Carl

Activist investor Carl Icahn announced April 30 after the close of trading that he added another 4.2 million shares of Nuance Communications NUAN.q since first taking a position in March. He now owns more than 10% of the company.

Faut-il suivre le vieux gourou?

Icahn's Been Busy
Sporting a beard on the front cover of the April 15 issue of Forbes magazine, 77-year-old Carl Icahn was looking pretty contented--and why wouldn't he be? Forbes estimates that Icahn's net worth since March 2009 has more than doubled to $20 billion. In the last year alone he's been an agent of change taking as many as 14 companies to task with his self-styled investor activism. His $882 million (1500%) in unrealized gains from Netflix NFLX.q over just seven months would have anyone smiling from ear to ear. The fact that he's made a $707 million bet that Nuance can do better must be a relief to long-time shareholders of the speech recognition software maker.

What Happens Next?
With Icahn's additional purchases in April, he's now the second largest Nuance shareholder behind Warburg Pincus, which owned 14.6% of its outstanding shares at the end of December. Speculation suggests Icahn will force the sale of the company or possibly even buy it for himself. Icahn Enterprises L.P.  IEP.nyse has a majority interest in nine companies in nine different industries; Nuance would be its 10th majority-owned company in 10 different industries. From that perspective I think Icahn's interest in the company makes a lot of sense. However, IEP hasn't acquired 100% of any business since it paid $335 million for PSC Metals in November 2007. Given this reality, it's more likely that Icahn will ultimately force a sale at a significant premium. 
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Nuance Communications is a multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA, that provides speech and imaging applications. Current business products focus on server & embedded speech recognition, telephone call steering systems, automated telephone directoryservices, medical transcription software & systems, optical character recognition software, and desktop imaging software. The company also maintains a small division which does software and system development for military and government agencies. In October 2011, unconfirmed research suggested that its servers power Apple'siPhone 4S Siri voice recognition application.