Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"International just starting to scratch the surface. For the majority of its history, TASK has been a US client-based business primarily delivered from the Philippines. In 2016, the company opened its first operation outside the Philippines (in the US) after realizing many early-stage US companies wanted to outsource somewhere closer to home (i.e., near-shore). Since then, the company has started building a global delivery footprint in order to expand its business internationally (the main reason TASK loses business is a lack of local talent and/or specific language support). To counter this, we have seen recent expansion in Taiwan for Southeast Asian languages, in Colombia and Mexico for Spanish, and in Greece and Ireland for other European languages. As a result of these near-shore expansions, TASK’s business in EMEA, APAC, and LatAm has greatly improved, but is just starting to scratch the surface of a massive global opportunity — BTIG, Dec 20, 2021"

"My perception is that the general feeling is it's great when it works. You can really use it to generate some very unique data. It's essentially in our hands. We use it to generate data we can't generate any other way. But it might take us a year to get there, which is not something that other groups have the luxury of, certainly in pharma, they don't have the time or the money to be devoted to that kind of thing. So, this idea that it works great for very specific niche applications, I think, is very true. But, that level of frustration that people feel when they first get it, and it doesn't work in their hands—I think it's very real, and I can certainly understand why there would be customers who would send it back because can you imagine after three years, six months with this instrument that you've paid $2 million for, and you still can't get it to work? At that point, it's like, "What are we doing?" — Leading academic institution/ex-BLI scientist"

"“We see these estimates (Marcato’s) as ambitious but plausible in the context of international opportunities, potential in other categories helped by improved segmentation (to begin Spring '18), and revenue recapture from closed stores… …Cost savings initiatives over this period are more aggressive than those of management but, in our view, a fair directional assessment of opportunity. We are in directional agreement with Marcato on opportunities for financial engineering given the durable cash flow of the business (which could be helped by net working capital benefits from retail closures). While cash balances are principally overseas, the company could both borrow against these cash balances and use foreign cash to support foreign working capital needs. A revolving line of credit or the combination of revolver and term-loan could both accommodate working capital demands and be used to reduce the share count with accretive results.” — Stifel 10/19/17"

"“But for the ops disruption, we would have had a very strong profit in the first quarter. Second quarter, our guide is really strong.” — CEO Bob Jordan on CNBC; “You know, the quarter was great … We’re predicting record revenues again in the third quarter. Record passengers. Record flights.” — CEO Bob Jordan on CNBC; “We had a great quarter in the third quarter. We’re forecasting record revenue and record passengers again in the fourth quarter.” — CEO Bob Jordan on CNBC; “We had a great 2023. Record operating revenue, record passengers, record loyalty revenue.” — CEO Bob Jordan on CNBC; “I am extremely proud of our progress and accomplishments in 2023—we ended the year a better Company…” — CEO Bob Jordan in 2024 Proxy Statement; “We had a strong first quarter, despite the financial results.” — CEO Bob Jordan on CNBC; “I’m very proud of the Company’s progress in 2023 … we entered 2024 a stronger company.” — CEO Bob Jordan at Annual Shareholder Meeting"

"“Today, I am pleased to report record 2021 adjusted earnings of $18.12 per share and record free cash flow of $1.3 billion. To surpass the previous record adjusted earnings per share by 65 percent is a remarkable achievement in any year.” — Lori Ryerkerk, Chairman & CEO – Celanese, January 2022. “In the face of unprecedented supply disruptions, logistics challenges, labor shortages, COVID variants, and rapid, broad-based inflation, the Eastman team delivered all-time record revenue and adjusted EPS and is positioned to build on this growth in 2022” — Mark Costa, Chairman & CEO – Eastman, January 2022. “Our performance in the fourth quarter capped a record year for Dow, which you will see highlighted on Slide 4. In 2021, Team Dow capitalized on the economic recovery, achieving record sales and earnings performance despite pandemic-driven uncertainty and industry-wide weather-related challenges.” — James Fitterling, Chairman & CEO – Dow, January 2022."

"“...there have been a lot more changes into the Medicare and kind of guidelines and an increase in Medicare audits for Aquablation, as well as commercial insurance audits, because strictly Aquablations are indicated for certain sizes of the prostate, but this past year some more restrictive guidelines were released, including size criteria, objective urinary flow assessment criteria, objective questionnaire criteria to allow for approval of Aquablation. So that may be a trend that we continue to see, just more restrictive requirements to offer Aquablation to patients because I feel like that's happening more and more as technologies are more available. I don't know if CMS wants to prevent physicians from kind of abusing this, but it's been a little bit more difficult to get the surgery for patients. I think there are a lot of headwinds for allowing Aquablation to reach more people.” — Spruce Point Interview with Private Practice Urologist, Dec 2024"

""Today, I am pleased to report record 2021 adjusted earnings of $18.12 per share and record free cash flow of $1.3 billion. To surpass the previous record adjusted earnings per share by 65 percent is a remarkable achievement in any year." — Lori Ryerkerk, Chairman & CEO – Celanese, January 2022; "In the face of unprecedented supply disruptions, logistics challenges, labor shortages, COVID variants, and rapid, broad-based inflation, the Eastman team delivered all-time record revenue and adjusted EPS and is positioned to build on this growth in 2022" — Mark Costa, Chairman & CEO – Eastman, January 2022; "Our performance in the fourth quarter capped a record year for Dow, which you will see highlighted on Slide 4. In 2021, Team Dow capitalized on the economic recovery, achieving record sales and earnings performance despite pandemic-driven uncertainty and industry-wide weather-related challenges." — James Fitterling, Chairman & CEO – Dow, January 2022"

"“One of the big benefits of Twist is the lower entry point if you’ve got a custom panel. You can get a custom panel from Twist for around $2,000. With the likes of Agilent, the minimum is something like $10,000 to $20,000... IDT, their minimum level of synthesis is like 1,000 times higher, and you will pay $10 per oligo, whereas, with Twist, you’re getting millions of oligos for $1,000. Each oligo costs way less.” — Major Twist customer, one of largest genomics centers in Europe; “Customization is sort of an inherent aspect of the DNA synthesis industry... To your question about why are they so unprofitable? DNA synthesis is extremely low margins, and the reason is there are so many competitors out there.” — Former Twist manager in a manufacturing role; “It’s like going to the supermarket and buying a pack of 1,000 eggs. Twist will sell you six eggs; Agilent will sell you 1000 eggs.” — Major Twist customer, one of largest genomics centers in Europe"

"“Today, I am pleased to report record 2021 adjusted earnings of $18.12 per share and record free cash flow of $1.3 billion. To surpass the previous record adjusted earnings per share by 65 percent is a remarkable achievement in any year.” — Lori Ryerkerk, Chairman & CEO – Celanese, January 2022; “In the face of unprecedented supply disruptions, logistics challenges, labor shortages, COVID variants, and rapid, broad-based inflation, the Eastman team delivered all-time record revenue and adjusted EPS and is positioned to build on this growth in 2022” — Mark Costa, Chairman & CEO – Eastman, January 2022; “Our performance in the fourth quarter capped a record year for Dow, which you will see highlighted on Slide 4. In 2021, Team Dow capitalized on the economic recovery, achieving record sales and earnings performance despite pandemic-driven uncertainty and industry-wide weather-related challenges.” — James Fitterling, Chairman & CEO – Dow, January 2022"

""It's impossible to capture" both low and high frequency fields and that "you can't have it both ways," saying it's not a "real world" scenario and that Nevro's claims make him "shake my head." — KOL; "Honestly, one of the biggest restrictions with Omnia is their handheld patient controller - if you want to turn the volume up on your television, you hit the button once, and it turns up one. You hit the button twice; it turns up two. From my understanding of how the patient programming works, if you do a left and a right, with the Nevro controller, you can't just turn your left leg up, and have your right leg stay the same. You're turning them both up. For high frequency, with their components and their design, they don't need that. But when you have the inability to separate out their programming at low frequency, it will be a challenge for the patients, because it is for us." — Medtronic regional sales manager for one of their largest territories"

"The company executed the acquisition of Ströer Interactive Group, including freeXmedia and businessAD, with diligence in every respect. The board of management and supervisory board were fully aware of the special aspects of the transaction in terms of the related party position of the seller and took these into account in a particularly sensitive manner. All legal and valuation issues were examined step by step by legal firms of international repute, and their legality and correctness were documented in expert opinions. The supervisory board was informed of every step taken by the board of management and received detailed written and oral reports from the advisers. The company filed special valuation reports with the commercial register in connection with the capital increase performed during the transaction and made this publicly available at an Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting of the company in March 2013. — Ströer conference call transcript"

"“When I was there, one major thing that was wrong - I'm going to give you an example. You are a customer, and you order a gene that is pretty large. First of all, that's going to give us issues in regard to getting that gene to you. It's going to take a little bit longer because the science is harder for us to get that onto a vector for. Another thing that was not going well for us was if you order a gene that is what we call “GC-rich,” meaning that there are a lot of G's and C's in this gene, it would also be hard for us to print that gene for you and get that to you within a short amount of time. Sometimes, people put in that order with Twist and PacBio at the same time because they want to do a test to see who gets it to me faster. .. if you order a gene that's GC-rich, sometimes, we would have to admit failure because our processes were not good enough to provide a GC-rich gene.” — Ex-Twist employee in manufacturing, now a research professor"

""If a doctor says I use Medtronic, Boston Scientific, or Abbot, the outcomes would be relatively similar... the reality is they are so similar that it's not that different." ... "But with Nevro, two things made them the big bang success at the beginning. They came out with the Senza study which showed just amazing outcomes... I know how this works, and in everything we did we would augment [the data] a little bit to get manipulation of statistics and so forth, but for this kind of number, this was like...what??" ... "We subsequently found out, as we spoke to former Nevro reps who were involved in the Senza study, that the manipulation in statements from the patients was crazy... So, it was a big scam. The way that they manipulated the data was criminal. I would say that the bigger names in neuromodulation who weren't getting paid by them, think of Nevro with disgust." — Ex-Nevro consultant/speaker and one of the most prominent KOL's in the space"

"“The Ushio source [had] degradation and they took it out. So, the same people who came to me and said, wow, we won the war, and we got Lasertec; it's all good with Ushio. There was this celebration. The same people came to me two years later and said, yeah, by the way, everybody in the field has taken the sources out, and we're replacing it with Isteq. Well, Isteq has not quite done their job. I don't think they have their sources in the field—if they have one or two already, there's not enough data. So, if you ask my opinion, Lasertec and Intel will come and do a song and dance and say, well, now we've got this new source supplier, and everything is good, it's all wonderful and all that stuff. My response will be, well, how much data do you have to say that because you were the same guys who came and said the same about Ushio? And I have not seen long-term performance data at all.” — Leading EUV lithography expert close to Lasertec's customers"

"So, if GTT continues to do acquisitions and the capital markets remain open, they'll be fine. When the music stops and they actually perform, the value will collapse. The real value of GTT is below the face value of the equity. What my experience has told me is rarely do companies trade that level. So, chances are, it will not be an actionable acquisition. I think they will just turn into what I would call a zombie. So just kind of sit there, probably have a single-digit stock price. No real equity value, negative growth. And they'll just kind of bumble along. I mean, the markets do tolerate that type of business. But when the capital markets do become discerning, then at that point, maybe a distressed situation like a Frontier or a Windstream. And there may be an opportunity there. But usually there's such a convoluted capital structure that outside of bankruptcy, there's no way to actually action a deal. — CEO of one of GTT's top competitors"

""I tend to be a little bit suspicious as well." — Endocrinologist based in NYC, 15 PWS patients; "I keep on getting back to the thing that concerns me the most is that I was not as aware. I had my concerns, but you're giving me a lot more concern that the people who are most in the know and most involved seem to be very, very uncomfortable with it. And that is giving me pause as well." — Endocrinologist based in NYC, 15 PWS patients; "A lot of it is going to be, it's going to be real world because the trial itself is small. You're basically making me go back and look at all the data again, because now I'm much more concerned about some of the things that you bring up. I was hoping that it would have utility in maybe 3 or 4 of my patients if I could get it approved. Now I'm beginning to wonder whether maybe I need to have a different type of focus in terms of what I want to do right now so that ." — Endocrinologist based in NYC, 15 PWS patients"

"“Until recently: ‘We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we’re not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.’” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You’re not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That’s not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest’s dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn’t want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that’s the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, March 2024"

""People get used to high frequency. My hypothesis is that the neurons may re-learn and then the pain can come back." — KOL in Europe; "I've observed, when I and other doctors get together and talk about this, that patients tune out of high frequency faster than traditional stimulators. In one year the devices are all the same and the curves converge. There's no difference in efficacy. Maybe a little bit on the front end but it disappears by 12 months." — High volume implanter/KOL and Nevro user; "You can only beat on the spinal cord so long before a refractory response happens. Look at drugs – ones that effect the nervous system lead to tolerance. I'm saying it's just too much energy and you have to back off. Either the cells are down-regulating and can't hear the noise anymore, or there's an inflammatory response to high frequency and you get cell formation that's impeding the electrical signal." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter"

""So, the robotic portion of it is very small...the robot will cut the tissue based off of the surgeon's plan." — Former Procept Executive; "The first generation that was launched years ago, I would say it was pretty clunky. It's like with any product introduction, you roll with what is clinically viable." — Former Procept Manager; "So I kind of giggle when I get to tell my patients this is a robotic procedure. It's really just an automated procedure, but it's faster." — Major Hospital Urologist; "...at the best that you would call it a robotic-assisted procedure. Robotic alludes to being automated. This was not. It was actually very intensive and part of the complication of the business model of PROCEPT and one of the reasons why I left, which was that there's nothing robotic about it. Essentially, the rep, meaning me, is in there basically doing the procedure for the surgeon. But this hospital gets to market it." — Former Procept Sales Rep"

"“VW has teams for early-stage battery technology and they are dealing with Quantumscape, but also getting tests and next-generation batteries from many other suppliers. They are evaluating, testing, and discussing not only QuantumScape but other suppliers as well.” — VW employee; “We are discussing what is the right path to continue and with whom. There, of course, we are discussing with Quantumscape, established players as well and as our joint venture partner.” — VW employee; “I think you said earlier that Volkswagen hasn’t given Quantumscape any orders, commitments, or purchase commitments because it’s too many years out, right? It’s like a decade away, is that correct? Yes, that’s correct.” — VW employee; “I think so. We have many partnerships where we thought they were great partnerships, but then we stopped the partnership. In the past, we thought Panasonic was a great partner for batteries, but it turned out not to be.” — VW employee"

"The revised performance goals were set at aggressive levels that reflected our realistic expectations at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Achievement levels between threshold and target result in payouts from 100% to 200% of target awards. If we achieve corporate adjusted EBITDA of less than 85% of target, the payout for all other components may be capped at target. If corporate adjusted EBITDA is less than 75% of target, the threshold goal, then payment of any other component of the award would be at the discretion of our CEO and the Compensation Committee. The Compensation Committee believes that requiring a minimum adjusted EBITDA threshold be met to receive any payment with respect to the annual cash performance awards both aligns executives' interests with those of stockholders and prevents excessive annual cash performance award payments in times when our financial performance fails to meet our expectations. — 2021 Proxy Statement"

"The core business that AtriCure was founded and started on...is the surgical ablation. And that is concomitant with other cardiac surgeries...In the United States alone, there are 300,000 patients that have cardiac surgery. Of those, one-third have Afib. Today, only 25% of those are getting treated. Now, that is a vast improvement though over 10 years ago when 10%. And the reason for that is that we got our device approved through the FDA and PMA. The guidelines changed and we have moved that needle, where we're now treating 20,000 to 25,000 patients per year... Now, it also shows you that there is a big market opportunity on top of that... you get the sense that it's under-penetrated and we've got many years of growth even with the guidelines there. And we are going to bring out new technology to improve the adoption of that from 25%. So hopefully get into 50% and 75% over the coming decade. — Michael Carrel, AtriCure CEO, May 12th, 2020"

""Should it occur, we would view the separation of TKR’s steel and bearings businesses as a positive." — Gary Farber, C.L. King, 2/20/13; "Our sum-of-the-parts valuation suggests a $69 target price ($52 + $17). However, given the disparate nature of the assets and investors’ preference for pure plays, we believe that an above-average conglomerate discount is likely required to entice investors." — James Kawai, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, 11/14/12; "Our sum of the parts ... suggests a valuation closer to $55, but we agree that the market is unlikely to properly reward either the steel or the bearing business for the secular improvements they have made as long as these businesses remain combined." — Stephen Volkmann, Jefferies Group, 11/29/12; "In the long run, however, we agree with Relational and CalSTRS’s positioning that the company would perform better if it separated into two separate entities." — Samuel Eisner, William Blair, 11/28/12"

""In terms of growth, I would say, growth is reflective of engagement. We don't have a strategy necessarily to grow the e-commerce revenue. We have a strategy to grow the engagement in the marketplace and the customer share of wallet and customer engagement and we're using both channels to do that. So we're not targeting a specific growth rate..." — Allan MacDonald, EVP, Retail. "So literally hundreds of initiatives that we have in motion and have identified can now be placed in an organized structured program for execution and tracking. And of course we are continuing our extensive programs targeting internal and external expense reduction." — Stephen Wetmore, CEO. "even operational efficiency programs that generate 20% and 30% return on invested capital are extremely valuable" — Stephen Wetmore, CEO. "You know where to Steven's opening remarks, we now have hundreds of initiatives identified in size" — Gregory Hicks, President of Retail."

"I worked on Harmony 3. I also worked on the study on [redacted]. It was another study in the nervous system. In fact, this study occurred in France. We used to work with [redacted]. I also worked on another study beginning with [redacted]. But the last study, which I speak about, where the studies are in the starting phase. In fact, I took part in the regulatory submission at the beginning of the project—I took part in the management of a different CRO, responsible for the management of the study...I worked with the hospital [redacted] in South of France, and I worked with a clinic in [redacted]. I worked in one hospital in [redacted]. And I worked with one hospital in [redacted] near Paris. I worked with [redacted] Paris. I think that's it. There were seven sites, but I remember all of the sites. We worked with Dr. [redacted], and we worked with Dr. [redacted] who is a very important doctor in the discipline. — Former Bioprojet employee"

"I'm very confident in our sequential improvement in market share driven by innovation. I would differ with your characterization [of P&G not achieving material market share improvement]. I think we've made substantial progress in increasing the percent of our business growing market share. And I think that ties pretty directly to the innovations you've seen....We are continuing to invest in innovation. We've increased the spending on research and development the past three years and we're going to continue to make sure that we're building the capability to keep that innovation going. And the results in the marketplace are demonstrating that we're executing with excellence today, more so perhaps than the previous period you were talking about. So I'm confident we're going to continue this sequential improvement and you'll see it in the [market] sharing, you'll see it in the top line. — Bob McDonald, CEO, Earnings conference call, 4/24/13"

""I don't think we're talking about that publicly, but we do a lot of work with Ginkgo, I'll say. We've been intimately connected with them, and certainly, there are things that are outside their expertise, specific kinds of testing." — Current Joyn executive; "For Joyn, what they did is a number of Ginkgo's technical people got seconded over to Joyn, and a lot of them ended up becoming full-time employees there." — Former Ginkgo employee, longtime direct report to CEO Jason Kelly; "The goal for us is we're running lean, so we've also grown pretty rapidly, so it didn't make sense early on to have those functions... But it was a very intentional goal that we wanted to be really lean, and, in fact, if you think about the partnership with Ginkgo, it was a similar kind of thing. We didn't set up DNA sequencing or synthesis. We didn't set up robotics, all that. We're leveraging them. So, it was a consistent approach." — Current Joyn executive"

"“The other thing I've never seen for that molecule is, well, is speciation. The reason we could move very, very fast is that we had the human cloned receptor. So, we could screen our compounds against the human receptor, whereas all the work done prior to that—and Abbott was quick to do this as well because they had actually cloned a receptor that mistakenly characterized it as a cholinergic receptor, not a histamine receptor [...] But when Jean-Charles Schwartz did this, it was old-school pharmacology with, I guess, it was rodent tissue strips or something. Or it was in some sort of tissue. So, they used rats. So, all their compounds that they found initially were good for rats. And then they kept advancing the compound, but, of course, they hadn't got access to the human clone, so they didn't know how good it was against the human receptor.” — Longtime senior scientist at Johnson & Johnson, with global leadership roles in neuroscience"

""With specific regard to the [short-seller] Report, the Committee concluded that the allegations were either factually incorrect or that there were reasonable explanations as to their non-materiality." — China Agritech, Inc. press release. "FTI independently obtained and reviewed documents which state that as of June 30, 2011, ChinaCast had cash, cash equivalents and term deposit balances reported in the Company's form 10-Q for the second quarter ended June 30, 2011." — ChinaCast Education Corp. press release. "We believe the findings contained in the FTI report should provide some comfort to shareholders as to the integrity of the Company's financial reporting and should serve to distinguish the Company from other Chinese companies that have received adverse publicity after failing to provide adequate verifications with respect to their financial statements." — Daniel Tseung, Chairman of the Audit Committee, ChinaCast Education Corp."

"“We have a perfect product to address putting information into the hands of the patient on a near real-time basis. We checked that box incredibly well.” — iRhythm CEO Blackford at Investor Day, 9/21/22; “It's not quite competitive to the degree that we would like it to be.” — iRhythm CEO Blackford at J.P. Morgan Conference, 1/13/25; “...I also have a very, very strong point of view that it's just not quite the right product for the market...” — iRhythm CEO Blackford on Q3 2024 Earnings Call, 10/30/24; “...based on your marketing materials, website, and other documentation, the Zio AT System is intended for “near real-time monitoring” and “high-risk patients,” even though the Zio AT System is not cleared for these indications. When used in this patient population, the Zio AT System may cause or contribute to serious injury or death because life-threatening arrhythmias may not receive timely treatment.” — Excerpt from FDA Warning Letter"

"On September 4, 2015, R&O received a letter from Robert Chai-Onn, Valeant’s Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel. In the letter, which was the first correspondence that R&O had ever received directly from Valeant, Mr. Chai-Onn claimed that R&O, a small licensed California pharmacy, owed Valeant over $69,000,000. However, R&O has never received a single invoice from Valeant in any amount and until September 4 had never received a single demand for payment from Valeant. R&O has requested copies of the invoices, but to no avail. Indeed, it seems that Valeant has no evidence whatsoever to back up its claims. Therefore, R&O believes that one of two things must be true: 1. Valeant and R&O are victims of a massive fraud perpetuated by third parties; or 2. Valeant is conspiring with other persons or entities to perpetuate a massive fraud against R&O and others. — R&O Pharmacy LLC Complaint for Declaratory Judgment"

""IonQ and 1QBit are working together on applying quantum computers to solve previously intractable problems in a variety of industries and are excited to explore new possibilities resulting from the release of IonQ’s newest generation of devices," said Arman Zaribafiyan, Head of Quantum Simulation, 1QBit. "We design quantum machine learning algorithms to drive performance on near-term hardware," said Iordanis Kerenidis, Head of Algorithms International, QC Ware. "We collaborated with IonQ in implementing QC Ware's quantum classification algorithm on their system, and the excellent results attest to their unique approach and demonstrated performance." "We are excited to announce IonQ as a preferred quantum compute partner for our Singularity platform," said Enrique Lizaso, CEO of Multiverse Computing. "Together, two platforms will allow us to develop joint solutions to interesting, real-life problems in finance." — IonQ Press Releases"

""We also have the same information for clients that we lose, so we have our wins and we have our losses, where they go. Unfortunately, there really isn't -- I think we said this numerous times and it hasn't changed, that there really isn't one specific competitor or category, even... I wish could tell you that there is a specific pattern, but there isn't, which is a -- in my opinion, is a good thing. We don't see any one competitor that is creating an enormous problem for us, and we also don't see any one competitor where it is kind of easy pickings for us. I think it is fairly balanced across the board." — Carlos Rodriguez(1); "We typically get between 45% and 50% of our new units from ADP... I think our culture, product, and service -- we end up winning a lot. So, I don't know why that would change in the future, unless something dramatically happens, which I can't imagine what that is." — Scott Scherr (CEO, President, Founder)(3)"

"Sure. We do track it. We track it by brand. But for us, in our categories, new products can be everything from -- we're doing a study to have new claims on a package, and we update our packaging to have those claims to better connect with consumers to actual new technologies like Compound W, Nitro freeze or Nix Ultra, where we actually have new formulas and new products over time. So we have a very broad definition of it. And we keep an eye on the velocity and how those individual SKUs are performing out there. We don't publicly talk about a freshness index or having a target of having 20% of our sales come from new products, but just track on a granular basis the improvements in performance of every SKU that we launch every single year, whether it's updated packaging or new technology. So we'd rather manage it on that level, Mitch, than in total with a much narrower definition. — Ronald Lombardi, CEO, Q2 2020 Call, November 1, 2019"

"“Longer-term margins, two of your competitors have a little bit of a different margin structure: Paychex, high 30s%, 40%; ADP, mid 20s%. Where do you guys think you shake out over the very long term?” — Justin Furby, William Blair. “We look at Paychex's business model and think that that's one that we can emulate as we grow over time. I don't know when you get to, what is it, 35%, 40%. But we can see us steadily expanding margins for a number of years. The goal is to try to see if we can keep growing at 20% as long as we can. If you're growing that fast, it's going to be hard to expand the operating margins by a lot more. But at some point, I think we can get up there.” — Mitch Dauerman, Ultimate Software, CFO. “...If I go out to the kind of the ending, when growth really slows, I think you would look at a company like Paychex, and you could see kind of the margin in that 35% to 40% range.” — Mitch Dauerman, Ultimate Software, CFO."

""If the client purchases an ISN product called the Repair Estimate Report from ISN, that's a Porch product. And at that point, Porch gets the whole inspection report because they need the report so that they can put together an estimate" — Home Inspector. "It's really not that many. I'd say perhaps 1 out of 20... I don't think that they're that accurate. So I'm actually not that thrilled with the product." — Home Inspector. "I think that if we go to the setup of the services and how I can enter services, pricing, how that ends up looking on the order form when people get to my website, it's real confusing. But my business isn't confusing." — Home Inspector. "I guess my parting gripe would be that, that the way that it was set up just barrages my customers with SMS text and e-mail. And I had to go in and pull and just shut a lot of that down because you know what, it's spamming and people don't want to be spammed." — Home Inspector."

"“One thing that Jason’s really good at is publicizing success. So, if any of those collaborations were successful, he would have publicized it, and I haven’t seen any of those publicized. So, as far as I’m concerned, they’re likely zero percent that panned out. When I was there, between my team and me, we signed 20...I mean, every single one of these companies were—if I named the name of the company, you would have heard of them. They may not all have been Fortune 500, but a bunch of them were.” — Former Ginkgo executive; “I was involved in setting up and bringing in Joyn, that collaboration, and also Genomatica. There were many others on top of that they didn’t list. In many cases, those collaborations are just gone. They just ended them. They also—and I’m pretty sure it’s buried somewhere in there, and if not, you can find it elsewhere—they also have a collaboration with Amyris, and that ended as well.” — Former Ginkgo executive"

"Next I'll turn my attention to Virus Broadcast data. The report claims that NQ is attempting to trick users by sharing the latest two viruses reported in a feature called Virus Broadcast. To be clear, on installation, NQ Mobile Security 7.0 preinstalls a virus database on the device. With that installation, NQ also prepackages the latest Virus Broadcast feed which is for informational purposes as well. Packaging this with the installation file avoids then for the user to have to separately download another file after install. This is a free service for users to see what the latest viruses are that have been recorded in our database globally. It is not specific to any particular users' device. So on installation, Virus Broadcast will show the user the latest two viruses in the Virus Broadcast at the point of installation. After the database is updated, the Virus Broadcast will update as well with the latest information. — Gavin Kim"

"Booms and busts in stock prices are often greatest in speculative mining and technology plays that tantalize investors with optimistic revenue and profit outlooks, yet often come from unproven claims and companies with a history of failure. We saw this in 2012 and have a proven record of calling out stock promotions in these sectors, namely Liquidmetal Technologies (OTCBB: LQMT) and US Antimony (AMEX: UAMY). We see extreme parallels between these promoted failures and American Battery Metals Corp (OTCBB: ABML) and Comstock Mining Inc.(NYSEAmex: LODE). These companies appear to have hitched their wagon to investor enthusiasm for electric vehicle battery recycling, and their prospective plant’s proximity to Tesla and its Gigafactory in Nevada . We recommend investors exercise extreme caution at these extended valuations and urge shareholders to closely examine why we believe companies are Strong Sells. — Ben Axler, CIO Spruce Point"

"But I also think as we learn more about the AT -- or sorry, the MCT market, there's probably 2 markets within MCT. There's what we call sort of the buy and build market where customer accounts are buying the device directly from competitor of ours. They put it in their clinic. They're doing the interpretation, the reading right there in clinic, downloading the data. We don't offer that sort of business model. And Zio MCT is something that we're going to have to continue to evaluate how we address that segment of the market. I think that's probably 20% or so of the entire MCT market that we're still probably going to have to think through the right product market fit for how we get after that segment of the market. But there's still 80% of that MCT market that our MCT product, new MCT product is going to go squarely at and I think going to have tremendous success within it. — iRhythm CEO Blackford on Q2 2025 Earnings Call, 7/31/25"

"“The CEO came from Chevron Phillips Chemical. That is another thing I think they should look at. Take Mark Lashier, he's an expert there, and spin off that business.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “This last Q4 where Phillips came out and their refining margins were so weak, so weak. That is just fundamentally unacceptable... That is a CEO problem.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “We have had significant issues with Mark Lashier, who's the CEO. He is on the hot seat at this point due to these operational issues... There is an open question if he is the right man for the moment for me.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “Mark controls everything and that is not a good thing and as you can see that does not lead to strong corporate performance.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “He's doing what's right for his buddies on the Chevron Phillips side which is just not that shareholder friendly.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey"

""Crown Castle’s stock has meaningfully underperformed that of American Tower and SBA over the last several years, and this divergence merits attention. Crown Castle’s organic domestic tower growth has lagged its peers. It bought into fiber in a big way just as the sheen on that business model was wearing off and fiber solution solutions growth has come in shy of investor expectations." — MoffettNathanson, January 2020; "We believe CCI shares could underperform near-term as the surprising pull-back in fiber leasing combined with unchanged capital investments may raise new questions as to whether or not fiber assets should trade at a discounted multiple to Towers, despite the positive long-term demand narrative for fiber infrastructure & small cells." — Citi, July 2019; "The Tower stocks have enjoyed a strong run so far in 2017,though CCI has lagged with a ~16% gain compared to over 30% for both AMT and SBAC." — BAML, October 2017"

"“And then can you just, I mean, there's been a lot of investor anxiety, I guess, over the potential for a recession in the U.S., at least. Can you just remind me how your business behaves in a recession? Is it actually a little bit countercyclical? Or can you just give a little bit color about the nature of your business in that kind of environment?” — Linda Weiser, WD-40 Analyst. “We're not recession proof, but we have been called recession resistant. And past history, I've been around for 30 years in the business. We've come through, we continued to invest in our business through the recessions, whether there will -- and the other thing that plays even more in our favor now is our geographic diversity. In 2008, when we had the financial crisis, our business was actually sideways, we actually grew a little, and if it wasn't for the collapse, if you will, of the pound-U.S. dollar exchange rate, we would have grown.” — CEO Ridge."

""Under the current management structure and people, no. I would never put a dime in there. If you could see a mature management in the industry, absolutely, there's an opportunity....I have no confidence at this point and time." — Former GFL Employee 1; "There are two parts, U.S. and Canada. Canada is quite saturated and prices are competitive. Chances of making big profits in solid waste, are not going to happen. GFL's main money maker is the infrastructure business. I am less familiar with the U.S. side of the business. It's tough to say if GFL will make money in the next year or two." — Former GFL Employee 2; "That's the wildcard in the GFL story, that's the gamble. Acquisitions play a key part to keep the momentum going. What happens when acquisitions stop? You need profitability. Can they turn around? Today they are not making money. That's a fact. I don't know if they can. They've acquired so rapidly." — Former Employee 3"

"I was offered a job at IonQ and I declined it. I'd thought very carefully about whether I should invest my career into IonQ, which for me is a major deal. One of the reasons you may be interested in learning is, the technical leaders of the company are Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim. And the majority of the technical employees are either graduate students or post-docs coming from Chris Monroe's or Jungsang Kim's group. What I'm trying to say is that the thought leadership belongs to Chris and Jungsang. Both Chris and Jungsang, they're full-time university professors. To me, it was very unsatisfactory that the technical leaders kept their university tenures. It felt to me that they weren't 100% committed to IonQ. I didn't want to wager my entire career on IonQ, when the two founders of the company, they did not wager their careers on the company. — Leading quantum computing researcher who has published papers with IonQ's founders"

"I think KLA is serious...a year or eighteen months is reasonable. — Intel Senior Engineer. Samsung is always trying to diversify vendors...they don't want to just rely on one company because it's not good for negotiation power...they keep pushing KLA to produce the same tool as Lasertec. — Longtime ex-Samsung executive. KLA kept talking like it's very soon, just in a year...I think it's pretty soon...in a year or so...KLA is working very hard to develop those. — Samsung executive. There's a huge risk here to Lasertec...if machines are piling up and KLA is going around reassuring people that if you can hold off until mid-2025. — Global Foundries view. For productivity and for economic considerations, KLA performs better than Lasertec...two-thirds of the business migrated from originally Lasertec to KLA...Lasertec has continued to decrease...their share in TSMC...KLA's share continues to increase. — Ex-TSMC procurement executive."

"“We are only using TransMedics for DCD organs. Donors from cardiac death as opposed to donors from brain death. We’re not really convinced that the donors from brain death, the organs get a lot of benefit from being on a TransMedics device because often the ones that you’d like to put on are those that are very poor quality and, the thing is, if you put them on a machine, you’re not going to make a poor-quality organ into a good-quality organ. So, if the organ is poor quality because it’s fatty because the donor was obese or was scarred from drinking, you’re not going to reverse those changes by putting it on a machine… with a marginal organ that’s, let’s say, fatty or scarred, that’s a chronic injury over many, many years. You’re not going to reverse that by putting it on a pump. So, it’s not as beneficial in my mind for those organs.” — Transplant surgeon and transplant program director at a leading Northeast academic center"

""Between 10%,15%. Sometimes, let's say, there be a new player or let Stats Perform wanting to have one property, which Sportradar currently has, they will pay everything or they will go up by 20%, 30%, 50% if they must have it because their clients otherwise break away." — Former General Manager Sportradar (3/31/2021); "That's a really good question. I think that they will. I think they'll try to. I think that we'll actually see that happen pretty soon with the NFL." — Sales Director Sportradar (3/5/2021); "Great question. That's a bit of my concern with the industry as I think as I talk to people about this, some people think Genius will have pricing leverage. I'm probably in the camp that the leverage is against them because if I take an example, we have the NFL on one end of the spectrum, the Sportradar, Genius sitting in the middle and FanDuel on the other end of the spectrum." — Former EVP of Strategy FanDuel (1/19/2021)"

"“We see the numbers, not just every quarter when we have the board meeting here, but we know where the trajectory has been. Then actually when we meet with Bob Jordan and Andrew Watterson, we bring these concerns up... We have years of disdain from leadership, and that’s how labor has been treated... I mentioned the word disdain before and I’m going to say it again because that’s the only way that really we can describe how labor has been treated and SWAPA and our data-driven analysis has been treated. It’s been disregarded. And here we are with an activist investor basically saying everything we’ve said... Right now we just can’t [get behind the Company] because we’re again disdained and there’s very little concern right now at the C-suite, you know, outside of their jobs. There’s not a concern for the employees. And that’s something we can never forget and really won’t.” — SWAPA Leadership, The SWAPA Number Podcast (July 1)"

"RSM was engaged by the Audit Committee on December 21, 2018 to serve as the Company's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2019 and was engaged again on June 12, 2020 to serve as the Company's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. On February 15, 2021, RSM told the Chairman of the Company's Audit Committee during a telephone call that RSM was resigning as the Company's independent registered public accounting firm, effective immediately. RSM then advised the Chairman on the call that it was resigning as a result of being unable, despite repeated inquiries, to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence that would allow it to evaluate the business purpose of significant unusual transactions that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2020, including whether such transactions have been properly accounted for and disclosed in the financial statements subject to the Audit. — EBIX 8-K"

"Spinal cord stimulation as a first-line treatment is, no...it’s absolutely not a realistic opportunity.. The insurance companies will never cover that. If Nevro’s saying they’ll make stimulators the first line of treatment when a back pain patient comes in, I have never heard of that. — KOL and high volume implanter; As far as stimulators being used for first-line back, this is question that’s been asked for 15-25 years... I don’t see that market being appropriate for spinal cord stimulation. There are a lot of psychological issues as well, so I don’t see non-surgical back as a big market for them or any company. — KOL and Nevro user; Insurers are making it even harder. Getting approval for stimulators is the hardest it has been... stimulators for first-line back....there’s no way that’s going to happen. You can’t go right to a $50,000 treatment. I mean, that’s way outside of the standard care. — KOL and high volume implanter"

"“We see the numbers, not just every quarter when we have the board meeting here, but we know where the trajectory has been. Then actually when we meet with Bob Jordan and Andrew Watterson, we bring these concerns up... We have years of disdain from leadership, and that’s how labor has been treated... I mentioned the word disdain before and I’m going to say it again because that’s the only way that really we can describe how labor has been treated and SWAPA and our data-driven analysis has been treated. It’s been disregarded. And here we are with an activist investor basically saying everything we’ve said... Right now we just can’t [get behind the Company] because we’re again disdained and there’s very little concern right now at the C-suite, you know, outside of their jobs. There’s not a concern for the employees. And that’s something we can never forget and really won’t.” — SWAPA Leadership, The SWAPA Number Podcast (July 1)"

""You need a bigger team and at least a couple of years of them working together really well to pull together the level of detail that is going to be sufficient...you’re never going to have full amount of detail, but the question is do you have enough to have the application stand on its legs and be considered fully [operational] as opposed to be rejected for being incomplete? I don’t think that’s reasonable to hit that [2027] target." — Former Oklo employee; "Oklo is in that camp which underestimates what has to be done to bring this to fruition...I think they are unconsciously incompetent on what you need to get thru the NRC." — Former Westinghouse Electric Managing Director, 38-year nuclear industry veteran; "They’re clueless – they’re operating like a small, tech company and they’re not even close to being in the playing field of what they have to do." — Project Manager, GE Vernova, 35 years of nuclear industry expertise."

"“Oh yeah. These are centers where we heard that they got organs from out of region and they would seem to come from a similar kind of procurement area. Like they would come from, say, Tennessee or something. And there would be literally a sort of hotline from the procuring team there to this center in our region asking if they want an organ...the fact was these guys were clearly getting them not in a sequential orderly way that would have put them next up for that organ, but rather there were local turndowns by local recipient centers and then all of a sudden it became this kind of free for all. And so, it never diverted effectively; it just stopped being part of the formal allocation process. This kind of thing, I suspect, is actually happening much more frequently than we know...I think this is how some centers get ahead in their numbers. It’s a below the radar screen kind of arrangement.” — Transplant surgeon, Utah center"

""Yeah, RUN also has the advantage of being on newer technology which scales more cheaply in terms of incremental margins." — Gary C. Butler, President and CEO; "So the number around that the difference between sales last year and this year is about 20 percentage points of additional new business coming in using our web entry systems versus Teledata which is our phone-in system." — Carlos A. Rodriguez, President, Small Business; "Really it's kind of the best of both worlds because the client gets better accuracy because you have real time payroll with real time validation of data, so you have fewer errors, fewer reruns and it takes down our labor component to both, it take the payroll and service the payroll and we think we're going to get a longer life client out of that because the overall quality and number of reruns and all those kinds of issues should be significantly down over time." — Gary C. Butler, President and CEO"

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we're not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You're not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That's not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest's dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn't want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that's the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, March 2024"

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we’re not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You’re not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That’s not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest’s dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn’t want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that’s the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, March 2024"

""This new alignment is the result of a very thoughtful and thorough process to de-layer our management structure, speed decision-making, simplify communications and reduce costs." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "Too many layers make you very averse to risk. You've got to be able to make fast decisions. We were like middle-aged people. We needed to slim down." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "We are reallocating our workload and assets in order to invest in areas of higher growth, including online and new launches." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "We are big, and we need big bets. I think that as we have become more layered, the culture here has become risk-averse." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "The current round of cuts is largely because of reallocation of resources as the company increases its online presence and consolidates some of its business functions." — TWX spokesperson."

"Personally, I think the company think that it is very natural that people want to get a home renovation. If they bought a home, especially if they bought a secondary housing, they want someone to help them to do with their renovation. But in my opinion, it is a very — like what I said, this industry, the home renovation, the way of acquiring a company like Shengdu is not a very smart move. What's more important is that, for the home renovation, you do not have this kind of network effect like what you have with brokerage companies. With the brokerage companies, the more agents that you have, you have a better chance of getting a much bigger market share than a smaller one. But for home renovations, you do not have this kind of network effect. Even if you are 10 times bigger, or even 100 times bigger, than your competitor, it is highly unlikely you can take market share from the small competitor. — Former BEKE senior manager"

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we're not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You're not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That's not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest's dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about 'our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn't want to charge your guests for their bags,' but why do you charge for the seats if that's the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, March 2024"