Callouts & quotes from 3,960+ activist slides

"It is self-serving for pest control companies like Rollins to predict an increase in bee activity and their nuisance. However, experts that follow bees believe that extreme temperatures are stressing bee populations, resulting in fewer colonies."

"In the circumstances, we believe that the best way forward is for you, the members of the Capricorn Board, to immediately withdraw your recommendation for the Proposed Merger and instead to initiate a transparent and meaningful strategic review"

"Analysts model revenues beginning in FY 2026 and accelerating in the out years. We believe these assumptions are aggressive. Given the large current discount to the consensus analyst price target, the market appears to be expressing skepticism."

"Spruce Point believes that when customers cut fees, suppliers and partners are typically expected to make concessions. We observe that MSCI's fees linked to equity ETFs have been in perpetual decline with further risk to the downside over time."

"Porch trades at a lofty 2021E 9.0x revenue and 11.7x gross profit multiple on the assumption its recent revenue growth is sustainable, but we believe recent results are distorted due to low-quality acquisitions, which inflates inorganic growth."

"Spruce Point believes that Rollins is experiencing more intense competition but is not directly acknowledging it. Rather, we believe they are telegraphing the issue through more frequent discussion of advertising and customer acquisition costs."

"In short, we simply don't believe it. Moreover, the Company hasn't even made clear how it is going to market with Element AIM. Specifically, are they even charging for the machine or simply placing it for free to capture the consumables stream?"

"The endocrinologist stated he had jumped to submit a few start forms only because he had been told by a study investigator – who we believe to be Jennifer Miller, based on his coy response – that the drug takes 4 to 6 months to show a response."

"reconstitute itself and upgrade the Company’s leadership such that it can objectively assess the best path forward for Southwest’s shareholders, employees, and customers. We believe this process needs to commence immediately. — Artisan Partners"

"“if you have hyperglycemia and diabetes, and you have edema and heart failure, and I do believe there were a couple of patients hospitalized with heart failure just to reduce appetite, it may not be a risk worth taking.” — Ex-Soleno employee #1"

"reconstitute itself and upgrade the Company's leadership such that it can objectively assess the best path forward for Southwest's shareholders, employees, and customers. We believe this process needs to commence immediately. — Artisan Partners"

"Based on the problematic Site Sharing portfolio, we believe that the above market rent that AMT is currently receiving, which amounts to 43% of operating revenue, is unsustainable and any average rent metrics based off this will be overstated."

"Based on our diligence, we believe that a significant portion of LSS's historical underperformance and market share loss has been self-inflicted and driven by organizational dysfunction – and is therefore reversible under the right leadership."

"Spruce Point views MSCI change of practices from providing margin targets to focusing on Adj. EPS as a major red flag. We later illustrate why we believe MSCI's margins are highly susceptible to potential manipulation through cost allocations."

"Spruce Point believes it is a huge red flag that Bunge failed to provide revenue projections for Viterra in its proxy statement which it likely had formulated if it were able to provide Adj. EBIT, EBITDA and Unlevered Free Cash Flow estimates."

"PLUG likely would not have been able to secure these deals without offering warrants to Walmart and Amazon. Yet management believes that it should get full credit for this as revenue, AND that the warrants should not count against gross profit"

"Disney may believe that price increases and “nickel-and-diming” of Cast Members and other costs is good for the bottom line... however, we suspect it is short-term thinking that puts the brand value and long-term health of the business at risk"

"Spruce Point does not believe that this significant Non-GAAP add back is justified, and finds it concerning that management would choose to include it in Non-GAAP EPS just as it begins to face an increasingly threatening competitive landscape"

"We do not believe Monster should trade at the same multiple as Coke. We believe Monster is more dependent on Coke than the other way around. We don't think investors are being compensated with materially higher growth to own Monster vs. Coke."

"Spruce Point begrudges Rollins’ cavalier treatment that an $8 million civil fine related to accounting management charges should be added to EBITDA and believes it should increase investors’ skepticism about its financial reporting practices."

"We believe Hormel Foods Corporation (NYSE: HRL) is a close comparable to BEF Foods in terms of underlying business mix and similar evolution away from a meat and protein-oriented business towards a branded, value-added packaged foods company."

"We believe a sizable dividend backed by the credit quality of America’s largest wireless operators in a business with one of the brightest areas of growth within the telecom sector will be incredibly well received by yield-oriented investors"

"Spruce Point does not believe that BOOT is pursuing the right strategy of expanding its physical retail footprint with an average of 10,800 square foot stores in an era where consumers are increasingly shopping online to save time and money."

"Spruce Point finds that BOOT’s product offering around the Texas Hold ‘Em single does not align with Beyoncé’s look which we believe further discredits the notion that consumers will be drawn to make purchases from BOOT because of the album."

"Spruce Point believes that, as management attempts to support future growth by transforming Dropbox into a more premium product, it risks chasing away its core customer base, which values it primarily as a simple and low-cost storage option."

"We believe the Street has failed to critically assess the accuracy of its financials and achievability of projections offered by management from recent acquisitions in light of its recent (Agro / Passport) and long-term acquisition failures."

"In fact, when we compare the realized revenue with prior year backlog, we see that LSP's conversion has been declining sharply for three consecutive years. Therefore, we believe investors should heavily discount the quality of LSP's backlog."

"Spruce Point believes the voting control paired with exceptionally long tenured directors has effectively turned the Company's Board into a "good old boys club"; four of Zillow's seven independent directors have been on the Board since 2005."

"Zillow went public in 2011. Since then, its business model has not materially changed. While Zillow likes to position itself as a growth-oriented company in its marketing, we believe there is strong evidence to show the business has matured."

"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."

"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”"

"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."

"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"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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"

"At present, we believe [CEO Mark] Lashier and the rest of the management team deserve investor support so long as they demonstrate meaningful progress against [their financial] targets. — Elliott Investment Management (November 2023 letter)"

"Avery Dennison faces significant long and short-term headwinds across its offerings' end-markets. We believe these headwinds will continue to intensify as competition increases, resulting in declining sales and further pressure on margins."

"MacLellan failed to disclose his role at PortaCom Wireless. While his tenure occurred over 20 years ago, we believe his role as CEO of a company that declared bankruptcy is material as an event where shareholders were significantly harmed."

"Based on our conversations with urologists, CMS has implemented more restrictive guidelines for approving Aquablation, requiring additional tests be performed before granting approval. We believe this may slow Aquablation procedure growth."

"Spruce Point believes there are intercompany sales and purchases between Xylem and Evoqua, as well as competition overlap, but that the merger proxy fails to adjust for these transactions when depicting the pro forma combined organization."

"We believe Skechers deserves to trade a substantial discount to comparable apparel companies, particularly in light of its deteriorating financial performance and governance issues. We see 30% to 50% downside risk to Skechers’ share price."

"Spruce Point believes that WSP's backlog is one of the least descriptive among its global peers. Furthermore, unlike Canadian counterparts Stantec and AtkinsRealis (SNC-Lavalin), WSP's backlog differs from remaining performance obligation."

"We believe this share price decline sends two clear messages: 1) PepsiCo is worth more and would be run better as two separate companies; and 2) the Board and management's decision not to separate goes against shareholders' best interests."

"Given our concerns about the reliability of Kornit's financials, we believe the most conservative way to value the Company is on its revenues and cash flow, both of which we believe will normalize for the large Amazon contribution in 2018."

"Part 8. The NOP service, we believe, traffics in and pushes unsafe, damaged organs rejected by reputable centers, as an unplaced organ means loss of device and aircraft fees; with TransMedics allegedly concealing adverse organ information."

""To meet our clients' needs, we believe the companies we invest in should similarly be focused on achieving sustainable returns over the longer term. Good corporate governance is critical to that goal" — CEO Larry Fink, 2014 Letter to CEOs"

""To meet our clients' needs, we believe the companies we invest in should similarly be focused on achieving sustainable returns over the longer term. Good corporate governance is critical to that goal" — CEO Larry Fink, 2014 Letter to CEOs"

"Spruce Point believes the market is under-estimating the likelihood of rising churn from recent price increases, sales and marketing costs to acquire new customers, and increasing deferred capex / lease repayment costs in the coming year."

"Rollins has been increasing its discussion of auto accidents and insurance as a headwind to margins, and recently modified its Critical Audit Matter discussion on the topic. We believe this will continue to weigh on margins going forward."

"Given our concerns about the reliability of Aerojet’s Adjusted EBITDAP, we believe the most conservative way to value the Company is on its revenues, which we can estimate with insights from the defense budget and current rocket programs."

"We are short the securities of TeliaSonera because we believe information that is being withheld from investors, along with the current board and management's (in)actions, will significantly impact the company's shares and credit profile."

"Beyond questioning the novelty of the HYDROS “AI”, one surgeon even believes that the added workload of a surgeon using HYDROS might actually LENGTHEN procedure time. This calls into question one of the bull case arguments around HYDROS."

"We believe LongHorn needs to reduce the prep items that customers are not giving them credit for, and focus their labor efforts on what customers actually care about. Estimated total savings from reducing prep costs is $6.5 – $12 million"

"We believe LongHorn needs to reduce the prep items that customers are not giving them credit for, and focus their labor efforts on what customers actually care about. Estimated total savings from reducing prep costs is $6.5 – $12 million"

"Spruce Point believes that frequent segment shuffling is a classic red flag and we find that Zebra has made multiple shuffles. When we evaluate the revisions, we see that it has twice moved product lines that exhibited declining margins."

"We believe there are numerous reasons why HIMS revenue multiple is likely to contract closer to its e-commerce peer group and see potential for 25% - 40% downside risk, and more if regulators were to take issue with HIMS operating model."

"With ~$11bn of debt maturities coming due by 2012, we note that Simon has meaningful liquidity risk. We believe that Simon’s current valuation reflects a downward adjustment for liquidity risk and the likelihood of future equity dilution"