Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"Our industry expert warned about the limited operating history of LSP’s facilities. According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), ROAD’s new subsidiary ACE Aggregates (ACE) had 36 citations in 2024."

"Spruce Point believes the market materially misvalues ROAD by not only miscalculating its enterprise value for the recent LSP acquisition, but also by mistaking it for a high-quality aggregate and material producer."

"Top player in multiple construction sub-sectors, both domestically and internationally, benefitting from multi-year order backlog and best-in-class history of executing complex, global projects on budget and on time"

"Wall Street analysts are projecting 2023 revenue growth of $283 million and improving margins. We believe these expectations are overly optimistic based on the breadth of revenue and profit headwinds we see in 2023."

"PGNY often makes the claim that it is a “data-driven” company that delivers superior outcomes, However, we find that even former employees harbor serious doubts about PGNY’s outcomes data and reporting capabilities."

"Small problem: Cambium appears to have never raised any funding and its site is a single page with vaporware like "Deep Tech approach, fusing biotechnology, green chemistry, computation, automated material science.""

"Heska has repeatedly touted the prospects for its new urine and fecal analyzer, the Element AIM. However, we seriously question Heska's disclosures related to the product and the Element AIM's prospects for success."

"Heska has seen dramatic multiple expansion over the past twelve months despite our analysis illustrating only modest changes in the Company's strategy, operations, competitive positioning, and financial performance."

"Spruce Point sees many similarities between its recent success with Maxar Technologies, a space technology and satellite manufacturer, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, a manufacturer of rocket propulsion and missile systems."

"We believe a $200M reduction in operating expenses would drive potential stock prices of ~$28-$32 (up 24-41%) and should be embraced by management and the board as a prudent and value-maximizing step for the Company"

"50% of equity compensation is linked to three-year ROIC goals of which FY 2022 and FY 2023 had targets for 100% payout set well below Disney's cost of capital and less than half of Disney's reported ROIC 5 years ago"

"Patrick Vitek appears to have unjustifiably profited by at least €52.1 million over seven months by flipping the entity owning Immofinanz shares to CPI PG and having the purchase price retroactively adjusted upward."

"As we discuss infra, the mention of a “mandatory takeover offer price” appears to be a false excuse. The adjustment seems to have merely been a way to extract an additional €52.1 million cash from outside investors."

"A final thought for the class action attorneys. As you investigate NQ, it might be worthwhile to also look at Wedge Partners, Matt Mathison, Toro Investment Partners, and “Treasure Hunter” (SeekingAlpha.com handle)."

"The losses in the GSEs' guarantee business during the financial crisis, when including $92bn of provisions, i.e. the accounting reserves for expected losses, significantly exceeded their minimum capital requirements"

"It was a massive disaster. It basically rolled out nationally and it was only a two-month stint and every Premier agent was up in arms that we've been your partner for years, how come you're not offering this to us?"

"We think that even modestly more conservative assumptions indicate CoreWeave’s business model generates returns that do not exceed its cost of capital – destroying, rather than building, long-term shareholder value."

"We believe shareholder conversations will enable us to refine further our Proposals to take into account shareholder feedback and encourage FirstGroup to take a proactive approach towards improving shareholder value"

"Our nominees will ask the right questions in the boardroom that we believe are not currently being asked due to the many interrelationships between the current Board members and AOL's Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong."

"In 2010, IRBT made a change to its inventory valuation section to make it appear as if there are no seasonal factors or short product life cycles that would lead to an inventory write-down for its consumer products."

"“You’re absolutely right. I’m not a PK person, but if you’re telling me that there’s a similarity, it would make no sense to do it in a tablet — if you’re saying that the PK data is similar…you’re absolutely right.”"

"And I posed that question to this doctor. I said, "Why wouldn't I just prescribe diazoxide?" And she said, Oh, it doesn't work.' But I don't know if that was because she was also motivated to get the Vykat approved."

"Notice carefully that the last disclosure on Nov 2018 made pre-IPO was $15bn+ of annual transactions processed. This was revised to $13bn+ at the time of the IPO on the website and disclosed at $14.5bn to investors."

"A different schedule in the internal Herbalife model provides more detail on its China historical and projected financials. In a hidden row, Herbalife here refers to the same $79,082,000 simply as "China Royalties.""

"I can now unequivocally say that Tessera is better off with Starboard's involvement and greatly appreciate the professionalism with which Starboard approached the board transition and overall stewardship of Tessera."

"To maximize Enterprise Value, would you prefer a 1% decrease in WACC or 1% increase in UFCF? I would prefer the 1% decrease in WACC. Usually, a change in WACC is more powerful than an equal magnitude change in UFCF."

"I can now unequivocally say that Tessera is better off with Starboard's involvement and greatly appreciate the professionalism with which Starboard approached the board transition and overall stewardship of Tessera."

"We believe that in some instances, Archer simply negotiated and signed some of these contracts in order to be able to issue yet another promotional press release, without any real substance or opportunity behind it."

"We infer from ISRG’s willingness to buy drapes from UFPT’s primary competitor (despite their “semi-exclusive” contract) that the relationship between ISRG and UFPT has become far more adversarial than in years past."

"PMV’s preclinical laboratory results for their primary drug candidate appear to have been photoshopped, raising an initial red flag that PMV may have cherrypicked data to spin a positive story on lackluster results."

"People might argue that Morinda, as opposed to NHTC, obtained a direct selling license in China. However, having a direct-selling license does not prevent scrutiny and even a crack down from the regulators in China."

"Management has become addicted to dilution as a way of bridging the gap created by its lack of core cash flows from operations, increasing shares outstanding by 70% since December 2022, and the pace is accelerating."

"Lasertec’s only use case is P2/P3, but it introduces debris in P2 which requires redundant inspection with a backup KLA DUV tool, and it’s too unreliable for P3 – eliminating any reason for its existence versus KLA."

"For production, for productivity, and for economic considerations, KLA performs better than Lasertec in TSMC. So, that's why I say already two-thirds of the business migrated from originally Lasertec to KLA already."

"We saw no evidence of meaningful construction for Fab 4B, which it calls “the second round of construction” that supposedly began in Oct 2023 – just an office space with a ladder and few pieces of wood on the floor."

"We believe sports prediction exchanges have structurally better odds. Prediction exchanges do not set the odds, users do. We believe Kalshi only charges ~1.5% on average to users per trade vs. the 8–10% DKNG margin."

"Starboard believes Mr. Bornak's extensive experience as a CFO of both private and publicly traded companies, as well as his strong operational experience will enable him to provide invaluable oversight to the Board."

"However, these recent initiatives are short-term in nature, and fall far short of an effective long-term plan of action to address the fundamental issues currently depriving Keisei stakeholders of the Company’s true"

"except for nominal fixed payments such as base salaries, we believe the compensation of executives should be strictly based on the performance of the company. — Glass Lewis; disservice to shareholders. — Glass Lewis"

"Revenue for the year was up 7% on an organic basis, benefiting from a solid 6% client growth and from the continued strong performance of our downmarket, PEO and multinational solutions. — Carlos Rodriguez (Q4 2017)"

""But at the end of the day, I think investors usually, and appropriately so, try to determine whether the company can generate higher returns than the synthetic alternative(1)." — Doug Terreson, Phillips 66 Director"

"Management’s proclamation that it has “hundreds of initiatives in motion” for cost reduction opportunities sounds comical, and begs the question, “what has management been doing with cost programs up to this point”?"

"“We would do more transferring of inventory than we physically did shipping… Keurig would ship stuff to themselves, I mean truckloads of stuff they’d ship [from MBlock] to themselves.” — Former GMCR / MBlock workers"

"“We encourage you to rely on the judgment of the Arconic Board, which is independent, objective and thoroughly dedicated to the interests of all Arconic shareholders.” — Arconic Letter to Shareholders, March 2, 2017"

"one of the employees of this client is also a director and shareholder in MC [Modular Concepts], and this relationship has entailed healthy inflow of orders from the client. — ICRA Modular Concepts LLC credit rating"

"The former also said that fear of missing an opportunity to cash out was what drove CEO Andrew Paradise to rush to go public via SPAC, despite its platform being “too manual” and “not sustainable.” — Former employee"

"“This is Agilent. This is Agilent again...I don’t see how you can call it a microchip”; “That’s what I would call Twist and Agilent’s technology...it’s an array panel.” — IDT ex-regional sales manager, left recently"

"“Thermo is 20%, is always more expensive than anyone. But on the other hand, you have such a quality and afterward, just a nice service that, yeah.” — Novartis, a large Twist customer, scientist in a leadership role"

""Hong Kong Faces Heat on Dollar Peg" — Financial Times, November 2010; "Hong Kong Should End Peg to U.S. Dollar, Deutsche Bank Says" — Bloomberg, November 2010; "The Peg will be History" — The Standard, January 2010"

"The Company accrues for estimated sales returns based on historical results. The allowance for sales returns at December 28, 2023 and December 29, 2022, was $27.4 million and $33.3 million, respectively. — 2023 10-K"

"“It is our intention within the 24-month period to be able to take this combined business, this pigments business, which will be in excess of $3.5 billion in sales…” — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013"

"WFG is a multi-level marketing insurance agency that purports to provide "financial services via life insurance, retirement strategies, and a variety of wealth-building strategies." — Olson vs. World Financial Group"

"“Across the board, [customers] are just trying to get by – not cut back employees, etc.... Nobody’s going to add anything. Its just not going to happen.” — Cybersecurity Expert, Former Forescout Relationship Manager"

"The “inextricable connection” between BEKE and Liu Xiaojun was covered by the Chinese media. Liu Xiaojun used to be the supervisor of Yantai Lianjia Real Estate Brokerage, a subsidiary of BEKE, and owns a — 36kr.com"

""But at the end of the day, I think investors usually, and appropriately so, try to determine whether the company can generate higher returns than the synthetic alternative(1)." — Doug Terreson, Phillips 66 Director"

"As Mr. Iger noted, he "got the call Friday and was working Monday" — Source: CNBC article titled 'Disney's Wildest Ride: Iger, Chapek and the Making of an Epic Succession Mess' published by Alex Sherman on 09/06/23."

"Q. You, Mr. Pereira, have admitted that -- and this is really just trying to answer the question, you don't have a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University, correct? A. Correct."

""PLA-based bioplastics showed a similar biodegradability of PHAs, as quickly degraded under composting and anaerobic digestion" — Biodegradation of Wasted Bioplastics in Natural and Industrial Environments: A Review"

"the class B ordinary shares owned by the Company in GSX at the date of the Deed specified in Schedule 1 to the Deed, namely, the 6,000,000 Class B Ordinary Shares owned by the Company in GSX — Walkers Legal Document"

"“We are excited about the Alaskan Project JV as it is an important part of our strategy to diversify and build our exposure in large scale multi-commodity and battery minerals projects.” — Avi Kimelman, Dec 18, 2017"