activist investor starboard value lp has a sizable stake in splunk inc and plans to push the software maker to take action to boost its stock price according to people familiar with the matter starboard’s stake is just under 5 the people said the hedge fund often targets software companies that could benefit from operational and margin improvements or be attractive takeover targets starboard founder and chief executive officer jeff smith is appearing at an activistinvesting conference the 13d monitor activepassive investor summit tuesday and is expected to detail the fund’s thesis then the people said splunk splk  founded in 2003 makes software used by companies’ informationtechnology and security operations to monitor threats and analyze data it has a market value of around 114 billion after the shares dropped nearly 40 this year amid a broader selloff of technology stocks in late march its market value was nearly 24 billion and at the peak in september 2020 was above 35 billion as the pandemic stoked demand for cloud computing an expanded version of this report appears on wsjcom want to get ahead pick the right company