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(Bloomberg) -- Phillips 66 shareholders are set to elect two of Elliott Investment Management’s nominees to its board, in the first ever US proxy vote for the activist investor.

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Shareholders are poised to elect Sigmund Cornelius and Michael Heim from Elliott’s four nominees, Elliott said in a statement Wednesday, citing a preliminary analysis of the votes. Two of Phillips 66’s nominees, Robert Pease and Nigel Hearne, were also set to be elected, Phillips 66 said in a separate statement.

Investors were poised to reject a proposal to declassify the board, which would mean all board seats come up for election in the same year. They were also on track to vote down an Elliott proposal requiring annual director resignations.

The votes are still being tallied and results aren’t final, but the preliminary count indicate a limited victory for Elliott in what has been the firm’s first full proxy contest in more than 100 campaigns targeting US companies. The provisional outcome also flies in the face of proxy advisory firm recommendations from Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co., which endorsed four and three of Elliott’s nominees, respectively.

“Phillips 66’s split election with Elliott on four board seats indicates shareholders want a measured approach to altering the company’s integrated structure,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Brett Gibbs said in a note.

Shares of Phillips 66 fell 5.5% to $114.30 at 1:03 p.m. in New York trading, giving the company a market value of about $46 billion.

While the vote was split, Elliott’s willingness to take a US company to a shareholder vote for the first time to win board seats could mark a change in how companies face off against the activist going forward. It’s also not the end of the hedge fund’s involvement in the company since it will have board influence.

Elliott has waged a multi-year campaign agitating for Phillips 66, one of the largest US fuel makers, to improve its performance and sell what the activist views as non-core assets. Earlier this year, Elliott announced it had built a $2.5 billion stake in the refiner.

Central to Elliott’s thesis, outlined in a sweeping 138-page slide deck released in April, was that Phillips 66 should focus on its core business of turning crude oil into fuel. The refiner has argued its integrated model allows it to manage risk better and provide competitive edge.