(Reuters) – An activist investor who tried to take control of the board at online appliance retailer 1847 Goedeker Inc a few months ago made a rare public apology for having ignored a settlement agreement that he and the company had reached.
David Kanen, whose Kanen Wealth Management owns 5.64% of the St. Louis headquartered company, said in a regulatory filing late Friday that he had sent a note to the board chairman “apologizing for comments that appeared in a story published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.”
In the filing, Kanen added that “he is pleased to have reached an amicable agreement with the Issuer, is supportive of
CEO Albert Fouerti” and wishes the company success.
A day earlier Kanen broke the accord the two sides had reached when he spoke to the newspaper. According to the published article, Kanen said “the company let him pick two board members from a pool of candidates assembled in an ongoing ‘refresh’ process.” He also told the newspaper that he “got the biggest thing he wanted in August,” when Albert Fouerti became chief executive officer, replacing Doug Moore.
Kanen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kanen had asked for a board seat for himself when he launched the fight at the company, criticizing its financial performance. He has criticized a number of companies, including Build-a-Bear Workshop.
Settlement agreements are always carefully negotiated and traditionally neither side is permitted to make any public comments, much less give insight into how the decisions were reached.
Since January, Goedeker’s stock price has dropped 63% but it caught the attention of investors on Reddit a few months ago when the stock price perked up and the company’s valuation briefly surged to around $1.6 billion before dropping back to roughly $334 million.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
