Third Point founder Dan Loeb doesn't plan to write one of his trademark letters to FedEx's CEO any time soon. The activist investor revealed Tuesday that he owns a stake in the company and actually likes CEO Fred Smith.
Loeb said he met with Smith last week in Memphis.
"I didn't need to explain to him, because he knows how great he is," Loeb told Andrew Ross Sorkin during The New York Times' DealBook Conference. "But we had a very constructive discussion about the company, and we had some ideas and I think he disabused us of some of our notions. But life goes on. It's just part of the the process," Loeb said in the interview televised on CNBC.
Pressed whether he would try to oust Smith, Loeb replied: "Absolutely not."
FedEx stock rose more than 1 percent in early afternoon trading.
Loeb, who resigned this summer from Yahoo's board after a dispute with CEO Marissa Mayer, said he exited when it had gotten very close to his price target, allowing him to get a 100-percent return on his investment. He described the company has having "hidden value" before he came onto the board.
Loeb was also an instrumental player in hiring Mayer to the company's CEO position, but Loeb said he didn't exactly have it all planned out that way.
"We could never have dreamed that we would first of all be able to get on the board and get someone like Marissa Mayer onto the board," Loeb said, adding: "I didn't have a specific game plan, but it obviously worked out."
—By CNBC's Jeff Morganteen. Follow him on Twitter @jmorganteen.