Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"Qwest fraudulently recognized over $3.8 billion in revenue and excluded $231 million in expenses as part of a multi-faceted fraudulent scheme to meet optimistic and unsupportable revenue and earnings projections. — SEC Press Release 2004-148"

"“I am familiar with the pitolisant structure”; “very simple compound”; “we had much better compounds based on physical property and drug-like properties than pitolisant. So, we pursued those.” — Longtime senior scientist at Johnson & Johnson"

"Similarweb data shows that Bestmoney.com is the 2nd largest referring website to Remitly. However, on Best Money's website, Remitly is not the most recommended alternative in its three largest corridors of the Philippines, India, or Mexico."

"Moe Tassoudji is listed in a lawsuit related to Club Jenna. According to public sources, Jay Grdina married adult film star Jenna Jameson in 2002 and together they created one of the most successful porn companies in the world – Club Jenna."

"Given SafeCharge’s historical strength around gaming, challenges of cross-selling to service to industries such as retail were expressed by a former employee. In addition, there were challenges expressed around Nuvei’s automation processes."

"While the volume of FIGS Threads for Threads donations has been questioned, management has openly admitted to donating flawed product. This anecdote strikes us as tone deaf and disingenuous. Were these units included in the donation totals?"

"In our opinion, GFL is showing investors an inaccurate measure of its leverage. Per its own IPO Prospectus, its lenders evaluate it on a "Net Funded Debt" measure, and not "Total Gross Debt" as depicted in its recent earnings press release."

"On October 26, 2021, days before his other 10b5-1 stock sale program started, the Chairman & CEO formed the Jagdfeld Giving Foundation for charitable purposes. This certainly makes it appear as if the CEO's stock sales are well intentioned."

"Shareholders need to be comfortable that the operating performance and value of Office Depot will be significantly improved either as a stand-alone company if the deal is not consummated or as a merged company if the deal ultimately closes."

"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."

"Notably, Sonoran increased its funding capacity to $1.4B in Q3 – just as Ally cut its bulk financing capacity (excluding its financing of Sonoran of $350M) from $1.5B to $1.25B, and cut its early termination option from 180 days to 90 days."

"The chart on the right illustrates an essential fact about fiber: providers can generate significantly higher capex yields by spending less capex and only pursuing higher yield projects. We believe Crown Castle has exactly this opportunity."

"Unfortunately, shareholders have suffered greatly during this period as Newell significantly underperformed both the market and the industry benchmark, and destroyed billions of dollars of shareholder value in a positive market environment."

"Interestingly, PetIQ wrote down the value of VIP’s customer relationships twice while finalizing the accounting. Does this reflect that PetIQ received customer pushback against the deal, perhaps due to its potential anticompetitive effects?"

"According to an independent accounting expert, the current 20% stake in OLC means that, under applicable Japanese accounting rules, this stake is valued at an 83% discount to its traded market value - equivalent to US$5.9bn of missing value"

"Starboard's average return on a 13D filing is 26.4% (versus an average of 9.7% for the S&P500 during the same time periods). However, when they have received a board seat, their average 13D return has been 34.5% versus 14.8% for the S&P500."

"Identified major issues with serving food at inappropriate temperatures, so developed “Hot food go, can’t say no” motto, helping to drive improvement in food temperature scores from 32% to 68%, which greatly improved the overall experience."

"VW feedback suggests QS is feeding them scraps of cherry-picked information, which fuels skepticism among VW’s engineers – test cells are behaving in an instable manner; internal commentary that test results they see are not representative."

"Interviews with experts and ex-employees lead us to believe that the ceramic separator QS is using is LLZO, which is far more expensive to manufacture than the separators used by competing solid-state efforts: “they’re not cost competitive”"

"Abbott management is aware that, given current G-Series prices and its own production cost advantages, offering the Libre at a lower price point allows it to take overwhelming incremental market share while still earning attractive margins."

"Hess has an interesting set of assets that have not yielded competitive shareholder returns over time. And they ought to. Working with the Board to refocus Hess in order to deliver returns to shareholders represents an exciting opportunity."

"Ambry Genetics was acquired at a notable discount relative to other advanced genetic and molecular diagnostic testing companies, despite the entire peer group, including Ambry, showing double-digit sales growth and EBITDA margins above 10%."

"I think energy investors are really focused on pure play companies that are focused on core businesses that are efficient, well run and superior capital allocation. Right? Investing and growing empires rarely is awarded in the energy space."

"uLab also plans to support clear aligner design for third-party labs in addition to in-house 3D printing. We anticipate that such software improvements could also encourage greater interest in third-party labs among current Align customers."

"We believe pursuing JV structures is the most prudent step for Macy's at this time to create significant value for shareholders given the wide discrepancy between the value of the real estate and the current enterprise value of the Company."

"Twist is essentially locked out of larger customers like big pharma, who revealed a critical reason why they can't use Twist in the clinic, where the real volumes and revenue are, and why its claim of a "high-throughput" platform is absurd."

"We believe GE can reach 18% operating margins through (i) a recovery in equipment profit margins to historical levels, (ii) stable improvement in the services portfolio over the next few years and (iii) a modest reduction in corporate costs"

"Kratos is trading at peak valuation on the inflated belief that “this time is different” and that its aspirations in the heavily promoted unmanned systems (aka: Drones) will drive nearly $800m of revenues and near record 10% EBITDA margins."

"To circumvent this sandbox, APP inserts the CRT into the “webview” where ads run. This makes the CRT available to user click events or other interactions which point to the Shopify site; thereby making the CRT accessible to the web browser."

"Ballard's press releases and the local government officials would have you believe they have produced 300 FCV buses. The reality is that they have likely produced less than 50 buses to date and only 11 of those are licensed and on the road."

"Once again, Amdocs appears to be taking the same steps which management allegedly took in the early 2000s to cover up potential evidence of business contraction: report consistent growth in Company headcount to corroborate claims of growth."

"Even through today, Disney has underperformed over every relevant period over the last decade...outside of the period since news broke of Trian’s increased beneficial ownership in Disney shares and expected request for Board representation."

"Phillips 66 has failed to grow their G&P business like their competitors. With a higher cost of capital and a poor in-house engineering function, the midstream business must pursue dilutive M&A to try to correct their own self caused issue."

"Either Phillips 66 thinks it is reasonable to pay a >50% premium to its own valuation for midstream assets, thereby destroying value, or it is fully paying for synergies in its own midstream acquisitions. Not so "unrealistic" as they claim."

"The “wholesale” price paid by distributors for Herbalife products does not allow for meaningful Retail Profits. As a result, a distributor’s only real chance to earn the money promised in Herbalife distributor presentations is by recruiting"

"Statistically, it is highly unlikely that any new Distributor will cross the gap from bottom to top. The precise statistics require knowing the relative turnover rates in the top and bottom segments. HLF provides minimal data on these rates"

"We find it disappointing that management wants a “free” pass on the 2012 earnings re-set and does not take responsibility for the events that brought it on, specifically a reduction in advertising that spurred a need for brand reinvestment."

"Phillips 66 has failed to grow their G&P business like their competitors. With a higher cost of capital and a poor in-house engineering function, the midstream business must pursue dilutive M&A to try to correct their own self caused issue."

"To avoid admitting a large miss, management has recently started saying that “to get to its mid-cycle EBITDA Phillips 66 needs adjusted gross margin of 14.50/bbl,” a level that even Valero (best-in-class operator) is not expected to achieve"

"Either Phillips 66 thinks it is reasonable to pay a >50% premium to its own valuation for midstream assets, thereby destroying value, or it is fully paying for synergies in its own midstream acquisitions. Not so "unrealistic" as they claim."

"We find the recent departures of relatively longer-tenured executives concerning: perhaps it's simply part of the recent changing of the guard, but the Hill-Rom executive team is now seriously lacking in continuity just as it needs it most."

"The complex multi-step logistics involve several independent moving parts, each affected by different factors (traffic, accidents, variable road conditions), so timing and reliability are going to necessarily be inferior to direct shipping."

"Large BLI customers are unhappy and not referenceable accounts; level of dissatisfaction with BLI is an outlier relative to other vendors they use; customers generally rate BLI’s system at 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, based on scorecard results."

"Current management's response to our Value Unlock Plan has been inflexible and defensive, showing instead that they prefer to do nothing new to improve performance and to optimize shareholder value from BHP's first-class portfolio of assets"

"Not only do we believe ROAD's backlog reporting to be extremely aggressive, we observe that a greater percentage of backlog is low bid / no contract at the same time the percent of backlog to be completed in the next 12 months is declining."

"Elliott has nominated four highly experienced and respected technology industry executives who share the view that BMC is underperforming and undervalued and who will work to explore all strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value."

"In addition to its incredibly stable and secure cash flows, TIP REIT has strong growth prospects, given its initial 2-year exclusive right as Target Corp’s land developer and its formal Preferred Vendor Agreement with Target Corp thereafter"

"Spruce Point observes unusual and unexplained changes to REZI's property disclosures between 2023 and 2024. Our suspicion is that REZI used its discretion to allocate greater overhead costs to the P&S segment to flatter ADI segment margins."

"Spruce Point views the pending legal battle as a sign of PBH's poor business practices to not uphold its end of the obligation and worst-case scenario is part of a last-ditch effort to preserve cash as revenue and cost pressure intensifies."

"In contrast to the market's predilection for ascribing tremendous value to anything that looks remotely like a "subscription", we believe investors are wrong to point to Heska's subscription consumables business as a unique source of value."

"The FTC's complaint alleges that Northrop's proposed acquisition of Orbital ATK would have reduced competition in the market for missile systems purchased by the U.S. government, resulting in less innovation and higher prices for taxpayers."

"Spruce Point does not believe that CLEAR should be valued like a technology company with a strong subscription based recurring revenue model simply for the fact that it is mostly comprised of low-paid "brand ambassadors" and field managers."

"Without explaining why or how, Morgan Stanley assumes that the average athena doctor will catch up to the national average, and that athena won't offer sliding scale discounts to higher-billing doctors. This appears to be a modelling error."

"Even through today, Disney has underperformed over every relevant period over the last decade...outside of the period since news broke of Trian’s increased beneficial ownership in Disney shares and expected request for Board representation."

"TMDX’s entire “inner circle” appears to have done all of part of their medical training at these two schools: the CEO, the Chief Commercial Officer; the head of its liver program and “Medical Director” who oversees its surgeons; and others."

"The UK businesses (£3.92bn revenue) are much larger than Greyhound (£0.65bn revenue), and we believe the operational benefits of a UK turnaround are far greater than the potential upside from Greyhound that may be foregone from a sale today"

"Since launch of PS4, Sony's gaming business has deviated from the historical cyclical pattern (i.e. revenue declines starting in years #4 and #5 of the cycle); in the PS4 cycle, Sony's revenue growth has actually accelerated in year #4 / #5"

"I think that the severity of edema and cardiac risk probably is being underplayed. The risks are real and significant, and probably underplayed to some degree, and the benefit is mild at best...I am a little bit surprised about the approval"

"Soleno’s trial investigators broadly repudiated HQ-CT as an outcome measure, as detailed in interview chapters, indicating that: parents exaggerated scores to meet HQ-CT inclusion criteria, with scores clustering around the entry threshold."

"We find subtle evidence of challenges faced, but not adequately disclosed, at Lightspeed. The Company reported negative stock compensation, and footnoted that it was related to cancelled options for departed employees in the R&D department."