Activist investor JANA Partners has a message for the board of The Cooper Companies Inc. (NASDAQ: COO): the problems are yours, and so is the fix. In a letter to directors on Friday, the firm called for urgent leadership and operational changes at the global medical device company, pointing to persistent financial underperformance, faulty forecasting and eroded shareholder confidence.

The market's reaction was, let's say, not exactly a vote of no confidence. Cooper stock gained Friday after JANA made the letter public.

Operational Missteps and Value Destruction

JANA's letter took direct aim at the company's recent earnings report, citing slashed growth expectations for the CooperVision segment due to inflated channel inventory. That is a polite way of saying the company built up too much product in the channel and then had to walk back its own growth story.

The firm also targeted the long and empty strategic review for CooperSurgical, noting that management aggressively repurchased company stock right before delivering these negative outcomes. Buying your own shares right before you disappoint everyone is a choice, and JANA is treating it as one.

Then there is the capital allocation scorecard. JANA highlighted that billions spent acquiring CooperSurgical failed to generate acceptable value, while approximately $750 million invested into CooperVision during 2023 and 2024 produced disappointing results. That is a lot of money for not a lot of return.

Compounding these governance concerns, the board inexplicably eliminated 2026 segment-level key performance indicators from executive incentive structures. When you remove the scoreboard, people tend to notice.

Call For Leadership Overhaul

This is not JANA's first swing at Cooper. In 2025, the firm pressed the company for a potential merger between its contact-lens division and Bausch + Lomb (NYSE: BLCO).

Those repeated operational missteps have driven the stock to a 10-year valuation low and caused severe underperformance relative to industry peers across one-, three-, and five-year periods.

Now JANA is urging the board to immediately launch an external search for a new CEO, asserting that internal candidates carry the weight of past failures. In other words: the people who got you here are probably not the people who get you out.

JANA described Cooper's problems as a "crisis of its own creation," arguing that repeated forecasting misses, poor capital allocation and strategic missteps have eroded investor confidence.

Strategic Sales and Cost Efficiencies

Alongside a CEO replacement, the firm demanded a new board chair, additional independent directors and aligned compensation metrics.

JANA also advised evaluating the sale of fertility and medical device assets, proactively engaging potential strategic buyers for CooperVision, and hiring a performance consultant to unlock cost savings within manufacturing and supply chain operations.

COO Price Action: Cooper Companies shares were up 3.02% at $55.40 at the time of publication on Friday, according to market data.