NEW YORK, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Activist Starboard Value,

one of the first investors to publicly push Salesforce ( CRM )

to make changes three years ago, increased its stake in the U.S.

software company by almost 50% in the second quarter, according

to a regulatory filing on Thursday.

The hedge fund reported owning 1.3 million shares in

Salesforce ( CRM ) on June 30, compared with 849,679 shares at the end

of the first quarter when it boosted its stake by almost 52%.

The move comes as the company's stock price has lost nearly

30% since January and is off nearly 9% over the last 12 months.

Salesforce ( CRM ), which has a market value of $223 billion, came

under intense pressure from a handful of activist investors in

late 2022 and early 2023. But many who publicly pushed for

changes cut their stakes or exited completely by the middle of

2023 after the company reported better results, added a new

director to the board and made other changes.

Now the pressure may be increasing again with Starboard,

which is known to revisit earlier investments if the company is

seen as backsliding on promises, loading up on the stock.

While Salesforce's ( CRM ) stock price gained nearly 100% in 2023,

Starboard's chief executive, Jeffrey Smith, said late last year

that the company still had room to become more efficient and

profitable.

A Starboard spokesperson could not be reached for comment on

Thursday.

The firm also increased its holding in drugmaker Pfizer ( PFE )

by 10.5% to 8.5 million shares, less than a year after

unveiling a $1 billion stake in the company and pushing it to

improve performance.

At Autodesk ( ADSK ), where the hedge fund settled its fight

with the software design company in April, Starboard cut its

stake by nearly 27%, the filing shows.

While Thursday's filing is backward-looking, the so-called

13F filings, which detail what U.S. stocks a fund manager owned

at the end of the previous quarter, are closely watched for

possible investment trends.