Caddis Capital, the second-largest shareholder in Fermi Inc., has declared its support for the company’s current board as former chief executive officer Toby Neugebauer seeks to regain influence through a shareholder meeting. The investment firm, which holds a 9.3% stake in the data-center developer, issued its position in a company statement cited in a Bloomberg report.
In that statement, Griffin Perry, managing partner at Caddis, argued that Fermi’s market valuation understates the strength of its underlying assets. Perry warned that selling the company at prevailing prices would deprive investors of meaningful value created within the business, and he expressed confidence in the ability of the existing board to carry forward the company’s strategy and improve prospects.
Neugebauer is pursuing a special shareholder meeting scheduled for May 29 that would expand the size of Fermi’s board and, if successful, would allow him to install himself and several additional directors. According to data cited in the same report, a trust linked to Neugebauer’s family holds roughly 15% of the company’s shares, making it the largest single stake.
Fermi’s management responded last week by declaring Neugebauer’s call for the meeting invalid and advising shareholders to disregard his consent solicitation. The company’s public position aligns with Caddis’s statement opposing both attempts to appoint new directors through the meeting and any effort to force a sale at current market levels.
The contest highlights a governance battle at a developer focused on data-center assets, with a significant shareholder split between the largest holder, via a family trust, and the firm that owns the next-largest stake. Caddis’s support for the sitting board underscores shareholder resistance to what it views as a premature sale that would not reflect the company’s intrinsic asset strength.
At present, the dispute rests on the competing claims and actions: Neugebauer’s petition to expand and retake the board at a May 29 meeting, and the company’s and Caddis’s pushback arguing for the current directors and against an immediate sale at market prices.