(Bloomberg) -- Shares of Lamb Weston Holdings Inc. surged on Friday after activist investor Jana Partners said it had built up a 5% stake in the company in a bid to push the french-fry supplier to explore strategic alternatives.

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The stock rose as much as 11% in New York trading, the most intraday in a year. The shares had declined 34% this year through Thursday’s close, which ranks among the worst performances on the S&P 500 Index.

Jana said it believes Lamb Weston shares are undervalued and called out “self-inflected missteps that have led to underperformance for shareholders,” according to a filing. It floated a review of strategic alternatives, as well as board composition and management changes.

It also highlighted a laundry-list of issues it planned to discuss with the board including share repurchases, management compensation, capital spending and raw potato procurement.

A spokesperson for Lamb Weston said its aware of Jana’s position and that it regularly engages with shareholders to “better understand and consider their views and will continue to do so.”

Jana has acquired more than 7.1 million Lamb Weston shares at a purchase price of approximately $336 million, according to the filing.

It has partnered with Continental Grain Co. on the investment and nominated Bradley Alford, Diane Dietz, John Gainor, Timothy McLevish and Joseph Scalzo to the Lamb Weston board, the filing showed.

Jana nominated Dietz to the Freshpet Inc. board where McLevish and Scalzo are currently board directors. While Alford was a Jana nominee in 2015 to the Conagra Foods Inc. board where McLevish was also appointed alongside him.

Lamb Weston, which sells french fries to fast-food chains including McDonald’s Corp., earlier this month announced it is slashing capacity and trimming its workforce amid softer-than-expected restaurant traffic and demand for its frozen-potato products. The actions, such as permanently closing “an older, higher-cost processing facility,” are expected to help the company to “better manage our factory utilization rates and ease some of the current supply-demand imbalance in North America,” Chief Executive Officer Tom Werner said in an Oct. 1 statement.

Lamb Weston has posted two straight sales declines, with Vital Knowledge calling the company’s earnings report released in late July “disastrous.”