Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

""The regulator found this service to be customer friendly and in compliance to the license conditions. While our service had passed the test of the regulator, the DoT is reportedly likely to impose penalty on us without any opportunity of personal hearing." — Bharti Airtel CEO"

""From 1997 to 2000, during a period of enormous growth through acquisitions, URI engaged in improper accounting practices involving its valuation of acquired assets, use of acquisition reserves, and accounting for customer relationships." — SEC vs United Rentals Complaint 2008"

"We believe that this deal illustrates CTC's tremendous financial flexibility, and provides a capital cushion to evaluate additional growth verticals, support its investment-grade status, and potentially return additional capital to shareholders. — Brian Morrison, TD Securities"

""The lead independent director or another appropriate director should be available to meet with shareholders in those situations where an independent director is best placed to explain and contextualize a company's approach" — BlackRock Investment Stewardship Global Principles"

""So if we were walking a store right now, and I was walking you through Optimax, Nucore, AquaGuard and our rigid core vinyl, our biggest category, those are all proprietary brands, hard to get and really good technology relative to the competition." — Lang MS Conf. Dec 7, 2022"

"The MPAA (“Motion Picture Association of America”) identifies as major studios Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, SPE (including Columbia Pictures and Tristar), The Walt Disney Company, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Universal Studios and Warner Bros."

"In Russia, PepsiCo had an advantage selling beverages beginning in the early 1970s when PepsiCo's CEO (Don Kendall) negotiated a barter agreement that gave PepsiCo the exclusive right to sell cola in the Soviet Union, which lasted until the mid-1980s. — PepsiCo Company History"

""The lead independent director or another appropriate director should be available to meet with shareholders in those situations where an independent director is best placed to explain and contextualize a company's approach" — BlackRock Investment Stewardship Global Principles"

"As legacy technologies transition to digital platforms, we believe Disney can lead the media industry forward. We could not be more excited to partner with Bob and the Board to help create long-term sustainable shareholder value. — Mason Morfit, ValueAct Capital Co-CEO and CIO"

""We have retained substantially all of our clients since inception" — Excerpt From PGNY 2021 10-K; "It would happen, but I can't say how often. Maybe 5% of the time. It was low, but people would switch." — Former Lead Fertility Patient Care Advocate at Progyny, Tegus, 10/13/22"

"The biggest EBIT contributor is Agribusiness oilseed processing. The further down the value chain we go, the higher the unit contribution margin. And the oilseed value chain, in particular, holds significant opportunity for value creation downstream. — CEO, Feb 2017 / May 2017"

"“Here’s what matters... [a]s soon as the judge enters the order, we will be all over the company. If they are not in compliance with the order, we will take action. We will not tolerate what has gone on.” — Lois Greisman, Associate Director, FTC Division of Marketing Practices"

"Every president has been a researcher from Kao, but compared to other companies, it seems that they lack marketing knowledge and management performance (...) the management is unable to provide appropriate marketing direction — Current Employee via Openwork (December 03, 2024)"

"Content costs are not very scalable. The whole idea of Patch was to have local people writing about local stories. This is what brings people to the site. As long as this is the business model, however, you need local bodies on the ground. — Former Patch ad manager, March 2012"

"“Is it unethical? Yes it is.”; “Yes absolutely, we were told to broaden the scope outside the box” – that is, the label; “Yes, that’s definitely off-label for sure. 100%. Did we ever read that in writing? No. Absolutely not.” — Ex-Harmony territory manager for an eastern state"

"“Here’s what matters... [a]s soon as the judge enters the order, we will be all over the company. If they are not in compliance with the order, we will take action. We will not tolerate what has gone on.” — Lois Greisman, Associate Director, FTC Division of Marketing Practices"

"“it’s not for production; it’s for EPL.” — Longtime ex-TSMC procurement executive who introduced Lasertec inspection tools into TSMC. “I want to emphasize that the A150 are going into R&D at the site...mostly R&D.” — Former Lasertec field service engineer at TSMC fab in Taiwan"

"Party B voluntarily accepts the management, direction, and guidance of Party A, shall strictly adhere to the educational ideas, safeguard the brand, refer to the management model, instructional model, and accept Party A's supervision over the quality management of the school."

"The paper states that experiments were run on "the newest generation IonQ quantum processing unit (QPU)," yet the second to last paragraph - buried near the end of a dense 12 page paper - makes an amusing admission: "Note that we restricted the experiments to four qubits....""

"His executive profile at the Potomac Officers Club states that “Chapman obtained his various degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard University Extension School.” His bio in the SPAC pitch deck states that his “career began at 16 in MIT AI Lab…”"

"Another large consolidation play in the U.S. Coal industry was Arch Coal's acquisition of International Coal Group (NYSE: ICG). The $3.4 billion merger was completed in June 2011.(1) Here we also observe that no revaluation was made to the coal inventories upon consolidation."

"AMR acts as if its approaching being "debt-free" and now it’s time to reward shareholders with stock buybacks and a dividend policy. But wait a second, is the Company really debt-free, or has it forgotten about its obligations to other stakeholders beyond financial creditors?"

"Saputo has exhibited the largest increase in Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) among its global set of dairy industry peers. Whereas its DIOs were below average, now they are above industry average. In fact, over the past 4 years, Saputo's DIO have increased by nearly 20 days."

"While this trade worked out well for FMCN insiders, FMCN shareholders did poorly. By Q4 2009, FMCN had written off Allyes by at least $258.4 million (including any amortization of acquired intangibles), which was a loss to shareholders of 87.0% of the original purchase price."

"The result has been dramatically more favorable for TWX's bondholders than stockholders. Since the current management team was installed, the bondholders of TWX have, on an indexed basis, generated a 40% overall return, while the stock has simultaneously lost 8% of its value."

"MSCI may be understating the increased pressures in the index business, notably from Qontigo which has integrated and merged various offerings under Deutsche Börse and was launched in 2019 with backing from private equity powerhouse General Atlantic's $720 million investment."

"Spruce Point believes there are better points in the home purchasing timeline to build stronger relationships with potential home buyers, and through professionals that have developed deeper relationships with customers (eg. Real estate brokers, mortgage brokers and lawyers)."

"We also do not have any means or desire to look at other company's bid or user data; our models use solely behavioral data, ad engagement data, win/loss notifications from mediation (same data shared to any bidder on our platform), and advertiser data to generate predictions."

"An interview of a former Newell manager who worked in the Connected Home & Security (CH&S) business sold to Resideo revealed a strong opinion that the acquisition was troubled with lots of talk from management, but little substance of how the transaction would increase value."

"Only with over 100 launches, well above our estimate of the entire addressable market in 2024/25, and generously holding price constant at $3.75m per launch and giving the company credit for lowering material costs to $1m, does Astra begin to break even on a per rocket basis."

"The move was a bait-and-switch. As alleged by Congressman Gosar and confirmed by numerous transplant centers we interviewed, TransMedics would no longer train hospital staff to use their device, forcing them to pay for its dedicated device technicians, surgeons, and aircraft."

"TransMedics has – and will never have – any opportunity in kidney as 1) only 40% of kidneys are pumped due to cost, despite the pumps being around for decades; 2) LifePort has 85% market share with its kidney pump; and 3) their pump is a third of TransMedics OCS cost at $30K."

"The plan that will be implemented with the election of all seven of our nominees and appointment of our proposed management team is projected to grow EPS from $11.81 (as of 2023) to $21.00 (as of month 36) to ~$23.00 (by FY 2027), a 93.7% earnings increase in just four years."

"The ex-employee indicated that Soleno’s best-case TAM is a mere 10-15% of PWS patients, as younger patients’ hyperphagia is manageable; and older patients tend to be institutionalized and on Medicaid, which won’t pay, leaving Soleno with a small potential niche in the middle."

"Spruce Point interviewed a former Lightspeed employee who was intimately involved in the Lightspeed Payments product, launched in 2019. During the course of our discussion, we heard an opinion that Lightspeed's talk of GTV is "smoke and mirrors" and to "not very transparent.""

"The findings suggest that regional subsidiaries owned by Accor SA and/or local hotels operated through management and franchise agreements by Accor SA have shown willingness to knowingly provide hotel accommodation in circumstances that materially facilitate unlawful conduct."

"We believe a meaningful share of NCAA handle is driven by college students, since Kalshi is 18+ versus OSBs at 21+. The result: Kalshi is capturing would-be DKNG users three years before they can legally bet on sportsbooks, potentially hurting DKNG’s future pipeline of users."

"Spruce believes Kalshi and other prediction market entrants (e.g., Polymarket) represent a much larger threat to DKNG than to Flutter (FLUT). DKNG is almost entirely U.S.-dependent, with ~61% of its total revenue coming from its U.S. sportsbook, compared to just 29% for FLUT."

"“We are committed to and definitely going to be driving $1 billion in revenue for the full year of FY '22. And obviously, as we get closer to that and we get more obviously near-term data, we'll be much more clear about that run rate.” — CEO Aaron Levie, Q2 2019 Earnings Call"

"“The lines are broken. The line is not continuous. It’s break, break, break. Look at the short lines - each duration is very short. They apply some current and then pulse - apply current, wait, apply current, wait, versus continuously increasing the current.” — Leading expert"

"They [Chairman Ding Shizhong and Wu Yonghua] have a controlling stake in those companies, in those distributors. ... They have invested in this company. How to say? That is, they call these companies “subsidiaries” or “branch companies”. — Mr. A (former senior ANTA executive)"

"CEO: "What makes WSP so unique in its ability to convert consistently higher net income into free cash flow." CFO: "Cash management will continue to be a focus, and we expect that our free cash flow will annually exceed our net earnings." — CEO and CFO, Analyst Day, March '22"

"“Obviously, the study was not designed to look at the smaller subgroup of highly inflamed tumor or high expression of PD-L1. Basically, that's the reason we are having a study that did not meet its primary endpoint.” — Fouad Namouni, Oncology Development Head at Bristol-Myers"

"We go to market with Google Cloud. We go to market with AWS. We go to market with NVIDIA. So those all look like market partners. So that is -- so we're using a lot of market leverage to be able to expand into these markets very quickly. — CEO Siebel, Wells Fargo, Dec 2, 2021"

"Founded in 1916, Baker Cheese is known for its high-quality mozzarella string cheese, which is sold in all 50 states. Its cheese production has grown aggressively the past 20 years and Baker Cheese is one of the top string cheese companies in the U.S. — Sargento Press Release"

"In 2023, Chevron’s Management Compensation Committee (MCC) reduced Hearne’s compensation “as a consequence of cost and schedule slippage on major capital project in Kazakhstan, capex overrun in the Permian Basin, and safety performance.” — Chevron Corporation Definitive Proxy"

"I think one thing that was really interesting about Virgin was we were a low-cost carrier—at the same time, we were a high-quality product...especially the kind of touch and feel of our product. And I think what that shows is that you can be both of those things. — David Cush"

"In 2023, Chevron's Management Compensation Committee (MCC) reduced Hearne's compensation "as a consequence of cost and schedule slippage on major capital project in Kazakhstan, capex overrun in the Permian Basin, and safety performance." — Chevron Corporation Definitive Proxy"

"There are two commonly accepted structures for independent leadership to balance the CEO role in the boardroom: 1) an independent Chair; or 2) a Lead Independent Director when the roles of Chair and CEO are combined, or when the Chair is otherwise not independent. — BlackRock"

"Lightsource bp is what I call an execution powerhouse. This is a good example of our ability to develop our pipeline at pace. Let me introduce you now to two colleagues from Lightsource bp [...] — Dev Sanyal, EVP, gas and low carbon energy, BP week, September 2020, Appendix 5"

"“Each surgeon, the less skilled they are, the more you watch them struggle...sometimes the whole room – you’ve got a room of 10 people that are like, ‘What the hell is happening over there?’” — Organ procurement technician at a high-volume Northwest academic transplant center"

""We hold Jamie Boychuk's operating ability in the highest regard based on what he and the team accomplished at CSX, and CNI before that." — Deutsche Bank; "We believe Jamie Boychuk is a very viable Chief Operating Officer candidate with a CN/CSX PSR pedigree..." — Susquehanna"

"Adobe said it plans to expand to territories such as Canada, Australia and Western Europe in 2022. Sheldon told Reuters that the processing deal with PayPal is not exclusive, and as Adobe expands further internationally after 2022, it may work with other processors. — Reuters"

"“I was quite bullish and excited about a couple of years ago, and I'm less so now... we have a lot of good therapies already. There's just not a lot of open running room for Wakix in the setting of narcolepsy.” — Physician and professor of neurology at a large academic center"

"“......And then jobs also I want to emphasize because it's also pretty significant. In the past it's been very fast-growing segment, but in the recent months we are starting to see the impact of a - of a slowing down economy as well.” — WUBA Management (Q4 2018 Earnings Call)"

""So, a lot of that build out for tenants, mostly notably Food Hall at Ashford Lane that is going to commence right here later in the third quarter. But we've got some other projects with other tenants at different centers that are also in process." — CTO Q2 2021 Earnings call"

"The KLA leading-edge optical inspection tool costs maybe $40 or $50 million. The SEM tool costs maybe $5 or $7 million...so the financial setup of optical and the CD-SEM is less money. — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec's CEO"

"Notice how ABML issued a press release that announced a $4.5m DOE grant, whereas days later American Lithium issued the same press release but clarified their role along with another partner. We believe this illustrates how ABML tries to glorify its position in the industry."

"At best, Carvana (CVNA or “the Company”) is a used car dealership masquerading as a high-growth tech business. At worst, it’s an uneconomical subprime auto loan originator being supported by an unknown party willing to purchase subprime auto loans at vastly off-market rates."

"Penumbra is a laggard in BOTH 1) scale and 2) stent retriever quality. The simultaneous growth of bundling and the solumbra technique - even as solumbra expands the market for aspiration catheters - will put Penumbra at a significant competitive disadvantage to larger peers."