Starboard's Smith Unveils Solstice Stake, Calls It 'Stupid Cheap' and Presses for $100 Million in Cuts

An activist with a reputation for forcing the issue has put Solstice on the clock — publicly, on stage, and with a number attached.

Starboard Value Chief Executive Jeff Smith unveiled a new stake in Solstice Advanced Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOLS) on Tuesday at the 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York, arguing the Honeywell spin-off is undervalued and needs someone to hold management accountable for boosting share price performance. He pressed management to focus on its core refrigerants and nuclear businesses and cut roughly $100 million in costs across the company. Solstice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The size of the stake itself was not disclosed on Tuesday, and no stake percentage was given.

"Stupid cheap" — and a question of faith in management

Smith called Solstice "stupid cheap" and said it has "great businesses but is undervalued." He blamed the discount on the market losing faith in management's ability to get the best out of its core businesses — a diagnosis that makes this campaign about execution and accountability, not about the quality of the assets themselves. Smith did not ask for patience. Someone needs to hold management accountable for boosting share-price performance, he argued, putting the burden squarely on the people running the company a year after its separation from Honeywell.

Focus on refrigerants and nuclear, cut roughly $100 million

The prescription was specific. To improve performance, management should focus on its core refrigerants and nuclear businesses and cut roughly $100 million in costs across the company, Smith said. The on-record remarks landed hours after Reuters, summarizing a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the matter, said Starboard had built the stake and wanted Solstice to focus on execution in its core businesses and cut roughly $100 million in corporate overhead. Secondary summaries of the FT reporting put the stake at several hundred million dollars and Starboard among Solstice's 10 largest shareholders — details TickerGrove attributes to that FT reporting, not to any disclosure by Starboard or Solstice on Tuesday. Investors liked the pressure: shares of Solstice were up about 4% to $62.85 in pre-market trading following FT's report, according to TipRanks' summary of TheFly, against a market value of about $9.6 billion at Monday's close.

A spin-off still living with the failed Element deal

Solstice was spun out of Honeywell a year ago and initially gained strongly, but the shares are down roughly 30% since closing at an all-time high on June 30, in part after failing to recover from the aborted $14.5 billion cash-and-stock deal to buy Element Solutions. The deal was announced on July 6 and canceled on August 27 after shareholder feedback on both sides. That sequence is the backdrop to Smith's faith argument: a large, shareholder-questioned acquisition, abandoned within weeks, is exactly the kind of capital-allocation episode that invites an activist to demand a narrower focus on the businesses already owned.

The core businesses in numbers

The businesses Smith wants at the center are already the company's engine. Solstice's own second-quarter 2026 results show Refrigerants & Applied Solutions net sales were $850 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 12% from a year earlier, while nuclear sales rose 27% to $125 million in the same quarter. In other words, the refrigerants and nuclear operations Starboard wants management to prioritize are not turnaround projects — they are the growing core whose performance, in Smith's telling, the market is failing to credit because it doubts the team running them.

Accountability is now the test

What to watch is whether Solstice answers with its own cost and focus plan — a public response to the roughly $100 million figure, any board or engagement disclosure, and whether the company defends the broader portfolio Smith wants de-emphasized. No board demand was unveiled on Tuesday, and Solstice had not responded when Reuters sought comment. At the same summit, Smith also discussed a separate Starboard position, Knife River, calling it "a very attractive acquisition target" — a reminder that Solstice is one front in a busy activist season, not the only one.