Event Driven Weekly – AIG, ARGX, CASY, CPNG, DHC, OS, SHCO, SOFI, STAA

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IPO WATCH

On January 7th, Healthpeak Properties (DOC) announced the formation and planned IPO of Janus Living, a senior housing REIT. Healthpeak will contribute its 34-community, 10,422-unit senior housing portfolio to Janus Living and will serve as its external manager. Management anticipated the Janus IPO closing in the 1H of this year. Management has also stated that part of the reasoning for this carve out was they felt the relatively small size of its senior housing portfolio as compared to the REIT’s outpatient medical and life science lab assets meant “it has been difficult for the public markets to recognize our senior housing platform’s capabilities and properly value the portfolio.”

B. Riley analyst John Massocca was out with a note the next day saying that he thinks this transaction has positive readthroughs for Diversified Healthcare Trust (DHC) whose own portfolio has a sizable senior housing component, with approximately 200 communities accounting for over 56% of their estimate for the REIT’s FY26 NOI. “Namely, if the market is positively receptive to Healthpeak isolating its operating senior housing assets in a standalone entity, we would expect it to also be receptive to positive operational achievements and further portfolio concentration by DHC in its similar properties. We see this as important for DHC, especially in light of the recent repayment of the REIT’s zero-coupon bonds at the end of FY25. This repayment means the REIT has no remaining meaningful debt maturities until 2028, and, as such, we see potential upside catalysts for DHC transitioning from being primarily tied to addressing liquidity challenges and debt maturities, to operational improvements driving NOI growth.”

C-SUITE CHANGES

Shares of Argenx (ARGX) closed the week down 6.13%. A big reason for this was because on Monday morning, it announced that Tim Van Hauwermeiren, current CEO and Co-Founder, will succeed Peter Verhaeghe as Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Board following Mr. Verhaeghe’s retirement. With Tim’s transition to Chairman, Karen Massey, the current Chief Operating Officer, will assume the role of CEO. Ms. Massey has served as COO since March 2023.

JPMorgan analyst Richard Vosser noted that while they believe there might be some disappointment given the strength of Tim’s leadership since he founded the company in 2008, they believe the market will be reassured by his continued involvement with the company as well as the caliber of the internal successor. Beyond this CEO transition, the next focus of the market is on the announcement of Q4 Vyvgart sales around the JPM Healthcare Conference, where they forecast $1,277m sales 1% ahead of consensus of $1,259m. Separately, TD Cowen analyst Yaron Werber was out on January 8th saying that their Q4 tracking survey shows continued steady Vyvgart uptake in CIDP/gMG. They expect Q4 global Vyvgart sales to be above consensus estimates driven by PFS uptake.

Another stock that got hit this week was American International Group (AIG), who announced on January 6th that Chairman and CEO Peter Zaffino intends to transition to Executive Chair and retire as CEO by mid-year. Insurance industry veteran Eric Andersen will be joining as President and CEO-elect of AIG, effective February 16th, 2026. Mr. Andersen joins AIG from Aon Corp (AON), where he most recently was a member of the Aon Executive Committee and served as a strategic advisor to the company’s President and CEO.

Wells Fargo analyst Elyse Greenspan believes this announcement should put to rest the M&A speculation around Chubb (CB) potentially putting an offer in for AIG. Per Jaguar’s internal tracker, this M&A headline came out on December 10th from Insurance Insider.

Additionally, while the timing of this news is a bit surprising given AIG recently (at the end of October) announced several transactions of their own (including Convex/Onex and EG renewal rights deal), Wells Fargo says the timing does coincide with AIG having successfully completed the IPO and monetization of the majority of its stake in CRBG and being seen as a pure play P&C company. “From here, we believe the shares could be range bound in near term as we wait for CEO transition and potentially new financial guidance (3-year financial guidance was laid out at last March’s investor day).”

INSIDER ACTION

Per Form 4 filings, shares of Casey’s General Stores (CASY) saw an insider purchase by Director Maria Moats. While the share amount of 300 could be viewed as small, the total outlay was $166,398. This marks the first insider purchase in CASY since July 1st, 2025 when Director Mike Spanos bought 200 shares for $100,636. Shares are up 18% since this July purchase. For those that do not know, Casey’s offers self-service fuel, a wide selection of grocery items and an array of freshly prepared food items across its nearly 3,000 convenience stores in the United States. What makes CASY a niche story is that approximately 2/3 of stores are still found in areas with populations of 20,000 or fewer. On January 5th, Wells Fargo analyst Edward Kelly added the stock its Q1 Tactical Ideas List. He notes that following a successful test, with final tweaks under way, early spring looks like an opportune time to add wings to its growing food offering. Given success with College Football tie-ins, March Madness seems to make sense. “To be clear, wings will be a phased rollout spanning multiple quarters, so the lift to total comps will likely be more muted in the NT, but early success on this front will provide needed visibility that comp momentum has legs.”

M&A MONITOR

In early December, SoFi Technologies (SOFI) announced a $1.5B common stock offering. The capital raises have led to more questions from investors as to what SOFI could do with the proceeds – with many asking about the potential for M&A, writes BofA analyst Mihir Bhatia. They think M&A is a possibility though they suspect any deal is likely to be smaller and more complementary than game changing. They wouldn’t be surprised to see acquisitions related to the crypto business, particularly building out SOFI’s capabilities as that has been a recent priority. “Another interesting area of investment, in our view, could be building out prediction markets and the capabilities to enable SOFI account holders to make prediction market bets in-app.”

Back on August 18th, Soho House (SHCO) announced that it had entered into definitive agreements pursuant to which an investor group led by MCR Hotels and its Chairman and CEO Tyler Morse will acquire the outstanding shares. Fast forward to this past week where shares would fall by 11.83%. This is because an 8-K filed on January 8th disclosed that MCR said it will not be able to fund its Closing Commitment in full at or prior to the currently anticipated Closing date. There are now discussions with affiliates of MCR to secure the funding. Stockholders preliminarily voted to adopt and approve the merger proposal, but the results are subject to final verification by the inspector of elections and the company will announce official results on May 4th. Interestingly, JaguarFlow picked up on two bullish trades on January 8th:

On January 6th, shareholders of STAAR Surgical (STAA) voted against its merger with Alcon (ALC). According to the 8-K filing, 34.4% of shareholder votes were in favor of the merger, while 63.0% were against (the remaining 2.6% abstained from the vote). Voter turnout was high at 87.9%. This outcome also reflects sustained opposition by STAA’s largest shareholder, Broadwood Capital (30.2%), and negative recommendations from proxy advisors. Based on public commentary by STAA’s activist, Wells Fargo analyst Simran Kaur expects there could be potential changes to leadership and key commercial priorities going forward. They also see uncertainties around STAA’s China business given near-term macroeconomic overhangs (tariffs, geopolitical uncertainty, consumer health in China) and potential longer-term headwinds (competition, ICL/refractive market growth trajectory). There is also more work to do ex-China, which has seen growth decelerate in recent quarters.

EVENT DRIVEN UPDATES

Coupang (CPNG) was discussed in the last Event Driven Weekly report on December 13th (See HERE) where we mentioned the company’s CEO resignation. On January 5th, Morgan Stanley analyst Seyon Park would issue a note highlighting how the National Assembly public hearings and the recent media headlines have not been favorable for Coupang, despite the announcement of a $1.17B customer compensation package. “With the Ministry of Science leading an intra-agency task force to investigate Coupang on multiple fronts beyond cyber security, we expect regulatory risk to remain elevated. This will likely take significant management time and focus and could potentially impede any major strategic initiatives for the near term at least. We think that regulators’ (Korea’s police agency, Personal Information Protection Commission) conclusions from the cyber security investigation, and in particular whether the breach was limited to the recovered laptop, will be a key event to monitor.”

ROLLING OFF

On January 6th, OneStream (OS) announced it entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Hg, a leading investor in software, services, and data businesses. The transaction values OS at approximately $6.4B. It was first reported on November 5th by Reuters that the company was exploring options, including a potential sale, and was working with bankers at JPMorgan. According to our internal tracker, from the close on November 5th to the close on January 9th, shares are up 17.45%.