Callouts & quotes from 3,960+ activist slides

"We believe Fairfax arranged and provided financing for Seaspan (which Fairfax had invested more than $1 billion into) to acquire APR Energy in February 2020, allowing Fairfax to remove APR Energy and avoid booking $109 million of losses."

"But all the investors who think that way – well, they'd better not listen to what Scott Galloway, or someone like him, has to say. If you believe what they say is true, then the fire won't be burning much longer for companies like yours."

"We believe this is a strong indicator that UFPT’s drape sales to ISRG have peaked. In our opinion, this is a significant problem for UFPT as their main source of revenue growth has disappeared with the company now facing declining sales."

"We believe the new BDC (ACAP) will have inferior returns relative to peers because it has lower asset yields and a higher cost structure. As a result we believe this investment will continue to trade at a deep discount to its book value"

"Spruce Point believes that this reflects the sell side's lack of understanding of the business' true underlying economics: analysts' price targets reflect a level of earnings power which the Company cannot sustain through the long-term."

"We compare Rollins’ valuation with a broad set of residential and commercial service companies. We expect Rollins’ margins to contract and its top-line growth to normalize. As a result, we believe its excessive multiple should contract."

"Our long idea is AerCap Holdings N.V., ticker AER. AerCap is the largest and, in our view, the best managed independent lessor. In a market with few bargains, we believe that the stock is cheap and offers a good risk-reward opportunity."

"Spruce Point believes investors should carefully consider that in the past three years, related-party distributions have exceeded the total investment made in the Company through capex, R&D and acquisitions by approximately $44 million."

"If management becomes more bearish about a recovery, it can reduce capacity further and shrink the cost base. We believe that if the business were right-sized to the current sales base of ~$3.3bn, EBIT margins could be approximately 10%"

"In our opinion, the paper exemplifies what we believe to be a 20+ year pattern of scientific and clinical dishonesty by the inner circle that pop ups repeatedly in Bioprojet’s key papers and trials, all of whom are authors on the paper."

"“We still believe we're going to get the benefit of integration. That's not lost because of the supply agreement that we have and the fact that we'll continue to be using our logistics assets.” — Mike Hennigan, CEO of Marathon Petroleum"

""In brief, we believe the program has been a success across multiple categories: energy savings, job creation, job training, and improvements to classroom environments." — Final report describing the Proposition 39 Clean Energy Jobs Act"

"We believe that lingering stigma around entering such environments could slow dental office activity for months into the future, given that the disease itself is not expected to disappear until later this year at the absolute earliest."

"We believe that although third-party ownership will not disappear as the market continues to shift towards loans, companies such as Sunnova that rely heavily on volume and economics of third-party ownership will be negatively affected."

"We believe the HIMS platform is designed and optimized to generate prescriptions for low-risk drugs. We believe these issues present a serious obstacle to expanding into more treatment-intensive and higher stakes health practice areas."

"Elliott believes Phillips 66 is deeply undervalued. We see $19bn of trapped value relative to sum-of-the-parts value of its assets and another $7bn of value from improved operations and additional value from the sale of non-core assets"

"Mettler claims that it has a diversified customer base, with no single end-customer accounting for 1% of sales. However, we believe Pitney Bowes is s meaningful customer that accounts for about 6% of Mettler's annual imports by weight."

"We believe the merits of the plaintiffs' lawsuit are strong and believe there is a high degree of probability that the Court will rule in their favor requiring Forward Air to hold a pre-closing shareholder vote on the Omni acquisition."

"Spruce Point believes all of Rubicon Project's growth opportunities have petered out or failed to materialize. This explains why we believe it needed to seek a merger partner in Telaria, which had at least one revenue driver being CTV."

"However, we believe this arbitrage is firstly unsustainable and secondly about to fall apart, because our findings imply that IIPR will in fact have to finance the 2020 dividend from capital raises or reduce the dividend substantially."

"As we’ve demonstrated, Nuvei’s revenue is low quality (already being restated) and growth has come from inorganic acquisitions and higher risk (and margin) business which will we believe will revert towards lower margin in the future."

"At or around the current valuation, we believe Match should be using 75% or more of its free cash flow, plus some or all of the approximately $900 million of available capacity under its 3.0x net leverage target, to repurchase shares."

"We therefore believe the primary reason SOFI has grown this portfolio so aggressively is because the Day 1 gains are the single largest source of recurring paper income available to management on terms that satisfy the comp structure."

"Ancora believes Mr. Wolf's extensive leadership experience, together with his management and financial experience, will enable him to provide the Company with valuable executive insights will make him a valuable addition to the Board."

"Starboard believes the Series A Financing has no bona fide business purpose given the Issuer's substantial cash balance and was done solely to entrench the Board and "buy the vote" ahead of a potential election contest with Starboard."

"I do believe it was slightly manipulated...Off-label, certainly people could use it...you’re completely right. If this is really such a good drug, people can use diazoxide and suspension exactly the same way for pennies on the dollar."

"We believe that HDClear may represent a best in class noise cancellation technology algorithm and that DSP should be actively looking to license this technology to smartphone companies, rather than, or in addition to, building a chip."

"We still believe we're going to get the benefit of integration. That's not lost because of the supply agreement that we have and the fact that we'll continue to be using our logistics assets. — Mike Hennigan, CEO of Marathon Petroleum"

"Warning: Based on public commentary, and patent applications pending, we believe it is only a matter of time until Impossible Foods enters the non-dairy milk category, which we believe will put further competitive pressures on Oatly."

"The allegations from a former Revenue Analyst at Dropbox are so specific, it’s hard to believe they aren’t true. Notably, data quality issues, broken systems, and key human capital defections will compound Dropbox’s transition plans."

"We do not believe that Saputo deserves a multiple commensurate with the larger branded players in the industry such as Danone or Kraft Heinz given its weaker margin profile, declining transparency, high leverage and fragile dividend."

"Spruce Point believes there is significant downside risk to Monster's share price as its premium multiple is reconsidered by institutional investors in the face of our strong evidence to indicate that it is masking growing pressures."

"Based on recent precedent M&A transactions for property software and analytics companies and clear evidence of challenges with the transaction, we believe MSCI wildly overpaid for RCA at approximately ~13x and 48x revenue and EBITDA."

"Bunge has instability in its leadership with its “World-Class Leadership Team” from 2020 having seen more than one-third turnover in key roles. Now the team is described as “Best-In-Class” which we believe is a much weaker qualifier."

"Pershing Square believes Herbalife is a pyramid scheme because, among other reasons, distributors earn more than 10 times as much from recruitment as they do by selling the company’s overpriced products to bona fide retail customers."

"Spruce Point believes LSPD purposefully avoids talking about quantifying payments margins. Even when asked directly by analysts, management gives long-winded answers and indirect responses suggesting things are fine and will improve."

"Wise also appears to have convinced artificial intelligence models that it is the #1 money remittance company. As adoption of these models to inform decisions increases, we believe Remitly will be challenged to attract new customers."

"We believe the Street has failed to capture accounting gimmicks to boost CHD’s 2018 EBITDA. Analysts simply take CHD’s recent annual results at face value, and use it as a base-line for future year EBITDA growth and margin expansion."

"Pershing Square believes Herbalife is a pyramid scheme because, among other reasons, distributors earn more than 10 times as much from recruitment as they do by selling the company’s overpriced products to bona fide retail customers."

"believes these high against / withhold votes are likely related to the directors service on the Company’s compensation committee...during which time the Company received an “F” grade in our pay-for-performance analysis. — Glass Lewis"

"“Our Board of Directors believes that the number of shares currently remaining available for issuance under the ESPP and the annual Evergreen Provision increase will not be sufficient for our future needs.” — Box 2021 Proxy Statement"

"We believe that the Merial-based estimate is most applicable to PetIQ, given that pet owners cannot take their pets into Walmart, making PetIQ wellness centers more like stand-alone wellness centers than Banfield’s in-store clinics."

"If Val-gan’s durable portfolio were valued within the range of multiples of businesses that we believe to be comparable, and the cliff portfolio were valued on the DCF analysis presented, then Val-gan’s multiple would be as follows:"

"UEC’s Chairman of the Board does not put on his biography his prior role at C3 Energy (ultimately becoming C3.ai) which we believe has become the poster-child and case study of promotional, speculative, and serial AI disappointment."

"If you believe Mettler, it is able to navigate rapidly changing business cycles with limited backlog, unexpected currency revaluations, commodities, disappointing acquisitions, and trade wars without ever missing quarterly earnings."

"If you believe Mettler, it is able to navigate rapidly changing business cycles with limited backlog, unexpected currency revaluations, commodities, disappointing acquisitions, and trade wars without ever missing quarterly earnings."

"We’re calling on the Audit Committee, led by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar, to review our report with an independent forensic investigator. We believe it’s time for CEO Lobo and CFO Boehnlein to resign or be terminated."

"Spruce Point believes that Stryker's inability to raise prices to offset inflation speaks volumes about the quality of its business vs. peers. Most are sticking to margin improvements despite inflationary and supply chain headwinds."

"We do not believe NQ can evade liability for these statements - it is clear to us that NQ deliberately materially misrepresented market share to investors, regardless of whether the estimates came from third parties that NQ engaged."

""That's a ridiculous statement. I do not believe that they have solved the issue... For QuantumScape to say we've solved this is disingenuous... I don't understand how you can say that and have a straight face." — Solid-state expert"

"Avery is an “investment grade” rated BBB / Baa2 / Stable by agencies S&P and Moody’s, respectively. We believe the credit agencies are not attuned to the fundamental challenges, and problematic accounting masking Avery’s struggles."

"We believe that management's and the sell side's discussion of international markets as a significant growth opportunity inflates Dexcom's apparent TAM to investors. Dexcom's market opportunity beyond the U.S. is currently limited."

"We believe companies should generate significant operating leverage on revenue growth, evidenced by incremental margins that are substantially higher than consolidated margins – especially software companies with high gross margins"

"Spruce Point believes that FND has a hidden form of debt within its Supply Chain Finance program. We observed that it modified disclosure language to reference amounts owed to financial intermediaries from amounts due to suppliers."

"Our reaction to the launch of the Intuit Enterprise Suite targeting the mid-market on September 17th was the same as the stock market’s: a giant yawn. We believe the offering largely represents the repackaging of existing products."

"We believe companies should generate significant operating leverage on revenue growth, evidenced by incremental margins that are substantially higher than consolidated margins – especially software companies with high gross margins"

"We have serious concerns about Heska’s management, financials, and competitive positioning, and we don’t believe the scil and CVM businesses acquired for 1.4x and 1.9x revenues only 1.5 years ago are worth substantially more today."

"We therefore believe that the reports CTR prepares for the Company are wholly unreliable. We do not believe that CTR developed these inaccurate numbers in a vacuum. We therefore hold the Company responsible for these misstatements."

"“serves on an excessive number of public company boards, which we believe raises substantial concerns about the director's ability to exercise sufficient oversight on this board” — BlackRock (in their voting rationale for Item 5.9)"

"Spruce Point believes there is significant downside risk to RELY’s share price as its premium multiple is reconsidered by institutional investors in the face of our strong evidence to indicate that it is masking growing pressures."