At Exxon's annual meeting Wednesday, shareholders elected at least two of the four board directors (votes are still being counted) nominated by Engine No. 1, an activist investment firm that turned up the heat on the oil major late last year. Engine No. 1, which holds a mere 0.02% stake in Exxon, has criticized the company's poor performance over the past decade. The tiny hedge fund chided management for aggressive, debt-fueled spending that has hurt returns and alleged that Exxon has no credible plan to protect value against a widening range of energy transition scenarios. To address these issues, Engine No. 1 wants Exxon to reduce oil production, invest only in projects with lower break-even prices, gradually diversify its business to prepare for a decline [...]

April 2021 marked the first monthly occupancy gain in Welltower's senior housing operating (SHO) portfolio since prior to the pandemic. With the vaccine rollout enabling many senior living communities to drop comprehensive move-in restrictions that were implemented last year to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, Welltower is hopeful that the industry has finally bottomed out.  Prior to the pandemic, the senior housing industry had never seen occupancy dip below 80%. But within just 15 months, Welltower's occupancy fell from nearly 86% to less than 74%.

Activist investor Elliott Management on May 17 published a letter to Duke Energy's board urging the utility to break itself into three separately traded companies. Elliott argued that Duke's sprawling portfolio of utilities, which spans parts of the Midwest, Florida, and the Carolinas, "has burdened shareholders with a conglomerate discount relative to the value of Duke's utility franchises." If each of these utilities was separated into its own publicly traded company, Elliott argues they would improve their operating performance due to additional management focus and achieve a higher valuation compared to Duke's consolidated structure.

AT&T on Monday announced plans to combine its WarnerMedia business (around 20% of cash flow) with rival Discovery to form a new publicly traded company. AT&T will maintain its current dividend until the transaction closes, which is expected in mid-2022. Then, management will reduce the dividend to account for the distribution of WarnerMedia to AT&T shareholders, who will own 71% of the new media company. Following the separation, management expects AT&T to have an annual dividend payout ratio of 40% to 43% on anticipated free cash flow of at least $20 billion.