Callouts & quotes from 2,092+ activist slides

"The console game market is becoming inherently less cyclical, because new consoles have: (1) standardized PC-based architecture, (2) full backward compatibility, and (3) greater reliance on recurring revenue"

"“The Company’s revenue was from 2 significant customers for the three months ended September 30, 2021 and from 3 significant customers for the nine months ended September 30, 2021.” — IonQ Q3 2021 10Q Filing"

"The Kent Island and Consolidated Mechanical transactions did not have a material impact on revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024 due to timing of when these entities were acquired. — Limbach FY24 10-K"

"We value the Company’s acquired, related-party, and core revenue separately. Our analysis yields an implied valuation range for the combined Company that is significantly below the current market valuation."

"As a crowning revenue inflation achievement for David Li's checkbook, Bigo continually hid the fact that one-third of its business at the time of acquisition came not from overseas, but from mainland China."

"We believe MSCI should provide this information since unbilled revenue is frequently manipulated by other public companies and can provide insights into potentially aggressive revenue recognition practices."

"We believe that BLI has now begun to stuff the channel to mask a sales decline, given a sudden, unexplained shift to distributor-based revenue over the last 2 quarters, from almost nothing to half of sales."

"Five percent growth onto just FY2017 Q2's revenue of $271.1 million is $13.56 million (Rmb 90.3 million), which is already 27% higher than Shunshun's full year revenue reported to SAIC of Rmb 76.47 million."

"Ginkgo charged it $19MM for foundry services in 2019 - $1.1MM per employee - with an eye-popping deferred revenue balance of $62.5MM on its books as of Dec 31, 2019, which works out to $3.7MM per Motif FTE."

"Organic order intake reached a record high level of $15.12 billion for the year, resulting in backlog as at December 31, 2023, of $14.1 billion, representing 11.8 months of revenues,(1) up 8.2% in the year."

"Since the beginning of 2013, HTA's same property revenues have grown on average by 1.9% y/y while same property expenses have decreased on average by 1.1% y/y, yet there is no commensurate margin expansion"

"Paychex is an ADP competitor that has reached its mature growth phase; yet, ADP trails Paychex significantly across all metrics: revenue productivity, gross margin, and operational profit margin (ex-float)"

"The effect of conforming DigitalGlobe’s accounting policy for payments received from customers that contain a financing element is to increase deferred revenue with an offsetting charge to finance expense."

"Even when the vehicle telematics industry was nascent with more robust growth potential, larger industry players were acquired between 4x - 8x revenue, significantly less than Samsara's hefty 16x multiple."

"It is a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley that companies ranging from Google to Meta to Twitter to Uber could achieve similar levels of revenue with far fewer people. — Brad Gerstner (Altimeter Capital)"

"International now contributes 26% of our overall direct revenue. (Note: NOT POSSIBLE TO GET 69% REPORTED GROWTH: SEE YR END PRESENTATION AND CONFLICTS WITH 20% CITED ABOVE) — Yr End 2022 Call March 8, 2022"

"If we illustratively assume TheFork is sold at 5x CY26E revenue, similar to peer transactions, it would imply Tripadvisor trades at just ~4.5x EBITDA on a pro forma basis, an even larger discount to peers"

"The market has historically valued software companies with a material hardware business at lower multiples because their revenue ramp is overstated and their gross margin profile is structurally inferior."

"If we illustratively assume TheFork is sold at 5x CY26E revenue, similar to peer transactions, it would imply Tripadvisor trades at just ~4.5x EBITDA on a pro forma basis, an even larger discount to peers"

"Spruce Point has significant concerns about Rollins’ mosquito revenue claims. For 2013, the former CFO claimed revenues were $20 million. Years later in 2018, a chart showed revenues at just $7.9 million."

"Not only is Zillow.com experiencing a decline in site visitors, its key KPI, revenue per visitor, is challenged. We believe this is strong evidence that the market should view Zillow as a mature business."

"We believe the counterintuitive DSO trend is likely indicative of Procept pushing systems on customers or relaxing payment terms, possibly as an attempt to boost sales to meet Street revenue expectations."

"Only Post-Deal Revenue Disclosure: "SafeCharge contributed revenues of $55,853 and net income of $11,643 to the Company for the period from the acquisition date to December 31, 2019." — Nuvei Q3 2020 MD&A"

"We do not track ‘online dating’ channels on YY Live platform for all the time periods, which contributes to more than 20% of YY Live’s total live streaming revenue. — The Big One mobile app analytics data"

"One customer represented 13% of the Company's total revenues at December 31, 2023. No customer represented more than 10% of total contract receivables. — Financial Statements: Concentration of Credit Risk"

"Despite claiming to have high levels of visibility into revenue drivers and trends, Box failed to meet its commitments, but continued to claim that the business was on the right track and executing well."

"Based on our research we believe there is an opportunity for Tessera to deliver double-digit revenue growth, achieve best-in-class EBITDA margins of 60-70%, and create significant value for shareholders."

"Compared to the investor day guidance from less than 2 years ago, investors are now expecting UNP to grow volumes at only one-third of guided levels and grow revenue at half of guided incremental margins"

"The upper bound of management's 2019 revenue is not achieved through "share gains" or "above market growth" – you get to $14.3 billion just by taking the market growth forecasts provided by management..."

"Given the trend toward expensive, human-intensive service delivery, we question whether Intuit’s Consumer segment should be valued more like a company such as TaskUs, which trades at just 1x NTM revenue."

"Muddy Waters, LLC believes that CCME is engaging in a massive "pump and dump" scheme whereby it significantly inflates revenue and profits in order to enrich management through earn-outs and stock sales."

"After delivery of a product or performance of a service, if uncertainty exists about customer acceptance, revenue should not be recognized until acceptance occurs. — FN22 FASB ASC paragraph 985-605-25-21"

"Our review of peer company gross margin expansion during their approximate growth from $200 to $400 million of revenue showed that none achieved such expansion, and the median was a gain of just 85 bps."

"Dycom's revenue from Frontier has grown by ~335% since 2020 and now constitutes 5.4% of total contract revenue. Dycom has booked approximately $1 billion of cumulative revenues from Frontier since 2020."

"The reason NQ’s SAIC financials show this revenue shift is because the Company pays minimal PRC taxes because it has far less profit than it claims. The Company’s SAIC and SEC financials are fraudulent."

"Axon would now like investors to believe that it is at the precipice of leveraging their video and emerging AI capabilities alongside a subscription model to drive both revenue and margin for investors."

"Mettler has a history of revenue recognition issues, but has never called out the problem. Here is one example we identified. How can it confuse the difference between the sale of a product and service?"

"Given Verint's demonstrated financial misconduct under Bodner and his business partners, we find the Company's more recent evasiveness regarding organic growth and cloud-based revenue highly concerning."

"Today's announcement marks the eighth guidance reduction at Southwest Airlines in the last 18 months with RASM (revenue per available seat mile) now expected to decline 4% to 4.5% in the second quarter."

"iRhythm trades at a $5.4 billion market capitalization and mid-to-high-single-digit revenue multiples despite an anticipated deterioration in revenue growth, which we believe may even prove optimistic."

"Zebra shareholders have absorbed almost $100 million in deal costs to acquire $243 million of revenue (40.7% of revenue). When evaluated as a percentage of deal value, the costs are approximately 4.5%."

"WD-40 lists China as its biggest opportunity and the CEO has made claims of $100m in potential revenue in 2016. Fast forward to Q1 2020, the Company produced $2.3m of sales, or a run rate of just $9.2m"

"DV's first Critical Audit Matter is specific to the Measurement segment revenue where International Revenues are booked. In light of our prior analysis and observations, we find this highly concerning."

"In its revenue projections, which we view as extremely aggressive, XL has stated it intends to create hybrid and EV upfits for vehicles that are much heavier than the ones it has historically serviced."

"This does not suggest that Vocera achieved another one of its objectives “to penetrate its existing installed base” otherwise revenue per customer and facility should have been driven higher over time."

"The crux of EHTH's application of ASC 606 is that EHTH books multiple years of commission revenue by claiming that no further performance on its part is necessary in order to collect these commissions."

"We find significant stress in REZI's inventory accounts from the Snap deal. Finished goods now make up almost 87% of inventory and the ratio of inventory to projected revenue is at a multi-period high."

"Juniper's LTM R&D as a % of revenue is 9+ points higher than the peer average. The recommended target of $200M of opex savings is conservative relative to total potential savings of ~$420M in R&D alone"

"SafeCharge and Smart2Pay have a higher relative cost of revenue than Nuvei's operation in the North American market due to costs associated with its merchant servicing model. — Nuvei 2020 Annual Report"

""Would you buy a company that wasn't transparent about their projected revenue? It's obviously a negative number or they'd be having a parade around it." — Former TASK Business Development professional"

"Bristol-Myers is estimating Celgene’s five near-term product launch opportunities will generate base case 2028 revenues that are 59% higher than the median of Wall Street analysts’ research estimates."

"Is Amdocs minimizing the immediate revenue contribution of acquired businesses only to realize greater acquisition-driven revenue later in an attempt to make the resulting sales growth appear organic?"

"Spruce Point is concerned by the potential for heightened risk of fraud at Dairy Crest (U.K.), Saputo's largest acquisition in recent history which accounts for approximately C$785 million of revenue."

"The rapid growth in unbilled receivables, which have now ceased to be defined by management, suggest that it has been booking revenues at a much faster rate than billing and collection of receivables."

"Towers: Owns ~40,000 wireless towers in the United States and provides critical shared infrastructure for wireless carriers; frequently considered the “best business ever” given the quality of revenue"

"Tessera has repeatedly licensed outsourced semiconductor assembly and test companies (OSATs) instead of higher value OEM and manufacturer licensees despite OSATs having far lower revenue and margins."

"Kornit's valuation is rich for a commodity-type digital printing company, and analysts are overly optimistic that it can sustain 20%+ revenue growth while expanding EBITDA margins from 7.6% to 17.8%."

"Spruce Point is concerned that Stryker has never cleanly broken out Mako’s revenues, but historically the three revenue buckets were within the Reconstructive (renamed: Orthopaedics segment in 2014)."

"Revenue and GTV are a function of agent count, so to justify its fabricated GTV and revenue figures, BEKE has also significantly inflated the number of agents on its platform to pump its stock price."

"AOS's revenue reporting concerns do not just extend to China. We find evidence it has misreported revenues domestically in its North American water treatment segment. Again, revising revenues higher."