Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"“McDonald’s is a poor performing restaurant company in need of a turnaround” — Market perception (2002-2003). “McDonald’s is a global brand business with strong momentum and significant cash flows” — Market perception (Today)."

""Total revenue of $115.9 million was up 220% year-over-year thanks to a combination of strong organic growth and the recent acquisitions of ShopKeep, Upserve and Vend, which added $50.5 million in revenue." — Q1 2022 Conf Call"

"SPCM question: “Does it make sense to assume that hospitals pay the smaller invoices for handpieces faster than they pay the larger invoices for systems?” “...your logic makes sense to me...” — Former Procept Manager, Nov 2024"

"Absent these extreme, and often repeated restructuring measures, Spruce Point estimates AVY’s Adjusted Free Cash Flow would be approximately $265m, or a 13% decline from 2019 – continuing its multi-year cash flow contraction."

"Absent these extreme, and often repeated restructuring measures, Spruce Point estimates AVY's Adjusted Free Cash Flow would be approximately $265m, or a 13% decline from 2019 – continuing its multi-year cash flow contraction."

"Spruce Point questions why Generac continues to own a motor racing interest through Pramac as a listed subsidiary. The racing business introduces unique risks to Generac such as its recent association with Italy's Alma Group."

"Our opinion as to why AMT refuses to disclose the MLAs is that it views such transparency as an enemy – that if investors had access to more information, they would not be willing to pay anywhere near the current share price."

"If the aspiration catheter is so low-tech that its role can be satisfied by cheaper existing products, why should Penumbra expect to maintain a premium price as neurovascular aspiration thrombectomies become more commonplace?"

"We believe Canadian Tire’s reported EPS does not reflect its underlying organic growth. By removing what we believe are unsustainable benefits to EPS, the gap between our Spruce Point adjusted EPS and the reported EPS widens."

"We believe Canadian Tire's reported EPS does not reflect its underlying organic growth. By removing what we believe are unsustainable benefits to EPS, the gap between our Spruce Point adjusted EPS and the reported EPS widens."

"We believe our plan could create total value of $54 to $64 per share compared to ~$28 per share in the proposed transaction, while retaining operating control and the prospect of receiving a true control premium in the future"

"These results have rightfully led investors to dismiss the Company's subsequent targets - not based on their estimation of the opportunity, but on their estimation of the management team's ability to achieve its stated goals."

"Management offered this explanation because they twice assumed investors are stupid – first when FMCN claimed to have 27,164 theaters, and then when management thought it could redefine the plain English meaning of “theater.”"

"Red flag 1: QS once again resorts to tricks and gimmicks, some buried in the fine print, which indicates that its 3x3cm prototype was actually charged at a sizzling 30 °C (86 °F) and only then discharged at a low temperature."

"Claiming a breakthrough off a single layer sample is like using one transistor in 1940 to say you built an Intel CPU – "It means they don't have good multilayer data"; cracked cells, short circuits from dendrites when stacked"

"With thousands of customers running jobs “every week” at a price of “several thousand” per hour, we would expect $100MM+ revenue. Yet, IONQ reported only $451K of YTD revenue around the time the claims were made in late 2021."

"As the G6 as released in June 2018, Q2 reflected only one months' worth of G6-related sales at most. Would this have been sufficient to drive the accelerated growth? If so, why didn't transmitter sales grow at a similar rate?"

"PowerSchool claims that Amy McIntosh is an "independent" director. However, we question her fitness to the Board given her director role at EAB Global, a reseller owned by Vista Equity, the largest voting control shareholder."

"According to BlackRock, it is in the best interest of their clients to have their capital invested in a company whose CEO has a serious criminal record for falsifying the financial statement of another publicly listed company"

"Twist is unable to scale; their chip's inability to produce sufficient amounts of single pieces of DNA causes major downstream manufacturing problems, resulting in high mutation rates; inconsistency; and poor turnaround times"

"Assuming PF McDonald’s owns the land and building of 37% of its system wide units and owns the buildings of 22% of its system wide units, then a preliminary valuation of McDonald’s real estate suggests a value of $33 billion."

"Spruce Point believes that current market data services fail to account for significant dilutive securities (options and RSUs), new operating lease commitments, and the liability to the Digital Transformation Institute (DTI)."

"If Amdocs is in fact a “tech” company with significant technology assets, why was its personal computer count flat for the past decade? And why did management decide to stop disclosing this key metric in its most recent 20-F?"

"We find that as international expansion increased since 2018, the DSOs widened. This could indicate that Monster was more promotional or offering extended payment terms or otherwise is taking longer to collect from customers."

"The Board is making the serious mistake of not maximizing the opportunity to repurchase its undervalued shares today so that it has the option to pursue M&A post-2025 when it’s not even clear recent M&A has created any value."

"We believe Huntsman should both explore ways to transition customers away from raw material-indexed contracts, and concurrently develop a plan to transition volumes away from end markets that predominantly use such contracts."

"The RBOCs are currently courting consumers with aggressive prices. Verizon and AT&T currently offer introductory DSL rates of as low as $15 per month for the first year, less than AOL charges for its standard dial-up service."

"Per Herbalife’s rules, “the purchase of products primarily as an attempt to qualify for advancement in the Marketing Plan is not permitted;” yet, Powell purchases just enough Personal Volume each month to advance up the chain"

"Incomes applicable to the individuals (or examples) depicted [are] not average. For average financial performance data, see the Statement of Average Gross Compensation of U.S. Supervisors at Herbalife.com and MyHerbalife.com."

"If a plan purports to sell a product or service, check to see whether its price is inflated, whether new members must buy costly inventory, or whether members make most “sales” to other members rather than the general public."

"Perion cites awards related to its SORT® cookieless technology, but when we investigated the awards carefully and evaluated the criteria, we identified numerous concerns about the rigor and relevance of the award recognition."

"We believe releasing the GSEs from conservatorship could generate ~$300 billion for taxpayers, while maintaining the same availability and affordability of mortgage financing that exists today with the GSEs in conservatorship"

"TO US, IT APPEARS THAT THE REAL REASON PHILLIPS 66 REBUFFED MR. GOFF HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS INDEPENDENCE FROM ELLIOTT, AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HIS INDEPENDENCE FROM CEO MARK LASHIER AND THE COMPANY’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS."

"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."

"Two Chinese advertising companies provided us data from IQ’s back-end system which show that IQ’s actual mobile DAUs from September 2019 were 60.3% lower than the 175 million average mobile DAUs claimed by IQ in October 2019."

"Being an S&P 500 index member is a validation of absolutely nothing, and can be a wasteland of corporate mediocrity. It affords investors zero protections against companies and their ability to scheme investors. Buyer beware!"

"Spruce Point believes BR is retroactively reducing segment margins, notably in its Global Technology and Operations segment by approximately 80 - 90 basis points, with a reclassification involving foreign exchange allocation."

"Spruce Point believes that any failure by management to disclose its full financial outlook to prospective buyers could, at the very least, provide sufficient grounds for Advent to ask Forescout to renegotiate the deal price."

"According to BlackRock, it is in the best interest of their clients to have their capital invested in a company whose CEO has a serious criminal record for falsifying the financial statement of another publicly listed company"

"Not much benefit from the machine, at most incremental; unusable for early-stage drug discovery given its lack of throughput; wouldn't use it “even if it was affordable” extremely niche instrument for occasional, one-off use."

"A recent Tegus interview conducted Oct 4, 2021 of both a former Zimmer Biomet and Stryker employee confirms that the market has shifted towards giving away the robots for free or reduced cost in exchange for implant minimums."

"Post-unification discounted off-market share buybacks are the clear gateway to greater franking credit usage and the increased shareholder value which can be delivered in that way for the benefit of all of BHP’s shareholders."

"This acquisition is puzzling, and might only make sense from a financial engineering perspective where Olam buys positions at various prices from low to high, then books a) revaluation gains for throwing good money after bad."

"I think this is a huge swing for Construction Partners. It's a completely new geography. I think they are paying full value plus plus for that business. I think they don't know Texas and they don't know Wheeler [the founder]."

"Logically, if in 2020 the lower margin cohorts from 2018 and 2020 grew to become the majority of the TPV, we would expect the average take rates to fall; however, the opposite occurred, and average take rates spiked by 17.5%."

"Land & Buildings seriously questions whether the NHI directors can faithfully execute their fiduciary duties to shareholders given their longstanding professional and personal relationships with Robert Adams and Andrew Adams."

"Approximately 52% of e-commerce Sales is Retargeting, with Incrementality of Only ~25%-35%. We Estimate Q1 2025 Churn is ~23%. APP’s Code Evidences its Business is Built on Systematically Violating Third Party Platforms’ TOS."

"At a $36 share price (adjusting for ~$4 of equity value ascribed to the NWC at the Mall and International Stores), Borders would trade at 7x '08E EBITDA, 7.5x '08E EBITDAR and approximately 11x '08E Maintenance Free Cash Flow"

"A current Joyn executive called them “a glorified CRO” and said that while of their R&D spend is with Ginkgo today, by virtue of it being a captive entity, they’d slash that to 15-20% of their R&D budget if it was up to them."

"While the CCASS data is inconclusive as to the exact number of shares pledged the significant movement of shares into the CCASS clearing system gives a strong indication that a significant amount of Huishan shares is pledged."

"Recall on the previous slide, G&K revenue guidance was suppressed ~$165-$195 below G&K projections. Is it a coincidence that Cintas actual results came in above the initial range by an amount close to the reduced G&K revenue?"

"In 2018, Aerojet benefitted from boosts in missile orders which will not be repeated in the 2019 budget. Based on the 2020E overall budget, key programs are expected to fall by 11% driven by declines in THAAD and PAC-3 / MSE."

"Without a proper focus on Kao’s strongest brands, it is hard to believe that Kao has the same ‘right to win’ in the global marketplace as peers and its poor portfolio management will continue to act as a drag on a turnaround."

"We believe releasing the GSEs from conservatorship could generate ~$300 billion for taxpayers, while maintaining the same availability and affordability of mortgage financing that exists today with the GSEs in conservatorship"

"Not only do we believe Zillow will fall well short of these targets, but the Company also quietly excluded some of these targets from their 2024 investor presentation, without ever having publicly commented on the retraction."

"We believe a large driver of Zillow's recent push for repurchases (the Company has spent nearly $1.4 billion over the last two years) is to offset dilution from the Company's overly-indulgent stock-based compensation program."

"These results have rightfully led investors to dismiss the Company’s subsequent targets – not based on their estimation of the opportunity, but on their estimation of the management team’s ability to achieve its stated goals."

"Nieuwoudt's extensive experience evaluating plans to maximize shareholder value and investing across the energy sector, as well as her public company board experience, would make her a valuable addition to the Phillips Board."

"The surgeon indicated that the TransMedics retrieval surgeon was aware of the damage but withheld it - although, as indicated previously, TransMedics allegedly prevents them from communicating directly with receiving centers."

"Investors were initially told that proceeds from the SPAC meant financing risk would be "substantially eliminated." A year and half later, the company needs additional funding just to get commercial operations off the ground."