Shares of Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK) are up over 5 per cent in pre-open Monday after the WSJ informed that the New York-based Starboard Value holds a near-5 per cent stake in the software company. Starboard is reportedly pushing Splunk’s board to make new changes. New actions aim at uplifting Splunk’s stock price, which is down almost 70 per cent from the 2020 high.

Starboard often picks underperforming software companies with room for operational and margin improvements. It wouldn’t be surprising that Starboard also sees Splunk as a solid takeover target. On Friday, the company’s market capitalization closing price was just under USD 11.5 billion.

According to the reports, Earlier this year, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) bid over USD 20 billion for Splunk, Shortly afterwards, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman claimed that it had a 7.5 per cent stake in Splunk, an involvement which resulted in one of the company’s partners earning a board seat at Splunk.

In 2021, the private equity giant Silver Lake invested around USD 1 billion in Splunk to fund the company’s transformation from a traditional software-licensing arrangement to a cloud-based subscription model. More information about Starboard’s involvement is expected to be available this week when Starboard founder and CEO Jeff Smith appears at a 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit.