Callouts & quotes from 3,960+ activist slides

"We believe Bent Tree Properties is a company that provides land acquisition services. Land acquisition companies generally work under contract to secure land or mineral rights and then subsequently transfer those rights to the underlying investor or company."

"ECP provided Sungevity with project financing in 2013. The loan was repaid in December 2016, three months before the Company filled for bankruptcy protection. ECP exited Sungevity at the perfect time. We believe it is wise to follow the activity of insiders."

"It is this strategy, coupled with expanded trading, that has driven what we believe is essentially a modestly profitable (at a smaller scale) trading business to take on crushing debt levels and, in our opinion, destroy substantial amounts of investor funds."

"When shareholders sued Amdocs in 2002, included among the allegations was a charge that the Company “misled the market to believe that Toes Corporation was merely an unaffiliated shareholder,” not a group of Amdocs employees. — Shareholder Lawsuit Allegation"

"Greenlight believes both anecdotal evidence and methodological valuation flaws suggest that Allied’s portfolio investments have not been marked to current “fair value” according to Allied’s own standards or as required by the Investment Company Act of 1940."

"Dexcom recently amended its licensing agreement with Google whereby royalty payments were replaced by an up-front payment of $250M in DXCM shares. We believe this reflects Verily's loss of confidence in Dexcom's ability to come to market in a timely manner."

"The Company is arbitrarily selecting the ONLY time period in recent history where relative TSR against performance peers has performed better. We believe this is a blatant attempt to mislead shareholders on the Company's track record of dismal relative TSR."

"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"

"Spruce Point believes it is a major red flag when a company stops being able to provide Free Cash Flow (FCF) guidance. We observe this happened after the departure of CFO Young in mid 2020. In the year he left, BR missed FCF guidance by an astounding 15.3%."

"Spruce Point has analyzed REZI’s guidance practices since coming public. We find a notable reduction in guidance practices starting in 2024 and accelerating into 2025. We believe this shift undermines confidence in the long-term visibility for the business."

"We believe that NICE's acquisition of inContact put it in position to increase share as customers demanded broader cloud capabilities. Meanwhile, Verint's acquisition of KANA simply expanded its suite of products without transforming its cloud capabilities."

"“[We] believe that our integrated business model generates the highest long-term value...So we’re committed to that” — Mark Lashier, March 6, 2025; “We can be bigger than that and we can be better than that” — Mark Lashier (on Bloomberg News), April 8, 2025"

"“Beware of hyper promotional technology companies throwing spaghetti on the wall to find a business model. We will explain why we believe Porch.com is the mirror image of The Active Network, a successful short from years past.” — Ben Axler, CIO Spruce Point"

"As discussed on slide 9, we believe HMHC's stock would have been higher after the announcement of strong Q4 results leading to a share price at or above $19.50 per share, implying an insufficient premium of 7.7% instead of the 36% advertised by the Company"

"We have a more sober view of Axon’s valuation as we believe there is ample room for disappointment around Axon’s ability to penetrate adjacent software needs of law enforcement, including dispatch, records management, and artificial intelligence analytics."

"According to an expert, due to nationalistic pride of wanting to partner with Amazon, we believe there will be fiercer competition resulting in: 1) Lower margins to Kornit or, 2) A complete loss of the business to a Japanese firm with more local resources."

"Spruce Point believes there is significant downside risk to MSCI’s share price as its premium multiple is reconsidered by institutional investors in the face of intensifying competition, moderating cash flow and dividend growth, and lower earnings quality."

"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."

"Spruce Point believes there is significant downside risk to PERI’s share price as the Company is signaling financial strain and will have difficulty in hitting lofty growth targets while cash flow is starting to contract and it accrues for severance costs."

"A majority of the BR stock promoters are neutral / hold with their BR recommendations. Yet, we don't believe any of the analysts have conducted a rigorous forensic review of the Company to stress test its accounting and claims of being a SaaS-like fintech."

"In general, we believe that there is strong evidence that vertical integration between content and distribution companies has had limited, if any success. — Morgan Stanley (Richard Bilotti, The Sum of the Parts is Greater than the Whole, December 15, 2005)"

"In general, we believe that there is strong evidence that vertical integration between content and distribution companies has had limited, if any success. — Richard Bilotti, The Sum of the Parts is Greater Than the Whole, Morgan Stanley, December 15, 2005."

"Spruce Point believes DY's margins are not likely sustainable and may have benefited from various actions that may be difficult to continue. As further evidence of our concern, management has walked back talk of what its long-term EBITDA margin should be."

"While PowerSchool touts the depth of its student data, we believe it must adhere to laws governing use of this data. We will illustrate areas we believe the Company is at high risk of running afoul of its obligations to protect and safeguard student data."

"Analysts have proven to be overly optimistic about Maxar’s results, often taking management’s word at face value and extrapolating results. Estimates have been slowly coming down, but we believe they are still too optimistic with further room to contract."

"Kate has failed to successfully grow outside of Japan. Given the interest in Japanese beauty brands among foreign consumers and acquisitions of Japanese cosmetics brands by Western rivals, we believe Kate has an opportunity to establish a global presence."

"TASK is the only company among its peers that we could identify trying to sell investors on COVID-19 related expense adjustments to improve EBITDA and EPS. Analysts aren't asking any questions or pushing back on what we believe are aggressive adjustments."

"Although we believe there are a number of attractive alternatives for Macy’s to create substantial value for shareholders and remain investment grade, we believe the most prudent first step is to create multiple JVs for the majority of Macy’s real estate."

"am I going to go to the mat and do an appeal and do all this extra stuff and work super hard for a drug that I don't believe is all that powerful or effective to begin with? No, it's just not a strong enough medicine to put in that much additional effort."

"Shopify has recently added a section in its Help Center for “Migrating from Lightspeed to Shopify”. We believe this to be another signal of the increasing competition between Lightspeed and Shopify, a battle we believe Shopify is better positioned to win."

"The material overpayment for the Brazil assets relative to their profitability and risks lead us to believe that AMT should be forced to impair its intangible assets and/or goodwill by US$274 million, or 28% of the combined amounts paid for acquisitions."

"We believe Procept mischaracterizes the landscape for BPH procedures, both by suggesting that resective surgical procedures can displace drugs and MISTs and that Aquablation has the potential to be the "one-size-fits-all" treatment for all BPH sufferers."

"The sell side believes that Dexcom's target U.S. market is 25% penetrated, leaving significant room for continued CGM adoption. However, under Spruce Point's view of Dexcom's optimal market opportunity, Dexcom's current market is already ~50% penetrated."

"We believe Samsara customer churn will increase over the coming year, as the large number of SMBs who signed up for ELD products to satisfy the government mandate come up for renewal in a starkly different macroeconomic and telematics market environment."

"We believe the promotion behind Resideo Technologies is a series of disappointments. The latest evolution as a split-up story to unlock value becomes an even greater “trust me” story with the current management team that previously failed to hit targets."

"“The safety and well-being of patients is of the utmost importance to Pfizer, and we believe this action is in the best interest of patients,” said Aida Habtezion, Chief Medical Officer and Head of Worldwide Medical and Safety at Pfizer. — Aida Habtezion"

"“We believe PSX's business should justify a premium valuation relative to the group, given its chemical and midstream businesses should warrant a significant multiple uplift when compared to traditional refining assets…” — Raymond James, October 27, 2023"

"“We believe PSX's business should justify a premium valuation relative to the group, given its chemical and midstream businesses should warrant a significant multiple uplift when compared to traditional refining assets…” — Raymond James, October 27, 2023"

"“We believe PSX's business should justify a premium valuation relative to the group, given its chemical and midstream businesses should warrant a significant multiple uplift when compared to traditional refining assets…” — Raymond James, October 27, 2023"

"Spruce Point believes sell-side analysts and investors are not factoring in multiple issues that will likely cause Generac to severely miss its lofty financial expectations and/or should factor into Generac receiving a lower valuation relative to peers."

"To believe the IPX story and The Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction ("HAMR") process, you must believe that a small team led by Australian mining executives discovered a process that has been overlooked for years by the global titanium industry."

"We believe that the “Factory” is an epic hoax, and think that it is little more than a ruse to conceal an additional $100MM of losses by misclassifying COGS and operating expense as capital expenditures – one of the oldest accounting frauds in the book."

"Spruce Point believes omitting a clearly identifiable 10.71% minority interest in a principal subsidiary undermines the reliability of the Company’s financial reporting and risks overstating EBITDA, profits, and cash flow available to SGHC shareholders."

"Wats, K, et al, The Convergent AF Ablation Procedure: Evolution of a Multidisciplinary Approach to AF Management We extensively reviewed the references used in this study and believe that the characterization of many references was sloppy. — Footnote 13"

"Without the surplus emergency funding that supported excessive spending for the past three years, and facing weak economic growth, inflation, and rising labor costs, we believe K-12 district leaders will be forced to make difficult budgeting decisions."

"We believe a clear and publicly communicated, value creation-oriented and aspirational plan tailored to DND’s opportunity set will be instrumental in attracting and retaining highly skilled talent and creating value for shareholders over the long term."

"WD-40 talks about its market dominance and great market position. Spruce Point believes it is a market that others chose to largely underinvest in because there either isn’t enough growth, or its not financially attractive enough to deepen the channel."

"Despite little discussion of competition in China from Ballard, Spruce Point believes that the “Sinohytec chain” is best positioned to capture the China fuel cell opportunity given relationships with influential research universities and manufacturers."

"We believe Axon should be valued relative to traditional weapons and firearms manufacturers and connected device and location electronics companies, not high growth SaaS peers with bigger TAMs, lower business risks, and proven recurring revenue models."

"Spruce Point was early in identifying the disruption from prediction exchanges for the legacy online sports betting operators. We believe the rising popularity of prediction markets is also a growth impediment for Super Group's sports betting business."

"The striking absence of dedicated finance, treasury, HR, legal, or other G&A staff in LinkedIn searches makes it apparent to us that Allonnia is controlled and run by Ginkgo as a captive entity, with no purpose we believe except to create fake revenue."

"Spruce Point believes LSPD is opaque and does not give investors enough information to evaluate its business model. For example, management admits it tracks CAC, LTV, monthly retention and churn. Yet, why doesn't it disclose these metrics to investors?"

"Procept proclaims its vision is to become "the BPH Treatment of Choice For All Prostates", but urologists with whom we spoke believed such a statement amounted to exaggerated marketing hype, and we believe that such a vision is unlikely to be realized."

"Spruce Point believes our assumptions are conservative given there is a good chance the state litigation ends up at SCOTUS, allowing Kalshi to operate at least through 2026. In our base case, we estimate DraftKings risks missing 2026 revenue by ~15.0%."

"Elliott believes such measures would create in excess of EUR 7 billion of value, representing more than 35% upside for Sampo shareholders, and would restore market confidence and reinforce management’s reputation for delivering value-creating outcomes"

"As part of its false advertising lawsuit against FIGS, SPI alleges that FIGS misrepresented the volume of its donations. We note the challenges faced by a start-up giving away half its product and believe FIGS' responses in discovery lack credibility."

"We have shown that both GFL's operating cash flow and capital expenditures do not reconcile. As a result, we believe its free cash flow is also potentially misstated. We believe adjusted H1 2020 free cash flow burn was ~60% worse than reported by GFL."

"We believe that because WTRG cannot cover its dividend with free cash flow, money raised from investors through these programs could essentially be used to pay back the same and other investors dividends, or “taking from Peter, to pay Peter and Paul.”"

"Even if we’re wrong on both the value of the standalone operating opportunity and the transaction value, we believe shareholders will still make money owning FDO due to the company’s attractive growth opportunities and modest forward earnings multiple"

"If investors are hoping that Zebra’s autonomous mobile robots will provide it industry expansion opportunities, we believe they will be sorely disappointed. Fetch previously offered robots for research and cleaning but has discontinued these products."