Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"“Running a McDonald’s is a 363-day-a-year business and an owner/operator, with his personal interests and incentives, can inherently do a better job than a chain manager.” — Fred Turner / Former President and CEO"

"All the time, all the time. Every time there's a contract renewal, which is usually after one year or two years, they would ask for lower rates in exchange for more headcount, more agents, right? — Fmr. Executive"

"Financial results for 2021, included stellar growth of 300% in total video and CTV revenue (or 123% on a proforma basis), with the fast-growing subset of CTV up 205%. — PERI financial reports and conference calls"

"With its sales growth rate plunging, front-line sales people departing, and diversified competition bundling services and discounting, is Forescout disruptive or being disrupted? — Spruce Point Capital Management"

""BHP's entire oil portfolio is non-core for a mining company and should be offloaded. The company should take the bold decision rather than suffer death by a thousand cuts." — Paul Gait, Bernstein, April 26, 2017"

"Credit ratings depend on a number of qualitative and quantitative factors; however, in general Moody’s recommends retailers stay below 3.5x Adjusted Debt / EBITDAR to achieve an investment grade rating. — Moody's"

"We estimate that the unit economics of newly acquired customers have actually gotten worse — from a $10 average loss per customer we estimated back in 2017, to $19 per customer in Q2 2018. — Theta Equity Partners"

"“Yeah, they were all specifically propped up because there was a very clear business opportunity that intersected with Ginkgo's core expertise.” — Former Ginkgo employee, longtime direct report to CEO Jason Kelly"

"“The FTC settlement announced today, coming after a two-year investigation also concluded that Herbalife is not a pyramid scheme – a conclusion that obviously vindicates our research and conviction.” — Carl Icahn"

"In my professional opinion, Inspire therapy should be the last option, failing everything else. It is a semi-permanent device that you put in your body and you will feel a bump on your chest — Sleep Tech (Reddit)"

"Limited details regarding medical history, concomitant medications and clinical course were provided; however, due to the temporal relationship, a causal role of WAKIX cannot be ruled out. — FDA FAERS Case Report"

"Wakix has kind of been a crowded field of third-line therapies... There are four FDA-approved medications now for this indication. That's a lot of options. — Neurologist in New York with 70-80 narcolepsy patients"

"GLENN BECK (VO): Radioescuchas como usted han descubierto como ganar dinero suficiente como para dejar su trabajo desde la comodidad de su hogar. ¿El secreto? Incomeathome.com [Ingresos desde el hogar punto com]."

"Well, I don't know if it will be for MATRICS X8ULTRA or ACTIS, but in any case, we are expecting to receive inquiries for inspection systems for EUV masks. — Lasertec CEO (Feb 1, 2022, Jefferies analyst exchange)"

"There is no guarantee that, if given another occasion to make a unilateral choice in contravention to shareholders' wishes, the board will not destroy shareholder value. — Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)"

"While food safety risk can never be completely eliminated, we think Chipotle has done an excellent job of significantly reducing the risk of another incident while maintaining the freshness and taste of its food"

"Note that the trained and certified dealer network slowed in Q1 2022 to 4%. One of our concerns is that Generac does not break-out clean energy revenues or margins in SEC filings as a separate reporting segment."

"Here’s more evidence we believe the CEO is not entirely focused on ABML. He attempted to hide a recent Director role at True Nature Holdings. Cole’s other undisclosed positions were also with troubled companies."

"This analysis also highlights that Procept’s 52% high volume hospital penetration means that a material portion of the low-hanging fruit has been harvested and that future sales will likely be harder to come by."

"We are troubled that Procept's activities around system rental and/or evaluation, specifically "loaning equipment to customers at no additional cost", have already been highlighted as problematic by the Company."

"XPO's CEO Bradley Jacobs has lectured in the past about honesty. Our report will stress test XPO's financial statements and accounting to see if they give an honest view of its financial performance and outlook."

"A crisis of confidence in management and a loss of access to capital could wipe out XPO shareholders. In the interim, we see 40% to 60% downside risk as the market reassess XPO’s earnings and management quality."

"50 or 60 million compared to 40 million dividend amount - and it has almost been doubled -; these are impressive figures, two-thirds of total assets, with a write-off only partially as much as the cash dividend."

"We believe that the Company is best positioned if it moves quickly to simplify its portfolio, but not at the expense of rushing to sell businesses at subpar valuations or based on depressed profitability levels."

"It appears incredibly suspicious that, after CFO Rao claimed new products don't generate higher ASPs or margin, MPWR would then report record price increases in 2017/18. Prices fell on average 5% from 2013-2016."

"Additional disclosures would allow investors to analyze the performance of the business in its underlying sub-segments and increase management accountability for performance relative to competitors and potential"

"Initial clinical trials were overwhelmingly centered on stent retrievers over aspiration catheters for the treatment of acute ischemic stroke, driving faster adoption of the stent retrievers among neurosurgeons."

"Recent private transaction comps for gaming real estate, as well as public gaming REIT valuations, point to a 6 – 7% cap rate and mid-teens multiple for experiential, large format leisure assets like theme parks"

"The outside directors have overseen persistent capital allocation failings, dismissed shareholder concerns, and failed to ensure basic checks and balances on management - rendering their ongoing tenure untenable"

"VW leadership is desperate for media wins in the aftermath of Dieselgate and has Elon Musk-envy – “pressure in Germany” for “nice Powerpoint slides” - but internal VW battery experts are “quite skeptical” of QS."

"He would express things like our photonic interconnect, is it really going to work? He’s very theoretical physics and he would just challenge things and Chris and Jungsang don’t want to be challenged in any way."

"What is noteworthy about the case is that it involved round-trip of revenue which involved providing capital to partners that use the funds to purchase services that is recorded as revenue by the public company."

"Spruce Point is equally as concerned by the leadership chosen to support and oversee CEO Conroy, with multiple executives and Board members associated with companies that had financial restatements and scandals."

"Spruce Point finds it interesting the Conroy left Claire's during a period it received multiple comment letters from the SEC questioning its financial reporting practices around store-level economics and EBITDA."

"Using the previously discussed methodology for identifying YY-controlled channel owners by tracing shared, YY-linked IMEIs, we believe it very likely that 500 additional channel owners are also controlled by YY."

"Spruce Point finds that AMR's CEO Stetson has also engaged in undisclosed stock sales contrary to SEC guidelines which mandate that a Form 4 must be filed with two business days following an insider transaction."

"We do not believe that high multiple, premier performance athletic shoe companies are credible comparables for Skechers. Furthermore, we believe Skechers growth rate will compress and its multiple will contract."

"In fact, while Dropbox reports churn rates in the "mid-teens," our survey suggests that close to 30% of users are either moderately or very likely to switch to a competing platform due to its recent price hikes."

"Zebra's multiple expansion and valuation premium to the sum-of-parts are difficult to explain; we estimate 65% – 80% long-term potential downside risk to the share price and expect it to underperform the market."

"Plc accounts for 77% of Rio's shareholder base but generates <20% of group EBITDA, meaning Ltd is required to support Plc by transferring cash and profit reserves to Plc to fund distributions to Plc shareholders"

"In this Part III, we're showing a series of transactions involving an Italian landbank, called Collina Muratella, that seemingly resulted in an almost €100 million hole from an announced €35 million transaction."

"Even if P&G is unable to achieve its underlying earnings potential, we believe there is little downside in the stock as it trades at a discount to peers, despite having the largest cost opportunity in the sector"

"If the Board cannot oversee accurate and effectively disclosed Operating Ratio guidance related to the current reporting period, shareholders are unable to trust its Operating Ratio guidance for the years ahead."

"While food safety risk can never be completely eliminated, we think Chipotle has done an excellent job of significantly reducing the risk of another incident while maintaining the freshness and taste of its food"

"Oasis believes that Kao brands' overall lack of blogs, podcasts, testimonials, YouTube infomercials etc. does little to drive consumer interest in its brand, particularly overseas where they are less well known."

"Samsara lost the RFP primarily because it did not submit a solution tailored to the requisite OBDI engine interface, a deficiency that we believe could have been easily rectified with better effort and planning."

"The primary goals of the recent proposals are to maintain the availability and affordability of the 30-year, fixed-rate, prepayable mortgage while protecting taxpayers from bearing the cost of a housing downturn"

"Monster's Co-CEO said they saw a shift to dollar channels which we view negatively. A search for “energy drinks” at some of the country's largest dollar stores returned more Celsius brands featured than Monster."

"A search on Amazon for Monster in a major U.S. city featured Red Bull and the one Monster product was shown at 25% off. The product is shown as eligible for SNAP / EBT which are government food subsidy programs."

"Having covered Disney since mid-way through George W. Bush's presidency (!)...we think it is notable - and not unrelated - that the ambiguity in Disney's outlook has helped investor sentiment to an all-time low."

"When we evaluate TASK's reporting of its revenue tied to Facebook, we find anomalies. For example, the reporting of the 6 and 9 month revenue contribution should imply the Q3 revenue figure, which doesn't match."

"We generally do not target promotions or advertising at any particular product or brand. Our significant promotions are generally aimed at generating increased levels of recruiting and retention of distributors."

"Spruce Point has identified significant turnover in the finance and accounting functions at Axon in the past few years. There are multiple instances of employees staying less than 2 years, and some under 1 year."

"Samsung Electronics currently lacks an effective international equity listing (over and above its KRX listing) for its core operating businesses, despite the impressive scale and global reach of those businesses"

"MSCI investors should be alarmed that its Head of IR and Treasurer departed a couple months after the RCA acquisition was announced in August 2021. Her LinkedIn biography indicates she departed in November 2021."

"Spruce Point’s proprietary rating of MSCI ESG rating is “F”. We believe there are many areas where MSCI can improve to raise its rating to become a better governed and respected company among its industry peers."

"Each Company Represents an Opportunity to Own a High-Quality and Sticky Business at an Attractive Valuation with the Potential for Significant Value Creation Through a Better Balance of Growth and Profitability."

"Spruce Point is skeptical about the quality and valuation of targets acquired by Perion. It has paid just ~30% cash upfront and structured most payments as contingent payment earn-outs if the businesses succeed."

"Our conversations with industry experts and former employees, however, suggest that hospitals continue to treat beds as a major capital expenditure which should generally be replaced as infrequently as possible."

"GCP has spent $75 million on restructuring and repositioning-related items, yet shareholders do not seem to have reaped any benefits from either improved operating performance or improved share price performance"