Callouts & quotes from 2,092+ activist slides

"However, if Sony Technologies can execute on the growth trajectory laid out at Sony’s 2019 IR Day, we see the potential for the company to: Grow revenue by >50%; Grow operating profit by >100%; Compound value at ~15% annually, and achieve a $35bn valuation in 5 years"

""...the Mailchimp growth story, again, at least when I was there, like revenue was going up into the right, although at a more like measured steady clip. But user growth really was kind of hitting a plateau at the time..." — Former Manager at Mailchimp, Tegus, 2/6/23"

"The domestic sports industry, first and foremost in this industry, the most important mode is the dealer/agent system. ... So for a brand company, I prefer the agent-distributor model, in which case I can more quickly more regularly receive my revenue stream. — Mr. D"

"For the first time in many years, Rollins referenced that termite damage claims have declined. Yet, it has said that revenues have gone up. However, this revenue source could be at risk if consumers perceive that termite protection services are not worth purchasing."

"From Company disclosures regarding the sales histories and pro-forma revenue contributions of recently-acquired businesses, our analysis suggests that Hill-Rom’s acquisitions consistently show top-line contraction immediately following their acquisition by Hill-Rom."

"Dadi told us that its annual revenue is less than $1.5 million (RMB 10 million). Lucky told us that the most revenue it ever generated in its history is $1.3 million. Yet ONP claims that in 2008, each respectively purchased paper worth $2.7 million and $2.2 million."

"We believe Agilent's current valuation represents a discount to intrinsic value and does not fully reflect the company's high-quality business model, increasing mix of recurring revenue, strong long-term growth potential and significant margin expansion opportunity"

"Since the investment was made in 3Q18, the difference of RMB 37.6 million was likely recognized as revenues by IQ in the second half of 2018, leaving the remaining RMB 726.155 million available to be used by management to artificially boost its top line, as needed."

"But at the end of the day, I think it's quite immaterial whether it was Topic 605 and now Topic 606 [ASU No. 2014-09], and actually we believe that had we stayed under the Topic 605 revenue guidelines, our results will be quite similar. — VRNT Q2 FY19 Earnings Call"

"But at the end of the day, I think it's quite immaterial whether it was Topic 605 and now Topic 606 [ASU No. 2014-09], and actually we believe that had we stayed under the Topic 605 revenue guidelines, our results will be quite similar. — VRNT Q2 FY19 Earnings Call"

"Meanwhile, while DXCM share price appreciation was driven largely by multiple expansion through H1 FY18, the stock has been range-bound since the middle of FY18 despite continued revenue beats, and the multiple has contracted to some extent on recent sales growth."

"Decisions about revenue recognition are among the most important issues faced by senior accounting personnel. At VMware, Munk held a key role as VP and Corporate Controller during a period the Company violated antifraud and reporting provisions of securities laws."

"Google makes most of its money when users exit the Google network. This represents the philosophical antithesis to the walled garden approach in which the objective is to keep the user on the network and earn revenue through display advertising and other services."

"By our best estimate, Waterpik has been another failed acquisition by CHD. In the three full quarters after it was acquired, and the acquisition contribution was disclosed through the consumer segments, we find total revenues declined from $102m, to $85m, to $79m."

"It is a one-trick pony whose sole commercial asset and source of revenue is the US license to an old, toxic drug called pitolisant, marketed as Wakix, that no reputable pharma company would touch – alchemically transformed into $2.5B market cap and 6X LTM revenue."

"Notably, our review of 3rd party app analytics data on Bigo’s overseas revenues showed the gifting activity was heavily skewed to a limited number of geographies, with approximately three quarters of its revenue associated with the top ten countries. — Footnote 52"

"Investor enthusiasm ebbs and flows over the years for money-losing and speculative fuel cell and energy storage companies similar to Ballard (ex: PLUG, FCEL, and HYGS). We find long-term valuations tend to be around 2.0x - 2.5x book value and 1.5x - 3.5x revenues"

"Spruce Point has had a lot of success in identifying aggressive accounting related to unbilled receivables. Suspiciously, the rise in unbilled receivables may have given C3.ai a "cookie jar" needed to deliver quarterly revenues above the high end of its guidance."

"Like State Street, their problems have been largely self inflicted as the whole industry has been poorly managed in our view (e.g., disappointing cost controls, poor capital allocation, lack of price discipline in core custody as ancillary revenues have declined)"

"Decreased residential customer water and natural gas usage as a result of conservation efforts, and the impact of more efficient appliances and furnaces, may harm demand for our utility services and may reduce our revenues and earnings. — Essential Utilities 10-K"

"After we make this final adjustment to the 223 million Rmb deferred revenue balance from before, we get 156 million Rmb of deferred revenue at fair value—or, just $24 million. Based on the calculations we made, TAL overstated Firstleap’s deferred revenue by 90%."

"Applying that rate of revenue contraction to each geography implies that areas outside those markets must grow 15% and 20%, respectively, to meet Street consensus, which we believe is unlikely, particularly given Skechers' challenges in the domestic U.S. market."

"Carvana not only trades at nosebleed levels relative to its closest peers, even on consensus revenue growth expectations we regard as too high, Carvana now trades at a premium to leading tech players, all of whom enjoy better margins and generate free cash flow."

"It is concerning that Limbach removed working capital targets from its incentive compensation plan targets after 2020, particularly given the Company's use of cost-to-cost accounting, where revenue and profit recognition are heavily tied to management estimates."

"a vote for Trian’s nominees is a vote for four highly qualified individuals who will seek to work collaboratively with the Board to: Assess the corporate structure and determine whether management is capable of achieving best-in-class revenue growth and margins"

"For products and services that are provided in advance of billing, such as our asset-based fee products, unbilled revenue (or a "contract asset") is included in Accounts Receivable on the Company's Consolidated Statement of Financial Condition. — 2019-2021 10-K"

"Actually, the revenue recognition of the Shunshun business is based on they need to get an offer and they need to get a visa. So I think in general, most of them will come to recognize maybe in Q3 or Q4 next fiscal quarter. — TAL FY17 Q1, FY17 Q3 Earnings Calls"

"The only possible reason why EDU’s Beijing subsidiary would not be paying Enterprise Income Tax is because it is not turning a profit. PRC tax law makes it clear that no EIT exemption is available to the BJ Operation because its revenue is deemed “for-profit”."

"Trian believes the mindset and culture at State Street has prioritized growth (in AUCA, AUM and revenue) over profitability. The “land grab” mentality must transition to a focus on EPS growth, return on invested capital and maximizing total shareholder returns"

"Mitek's true rationale for adopting this poison pill - old-fashioned entrenchment - is demonstrated by the Company's use of an amorphous and far-reaching definition of beneficial ownership that extends well beyond the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code."

"We believe that, even on reasonable base-case assumptions for growth in new products and the legacy business, respectively, Hill-Rom should miss consensus core revenue estimates by 2% – a top-line miss the likes of which the Company has not seen since Q2 FY16."

"Yahoo said on December 9th that Gemini is now at a $500 million revenue run rate but has never given any financial details to demonstrate this product's success and hasn't said how much of the $500 million run rate comes from cannibalizing other Yahoo revenues"

"During FY2018, PBH changed its organic revenue disclosure to “organic & proforma revenue growth” to include the benefit of the acquired brands growth. We believe investors should not give management credit for the high growth of PBH’s recently acquired brands."

"We find it concerning that management’s definition of “cloud revenue” is not consistent between its press releases and financial statements, with its SEC filings noting that cloud revenue includes “term-based licenses, which are recognized at a point in time.”"

"How is it possible that Lightspeed experienced no organic revenue decline as COVID-19 swept worldwide? Its closest revenue peers in the POS technology space, Par Technologies, Agilysys and Toast, experienced sales declines of -19%, -25% and -27%, respectively."

"Today, we reveal why we believe EHang (NASDAQ: EH) is an elaborate stock promotion, built on largely fabricated revenues based on sham sales contracts with a customer who appears to us to be more interested in helping inflate the value of its investment in EH."

"Kornit's disclosures give an inconsistent view of actual revenues from Amazon. We find stated discrepancies in both 2016 and 2017 reported revenues. At best just a rounding error, at worst evidence of financial control issues. — Spruce Point Capital Management"

"MSCI and analysts talked up RCA's mid-to-high teens revenue growth and high and improving renewal rates. However, within a year after the acquisition, the evidence points to substantially lower revenue growth and MSCI stopped reporting RCA's Run-Rate revenue."

"DeMarco was also allegedly the source of the “percentage of completion accounting techniques learned from the ‘Andersen school of accounting’ that allowed Titan to either overstate or prematurely state revenues at the company.” — Shareholder lawsuit documents"

"While GNYHA receives $7M in various tax-related distributions from Premier on an annual basis through its ownership of Class B shares, it stands to increase its administrative fee revenue by close to $40M per year by moving to a market-rate shareback of 66%."

"Spruce Point has a track record of calls that identified anomalies related to capital raising, capex spending, suspicious acquisitions, and abnormal revenue per employee in businesses that appear commoditized. We observe the same issues with Perion Networks."

"2022 CTV revenue was $28.5m, and PERI has disclosed its two annual growth rates in 2022 (108%) and 2021 (205%). As a result, we can work backwards and estimate that 2020 CTV should be $4.5m. However, a presentation slide from 2020 shows CTV revenue as $9.9m."

"Perion has not called out Microsoft Bing in relation to “monetizable searches” since the end of 2021. Recent explanations of search advertising revenue is attributable to average daily searches which are not referenced as monetizable ore commercial searches."

"In addition, the Company improperly accounted for other items that overstated net income, including the estimation and recording of self-insurance reserves, its recognition of equipment rental revenues, and its income tax accounting. — SEC URI Complaint 2008"

"We have a strong conviction in our ability to create incremental value from this combination and are raising our long-term target for real estate revenue growth to the high-teens from the mid-teens percentage range. — Real Capital Analytics (RCA) Aug 2, 2021"

"According to Moody's, a credit rating agency which was privy to Itiviti's management and insights about its business given its public debt rating, contracts were shorter than BR management's claims, and the recurring revenue mix was less than 100%. — Moody's"

"“As our momentum continues, we are raising guidance once again for the current year. Our guidance for the non-GAAP revenue is increasing by $25 million to $1.37 billion representing 10% growth and acceleration from the prior year.” — Dan Bodner – CEO, Verint"

""As our momentum continues, we are raising guidance once again for the current year. Our guidance for the non-GAAP revenue is increasing by $25 million to $1.37 billion representing 10% growth and acceleration from the prior year." — Dan Bodner – CEO, Verint"

"There is a continuation of acquisition revenue contribution misreporting into early 2020. The Company first claimed that $21.2 million of sales were contributed by Captiva, Neurio and Pika in Q1 2020. The 10-Q later revised this figure to just $1.0 million."

"Zebra referenced only one client win early and continues to talk up “strong interest” but provides no specifics on revenues. In fact, almost three years after acquiring Fetch on July 1, 2021, Zebra is still saying robotics is “nascent” and in its “infancy”."

"We believe that Globant should explicitly disclose to investors which of their related parties are affiliated with WPP. We believe the spirit of related party disclosure is to highlight to investors how much revenues are coming from your largest shareholder"

"Total receivables have ballooned 456% in the same period that revenues have grown 99%. This suggests that Axon has booked revenues, generally associated with the weapon (and body cam), in advance of its ability to collect on these sales in a timely fashion."

"According to the 10-K, BID generated $26M of 2013 Agency commission revenue from Finance loan collateral. Assuming ~28% average Agency margins and 35% taxes, yields $4.7M of net income, or ~4% of ROE. Some of these sales may have occurred without financing."

"From a penny stock to a $5 billion market cap with no proven or probable reserves and now trading at 42x highly questionable 2026E revenue estimates, we believe investors should exercise extreme caution and believe there is 65%-85% potential downside risk."

"Limbach previously included a footnote in its financial statements indicating whether its existing backlog substantially covered forecasted revenue but removed that disclosure in Q1’25, supporting our view that backlog coverage has materially deteriorated."

"“...so in our most recent quarter, on that metric, we reported 106%. And I think the kind of commitment in what Mark [Wayland, Chief Revenue Officer] was saying was we're going to improve that rate from here.” — CEO Aaron Levie, 2019 BoxWorks, October 2019"

"Spruce Point finds it troubling that GFL restated results again in Q2 2020. Solid waste revenues mysteriously increased by $12m. The large increase of intercompany revenue, and boosting of Solid Waste segment results, is alarming in light of our research."

"When asked on the Aug 2022 call “how quickly” it would contribute to revenue, the CFO evaded the question and shifted the topic to “we’ve increased our capacity in San Francisco,” saying only that the facility would “start to record revenues” in Jan 2023."

"A Snake Oil Salesman And Some Hedge Funds Partner Up To Pimp The Latest “Synthetic Biology” Scam -- As Phantom Revenue, A Hocus-Pocus Business Model, Rampant Related-Party Games, And A Decade of Colossal Failure Get Shoveled Into Yet Another Garbage SPAC."

"Basically all revenue growth since Mar '23 has come from siphoning deferred revenue – an abrupt change of trend and the first major, sustained decline in “advances.” Increase in revenue of ¥38B/$245MM is similar to ¥44B/$283MM decline in deferred revenue."