Rick Perry Loses Board Seat at Fermi, Amarillo Data Center Company He Co-Founded
The former governor lost reelection at Fermi's annual meeting, according to a transcript obtained by The Texas Tribune. The vote totals have not been filed.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry lost reelection to the board of Fermi, the Amarillo power and data center company he co-founded, The Texas Tribune reported Friday, citing a transcript of the company’s annual meeting.
The Tribune reported that a board-endorsed proposal to extend the terms of Perry and director Jeffrey S. Stein until the 2029 annual meeting failed. Co-founder and former CEO Toby Neugebauer, who was on the shareholder call, told the Tribune that Perry did not receive the votes to keep his seat and that he did not campaign to remove him.
The Tribune could not immediately reach Perry, and Fermi did not immediately respond to its questions.
A project on Texas Tech land
Fermi is leasing about 5,000 acres from the Texas Tech University System in Amarillo for a project it calls Matador. It plans a private power network combining natural gas and nuclear with solar and batteries, which it has pitched as an answer to concerns that data centers will drain the Texas grid. Its application for a large reactor is still pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The company went public within six months and has since lost more than 90 percent of its peak share price, according to the Tribune. Fermi removed Neugebauer as CEO for cause in April. He backed down earlier this year from an effort to call a special shareholder meeting. The company announced its first tenant, TensorWave, in August.
Perry retains about 16 million shares, worth roughly $41 million, the Tribune reported, down from about half a billion dollars at the peak last fall. Perry’s son Griffin holds about 60 million shares through Caddis Holdings LP, just under 10 percent of the company. Friday’s vote leaves one co-founder on the board, Larry Kellerman.
The transcript did not include vote totals. Federal rules give the company four business days to report preliminary results to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Tribune reported, and that filing will show how shareholders voted.
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