Thanks, we’ll take everything under advisement, is the response Synacor offered Friday to an open letter from two large shareholders that urged the company’s board to halt its search for a new CEO and to put the TV Everywhere and Web portal tech firm on the block.
“Synacor's Board of Directors, management team and employees remain focused on our strategic priorities to deliver sustainable growth for the benefit of all our stockholders,” Synacor said in a statement, noting that its strategic plan is to focus on four areas – mobile, with an emphasis on its Android framework; personalized and curated startpages and homescreens; TV Everywhere products, including next-gen search and discovery; and cloud ID authentication solutions that focus on auto, social login and single sign-on technologies.
JEC Capital Partners and Ratio Capital, which each hold a 4.9% stake in Synacor, issued their open letter on Thursday, claiming that “the Board’s failure of leadership” has contributed to the company’s slumping stock price, revenues and cash balance and an increase in R&D spending. They argued that Synacor would benefit shareholders by selling the company rather than trying to execute a growth strategy that would keep the company autonomous.
