Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

""Shrimp inflation is expected to stay at the current high level because of production issues in Asia." — Buckingham, March 21, 2014; "Commodity Outlook Should be Favorable in FY15 as Shrimp Pressures Ease." — Sterne Agee, March 21, 2014"

"EBITDA add-backs. Very aggressive; includes uncapped pro forma cost savings, synergies and operating expense reductions resulting from transactions and expected to be taken within 18 months, determined in good faith by Parent. — Moody's"

"“We’re well positioned to drive growth; you’ll see that. Look, by ourselves, we think we have a 15% to 20% growth... There are long-term growth drivers that are pertinent to the market on an overall basis.” — 2011 Analyst Day (1/7/2011)"

"I did that for six years, and then I retired. I was retired for about 11 years when I was called by Danimer to come conduct a turnaround because the company was near bankruptcy. — Croskrey Witness Transcript, August 13, 2019 Proceedings"

"When I first thought about the reasons why we exist, I thought about the value for our users, but afterwards I understood that it's just: neoclouds exist because Nvidia needs another distribution channel. — Former Nebius project manager"

"It's a little bit wait and see...I've been using off-label GLP-1s in this space a little bit recently. I don't know if you've encountered that with any of the people that you've spoken to. — Endocrinologist based in NYC, 15 PWS patients"

"“really it's just the two outer housings, that are different, and maybe a slight compromise in overall performance, if we had separate engines, we could have slightly better weight overall” — Alan Tepe, Archer Manager of Inverter Design"

""In brief, we believe the program has been a success across multiple categories: energy savings, job creation, job training, and improvements to classroom environments." — Final report describing the Proposition 39 Clean Energy Jobs Act"

"“molten tin that splashes everywhere” with “puddles in the air” that “coat everything,” with “no way out” of the problem via attempts at “debris mitigation.” — Former KLA executive in a leadership role in their EUV mask inspection group"

"10/28/15: Q3'15 earnings miss on SSS, EPS headwinds due to higher D&A & margin dilution from franchisee acquisitions (labor, low sales, training). Guided to "single digit" net earnings growth in FY'15 and 20% in FY'16. Shares fell ~17%"

"Rate base growth potential is a key investor marketing pitch used by WTRG to show upside in its business. We find that Peoples is falling behind expectations for rate base growth and projections have quietly been cut by $100m per year."

"Generac's multiple is still elevated from its Pre-COVID expansion. Based on aggressive consensus estimates, clean energy will comprise just 7% of 2022E total revenues, not material enough to cause a wholesale re-rating of its multiple."

"New Board members with substantial retail, operating, and turnaround experience are desperately needed to transform Office Depot and set it on the right path for future success regardless of whether the OfficeMax Merger is consummated."

"New Board members with substantial retail, operating, and turnaround experience are desperately needed to transform Office Depot and put it on the right path for future success regardless of whether the OfficeMax Merger is consummated."

"With ABML promoting its ability to become a leader in battery recycling within the state of Nevada, we find it curious that its Chief Resource Officer Scott Jolcover is also a consultant to Comstock Mining in "commercial transactions"."

"We question how AMT’s towers can be positioned to capture incremental growth when, according to their President, CEO, and Chairman, the vast majority of their towers are not located where the people generating the increased demand are."

"Kuo Wei (Herbert) Chang was Monolithic's largest shareholder at IPO and continues today to serve on the Board. His involvement with prior public companies Oplink, BCD Semiconductor and Marvell Technology all merit significant scrutiny."

"The contrived phrasing suggests that Quantumscape is trying to mislead investors into thinking that this is the first time they’ve made multi-layer cells, when all they’re saying is that this is the first time they’re talking about it."

"NQ Yu Lin: We have responded many times to similar questions before. To put it simply, NQ and many cell phone companies, such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Coolpad, Gionee and oppo, have long-term collaborations on software pre-installation."

"Legacy MDA missed its own revenue and EBITDA estimate by a staggering $115m and $19m, respectively. MAXR also made an accounting change to boost DigitalGlobe’s sales and EBITDA, so the disappointment was even worse than we illustrated."

"We believe that lingering stigma around entering such environments could slow dental office activity for months into the future, given that the disease itself is not expected to disappear until later this year at the absolute earliest."

"Notice that in Alpha Natural’s two largest acquisitions of Massey Energy and Foundation Coal there were virtually no adjustments in the value of the acquired coal inventories. This was under CEO Kevin Crutchfield’s leadership of Alpha."

"Vitasoy is a globally recognized player in plant-based drinks, with a strong presence in Asia and China. It has nearly a billion dollars of sales and strong profitability. The Company recently announced it would launch a new Oat drink."

"We believe that although third-party ownership will not disappear as the market continues to shift towards loans, companies such as Sunnova that rely heavily on volume and economics of third-party ownership will be negatively affected."

"GTT obfuscated its negative organic growth rates of -8.7% and -7.7% in 2017 and 2018, respectively, by not providing financials for what it characterizes as “immaterial acquisitions” and “asset purchases of certain customer contracts.”"

"Twist explicitly states that the facility is for “DNA Data Storage,” not manufacturing, which it lists as the use case only for its South San Francisco HQ – contradicting numerous statements the CEO has made about its intended purpose."

"Investors are likely extrapolating past performance incorrectly. The MBA tuition levels at three colleges launched between March 2016 and January 2018 are at price points that are ~40% ($38,500) lower than 2U's original three programs."

"We believe the HIMS platform is designed and optimized to generate prescriptions for low-risk drugs. We believe these issues present a serious obstacle to expanding into more treatment-intensive and higher stakes health practice areas."

"We are concerned that Amdocs is not only capitalizing expenses, but parking them in an unamortized account, thus avoiding any expenses which it would otherwise incur through either direct expensing or amortization of capitalized costs."

"By baking gains from disposals of fixed assets into its “Purchase of property and equipment” line, management is presenting a superficially deflated capex figure, and hiding it by failing to disclose that they are presenting net capex."

"Disney fails to set challenging financial performance targets (70% of annual bonus), including negative free cash flow targets in FY 2021 & 2022 and targets well below consensus estimates when comp plans for the year are made ('20-'23)"

"Elliott believes Phillips 66 is deeply undervalued. We see $19bn of trapped value relative to sum-of-the-parts value of its assets and another $7bn of value from improved operations and additional value from the sale of non-core assets"

"How does Mettler attract and retain the most talented employees when its stock compensation expense per employee is the lowest in its industry by a significant margin, and it appears to avoid granting equity to rank and file employees?"

"Mettler claims that it has a diversified customer base, with no single end-customer accounting for 1% of sales. However, we believe Pitney Bowes is s meaningful customer that accounts for about 6% of Mettler's annual imports by weight."

"PERI made a suspicious change to its disclosures of rented servers. In the recently filed 20-F, it changed its historical disclosure from "approximately 1,000" to "thousands" which indicates a multiplicative increase of server rentals."

"We believe the merits of the plaintiffs' lawsuit are strong and believe there is a high degree of probability that the Court will rule in their favor requiring Forward Air to hold a pre-closing shareholder vote on the Omni acquisition."

"The role of the CEO is to run the company. The role of the Board is to provide independent oversight of the CEO. Therefore, in general terms, there is an inherent conflict of interest for a CEO to act as her/his own oversight as Chair."

"This view appears to completely contravene U.S. GAAP, which provides that “if a business is expected to lose money for a sustained period, the inventory shall not be written down to offset a loss inherent in the subsequent operations.”"

"The field is 'very skeptical and rightfully so'; can't get BLI data through peer view; software bugs; contamination issues; doesn't recommend the tool and not suited for commercial pharma/biotech customers; unusable by most scientists."

"Spruce Point believes all of Rubicon Project's growth opportunities have petered out or failed to materialize. This explains why we believe it needed to seek a merger partner in Telaria, which had at least one revenue driver being CTV."

"Regardless, it does strike us as an interesting coincidence that Kanovich and Singer funded these payments at the same time DLO sent $38.7 million to purchase the assets of PrimeiroPay – and the $38.7 million was actually a prepayment."

"APP claims to be able to deliver performance targeting without PII. However, its code collects and structures IDs and other information from across many major platforms including Shopify, Google, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, TikTok, etc."

"It is self-evident that Huue could only “leverage Ginkgo’s platform” if it’s plied with cash that will be recycled back as fictitious revenue, and we question whether it’s even an active startup or a carcass being exploited as a front."

"How convenient that management writes down contingent consideration liabilities as though it overestimated the performance of its acquisitions, while at the same time demonstrably underrepresenting their likely revenue contributions..."

"The recent fall in many commodities has surprised me. It has turned out that over several years, sharply rising commodity prices and low interest rates created a boom in investment, and excess supply in everything from iron ore to oil."

"Disney fails to set challenging financial performance targets (70% of annual bonus), including negative free cash flow targets in FY 2021 & 2022 and targets well below consensus estimates when comp plans for the year are made ('20-'23)"

"Rather than writing down the recovery from the case, BUR reported the loss as a “net loss on equity securities”, making it highly likely that few – if any – investors ever became aware that the reported ROIC and IRR of Napo was a sham."

"On the surface, and taking management's headline numbers, everything looks great. But, cash flow is stalling out, while USCR's dependency on "adjustments" to engineer earnings growth rise. Q1'2018 results are showing significant strain"

"The ex-employee expressed “shock” that anyone took these organs: “I’ve had a lot of organs that were refused by the initial center...’We actually don’t want it’...that usually boiled down to withdrawal time...or the pathology results”."

"If the new streaming platforms are trying to "expand the TAM" by lowering total costs, then the subscription services would need to be priced at a *discount* to the current hardware cost ($17 / month for PC, and $7 / month for console)"

"Following the spin-off of beverages and creation of a pure-play confectionary business in 2007, Cadbury increased its 2010 operating profit margin to a level 400 bps above what Wall Street analysts had forecast prior to the separation."

"As we shall show, danger due to pitolisant’s drug-drug interactions is inevitable and unavoidable, as it interacts strongly with medications like SSRI’s and other antidepressants that are widely prescribed for narcolepsy and cataplexy."

"The latest installment of Elliott's Streamline66 podcast features Michael Heim, who has a long record of leadership in the energy industry as a founder of Targa Resources, one of the most successful Permian-focused midstream operators."

"The conclusions in the 60-page report were received were damning and we interpret them as indicating that the claims are fraudulent with red flags, discrepancies, contradictions, and omissions that suggest an intent to mislead the FDA."

"However, we believe this arbitrage is firstly unsustainable and secondly about to fall apart, because our findings imply that IIPR will in fact have to finance the 2020 dividend from capital raises or reduce the dividend substantially."

"Accordingly, if the alleged exploitation of minors were shown to be linked to a broader organized pattern directed against civilians from occupied territory, these categories could become relevant as a matter of legal characterization."

"First, it was reported by Jining Daily that according to [Shandong Province] Jining City Rencheng District local finance regulator in February 2017, both Tangren Capital and Taihe Capital did not obtain business operating certificates."

""the new management of that coal business may want to continue to expand and continue to produce coal long beyond the time frames and horizons that we put out in our commitments" — Glencore CEO Gary Nagle, Bloomberg, December 3rd, 2021"

"IPX said in its quarterly filing "During the quarter, approximately 84 acres of optioned properties were exercised and converted into long-term leases and approximately 616 acres of optioned properties were extinguished." — IPX filings"

"We’re not just a refining company. We shouldn’t be viewed just through a refining lens, whether it’s our balance sheet or whether it’s our earnings and earnings volatility. We are diversified on purpose. — Mark Lashier, January 7, 2025"