this threshold and the remaining director designee, Andrew Teno, will resign from the board of directors within two business days following the closing of the deal, according to Cheniere.
“We appreciate Carl Icahn and his board representatives for their support of Cheniere over these last almost seven years as we have become the world’s second largest LNG operator,” Cheniere’s CEO Jack Fusco said in the statement.
“Our investment in Cheniere is a shining example of IEP’s activism efforts. We were instrumental in hiring CEO Jack Fusco, who has assembled a great team and unlocked the value of a fantastic asset,” Icahn said.
“As we have said many times, when the time for activism is over, we generally take a profit on a portion of our stock. To date, we have made over $1.3 billion in realized and unrealized gains on Cheniere and, even after the sale today, we still remain sizeable owners of Cheniere stock,” he said.