Callouts & quotes from 1,012+ activist slides

""And the idea that somebody has publicly said repeatedly that it is going to go direct-to-consumer, and you're signing up to that type of long-term deal. It also -- that's untenable." — Chris Winfrey, Charter CEO, September 1, 2023; "On the negative side, Iger's open and honest disclosure about his worries about the long-term health of the linear networks has frustrated the market because it wasn't matched by an immediate action step. As such, we have been needlessly left wondering and postulating about assets that are no longer drivers of future company earnings." — Michael Nathanson, MoffettNathanson, November 9, 2023; "Sometimes, when I am looking for a reaction to my own thought process, I like to test that process in public, particularly in ways that I might be able to get a reaction from the investment community. So my thought was at the time that I would essentially be public with that thought process." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, November 2023"

""And the idea that somebody has publicly said repeatedly that it is going to go direct-to-consumer, and you're signing up to that type of long-term deal. It also -- that's untenable." — Chris Winfrey, Charter CEO, September 1, 2023; "On the negative side, Iger's open and honest disclosure about his worries about the long-term health of the linear networks has frustrated the market because it wasn't matched by an immediate action step. As such, we have been needlessly left wondering and postulating about assets that are no longer drivers of future company earnings." — Michael Nathanson, MoffettNathanson, November 9, 2023; "Sometimes, when I am looking for a reaction to my own thought process, I like to test that process in public, particularly in ways that I might be able to get a reaction from the investment community. So my thought was at the time that I would essentially be public with that thought process." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, November 2023"

""We have exclusive arrangements with people like the English Premier League, the number one most bet sporting league and activity in the world, and we also of course have exclusive deals with players in the US like the NCAA." — Niccolo de Masi - CEO DMYD, Interview with Benzinga (Dec. 23rd, 2020); "One of Genius Sports' subsidiaries, Betgenius, offers services to betting operators in the United States and internationally, including a sportsbook management platform and digital marketing. The partnership with the NCAA does not include any betting rights, a Genius Sports spokesperson told ESPN." — ESPN (May 14th, 2018); "Yes, no one else can have scouts in venue, but that doesn't mean that another supplier can't scout off of TV. So just because Genius could have scouts in venue for NCAA basketball doesn't mean that Sportradar couldn't scout off of the TV feed or something else." — Sales Director, U.S. Betting Division at Sportradar, Source: Tegus (3/5/2021)"

"“I think Twist is not profitable because I was shocked when you mentioned the pricing of 7 cents to 10 cents a base pair. At that rate, I don’t think they will ever be profitable. I think they may be doing that to increase market share, maybe doing some kind of marketing campaign to win the market.” — Executive at Genscript, key Twist competitor; “Back in 2019, when Twist came into the space, it was about 50 cents per base pair for GenScript, and now we’re down to like 35 cents per base pair.” — Executive at Genscript, key Twist competitor; “I don’t know anyone today who would be pricing at 20 cents per base pair. I think that’s a thing of the past, and actually, I don’t remember this being that expensive. Some companies charge more for more complex genes. Certain gene sequences are harder to synthesize. I think 9 cents is very reasonable. There are lost-cost providers that can do things in China for maybe 7 cents.” — Abbvie R&D Director; Twist customer"

"“We are only using TransMedics for DCD organs. Donors from cardiac death as opposed to donors from brain death. We’re not really convinced that the donors from brain death, the organs get a lot of benefit from being on a TransMedics device because often the ones that you’d like to put on are those that are very poor quality and, the thing is, if you put them on a machine, you’re not going to make a poor-quality organ into a good-quality organ. So, if the organ is poor quality because it’s fatty because the donor was obese or was scarred from drinking, you’re not going to reverse those changes by putting it on a machine… with a marginal organ that’s, let’s say, fatty or scarred, that’s a chronic injury over many, many years. You’re not going to reverse that by putting it on a pump. So, it’s not as beneficial in my mind for those organs.” — Transplant surgeon and transplant program director at a leading Northeast academic center"

""Between 10%,15%. Sometimes, let's say, there be a new player or let Stats Perform wanting to have one property, which Sportradar currently has, they will pay everything or they will go up by 20%, 30%, 50% if they must have it because their clients otherwise break away." — Former General Manager Sportradar (3/31/2021); "That's a really good question. I think that they will. I think they'll try to. I think that we'll actually see that happen pretty soon with the NFL." — Sales Director Sportradar (3/5/2021); "Great question. That's a bit of my concern with the industry as I think as I talk to people about this, some people think Genius will have pricing leverage. I'm probably in the camp that the leverage is against them because if I take an example, we have the NFL on one end of the spectrum, the Sportradar, Genius sitting in the middle and FanDuel on the other end of the spectrum." — Former EVP of Strategy FanDuel (1/19/2021)"

""You need a bigger team and at least a couple of years of them working together really well to pull together the level of detail that is going to be sufficient...you’re never going to have full amount of detail, but the question is do you have enough to have the application stand on its legs and be considered fully [operational] as opposed to be rejected for being incomplete? I don’t think that’s reasonable to hit that [2027] target." — Former Oklo employee; "Oklo is in that camp which underestimates what has to be done to bring this to fruition...I think they are unconsciously incompetent on what you need to get thru the NRC." — Former Westinghouse Electric Managing Director, 38-year nuclear industry veteran; "They’re clueless – they’re operating like a small, tech company and they’re not even close to being in the playing field of what they have to do." — Project Manager, GE Vernova, 35 years of nuclear industry expertise."

"“Nevro was categorically against what we called Quantity Purchases for the first 3 years the product was on the market. Then as they started to fall short and needed to meet quarterly numbers – we say it’s like a drug where you try it and then you’re hooked. Nevro began utilizing QP’s in Q2 2018 and by Q1 2019, within 3 quarters, they were completely hooked. Once you do one, you can’t hop off that ride. You’ve now provided the account a new price point. You’re demonstrated you’ll sell at that price, and they’re shown willingness to buy at that volume. The company can’t say no because they know the volume they can move. As a director, I was the one negotiating those. I’d joke I’d write it as a one-time offer, every time I did it. For my region, on a quarterly basis, as much as 16-17% of my sales were driven by channel stuffing. I’ve heard it still takes place but more scrutiny of it.” — Former Nevro regional sales director"

"“We believe the time has come for material changes in leadership here as BOX remains in a “no-man’s land” for investors – not enough growth and not enough margin. We have covered tech/software for 18 years and have never come across a company that is a leader in a $40B TAM and continues to mis-execute so badly. The commentary every quarter of “strong demand”, “sales productivity/enablement improvements” and “solid momentum” in the business have not correlated with decelerating growth across all metrics for a number of quarters. It is also amazing to us the Board of Directors has done nothing to push the issue. We believe this is potentially an activist investor’s dream but with five of the nine board members being founders/VCs we see a bit of a roadblock...Management is now two years into a go-to-market transformation with no indicators pointing to any sign of success. Something must change.” — Craig-Hallum, August 2019"

"“In 2020, we incurred significant operating and capital expenditures in launching our biosecurity offering, which includes COVID-19 testing products…” — SPAC prospectus; “Covid testing was also just a ploy to get into pharma because for years they've tried to get into pharma and nobody wanted to work with them. It's still just like a commodity business that they're in, sort of NGS of viral samples; it's like the Quest Diagnostics and all these other labs, it's a race to the bottom for pricing and things like that. They've got some inflated revenues or short-term revenues but I don't see that as building long-term value.” — Former director-level employee; “I don't even know why Ginkgo is doing Covid-19 testing. PCR testing, you can do that at any university lab, really at any company. It just requires a couple of DNA sequencers, I mean, Illumina instruments, nothing special.” — Former employee in a managerial role"

"In the case of SandRidge Energy, Carl Icahn may be just the treatment the company needs.....If one takes a close look at the performance of SandRidge in the cold, hard light of reality, it is difficult to make a case for management or to argue that their performance is serving shareholders well.....Between Oct. 1, 2016 and May 1, 2018, shares in SandRidge fell from $21.27 to $14.35. This means the management and directors at SandRidge have produced a return of -32.5 percent for investors.....When a company is performing as far below industry averages as SandRidge, a shakeup is warranted.....If negative 32 percent is what this board and management can produce after a bankruptcy eliminated most of their legacy issues, it may well be time to let someone else try. — Stuart T. MacDonald, Professor of Finance, University of Central Oklahoma, What is good for you isn’t always pleasant, The Journal Record (May 8, 2018)."

""I think it's early days to speculate on [the economics of Epic], the product isn't even built yet... in terms of pricing and all of those things it's just too early for us to really talk about but I do expect its going to be a very profitable business for us" — Hugh Johnston, Disney CFO, February 2024; "An effort to notify the leagues wasn't made until Tuesday before a planned announcement. Many learned of it when The Wall Street Journal broke the news...The leagues... are eager to be fully debriefed and ensure that this platform doesn't present new business risks or threats." — Wall Street Journal, February 2024; "[M]anagement by press release" — meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of The Walt Disney Company"

""I think it's early days to speculate on [the economics of Epic], the product isn't even built yet... in terms of pricing and all of those things it's just too early for us to really talk about but I do expect its going to be a very profitable business for us" — Hugh Johnston, Disney CFO, February 2024; "An effort to notify the leagues wasn't made until Tuesday before a planned announcement. Many learned of it when The Wall Street Journal broke the news...The leagues... are eager to be fully debriefed and ensure that this platform doesn't present new business risks or threats." — Wall Street Journal, February 2024; "[M]anagement by press release" — meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of The Walt Disney Company"

""Penumbra has offered a similar kind of [bundling] arrangement [as Medtronic], but I told them that I am not interested because I have used their stent retriever and I don't think it is as good as the Solitaire [Medtronic]. And the discount that they are going to offer – truthfully, they could even offer it for me for free and this would not convince me to use it." — Neurosurgeon. "It is widely recognized that doctors hate Penumbra's stent retriever.... Penumbra is trying to get into stent retrievers and has fallen flat on their face. Penumbra has not gotten any traction with their stent retriever. The development of a stent retriever is not easy at all." — Neurovascular Products Sales Director. "Medtronic has the Solitaire - it's a great stent retriever. And you compare that to the Penumbra stent retriever, which is this 3D separator - in my opinion, it wasn't at as good." — Neurosurgeon."

"This pattern suggests that Phillips 66’s board is using these repeated proposals as a distraction tactic while failing to deliver tangible governance reform that shareholders seem to support. If the desire to declassify is genuine, one would think the board would accept the remedy that Elliott has proposed. — Professor Mark DesJardine, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business; Phillips objects to the Elliott proposal, weakly arguing that it “contravenes well-settled principles of Delaware corporate law and would be highly unlikely to withstand scrutiny in Delaware courts… The problem with this argument is that it ignores the simple fact that directors are free to resign their board positions at any time, and nothing in the Phillips charter or bylaws possible can be construed as preventing directors from voluntarily offering to resign..” — Professor Jonathan Macey, Yale Law School and Yale SOM"

""[Medtronic's] intermediate catheter - it is the aspiration catheter." — Neurosurgeon; "The FDA label matters more to less-sophisticated doctors, like radiologists. People like me do whatever I think is best." — Neurosurgeon; "They are a commodity product. We basically just decided in our [RFP] process - if you step back and think about what they're offering, they're just plastic tubes, right? How hard is it to make plastic tubes?" — Neurosurgeon; "Penumbra went around to and made a very big deal about physicians using Medtronic, Terumo and Stryker aspiration catheters that previously did not have the stroke label indication. They freaked out a lot of doctors. This annoyed the doctors a lot because [the Penumbra salesman] should not be telling the doctors how they should be treating their patients. This also swayed some doctors to use Penumbra." — Neurovascular Products Sales Director"

""It was a maze. We were doing a disservice selling a 1,200 employee client Vantage when we would have done a better job selling Workforce Now... I'm not sure that the customer is at the center of the decision." — Former SVP Product Strategy; "Why are margins so low? Overhead. So many layers, so many inefficiencies with regards to the same people doing the same thing... each product or team has its own duplicative organization. There are still silo's." — Former Sr. Director of Business Transformation; "There were always turf wars at the seams. Imagine a 49 employee client moved into Majors and is now being sold Workforce Now. Who owns that client? Is this an SBS or a Majors upsell opportunity? Consider it – there’s separate sales leaders. Everything is segmented by size. The revenue is ‘owned’ by regional GMs with their own P&L. It’s a mess." — Former DVP, Business Transformation"

""Can you talk about if the Company through this process discussed taking the Company private through a leveraged buyout and how you decided that this was the better alternative?" — Gary Lieberman, Analyst, Stanford Financial Group. "Yes, this is Bill Schoen speaking. We absolutely did, and we had several conversations with several people regarding that. And we came to the conclusion because of our extraordinary, outstanding balance sheet, that it would be a better approach -- the directors felt it would be a better approach to go ahead and give this cash dividend to our shareholders and then allow our shareholders to continue in the growth of our Company." — Bill Schoen, HMA Chairman. "In a bold move, Schoen fended off private-equity investors that have snapped up rival hospital companies, such as HCA last year, by using some of the same tactics." — Business Observer."

"It’s just the toxic culture, this weird secrecy. Waleed’s sister is the product director for the lung division. What Amira says goes as far as lung cases go. The product director for liver - I want to say that his son is also in the company somewhere. Ahmed is his first name. — Former employee; The CEO, his sister, heads of other divisions, and then the technical officer were Egyptian. Some others by marriage; they may have some other relatives. They make decisions among themselves and we didn’t know what’s going on. — Former senior employee; Whenever someone’s sister is running the lung program - things like that. They just built out without knowing what they were doing. And if my team calls their 1-800 number, it was just like Larry, Mo, and Curly running things back there, trying to get a case done. — Transplant surgeon at a high-volume CA academic center"

"“I mean, they had very similar beginnings, Zymergen and Ginkgo. What was different about the two companies, really, and this maybe seems like I'm splitting hairs a little bit, but Zymergen was always focused on lower-risk science.” — Former Ginkgo director level employee; “Ginkgo has always been more of the let's not do strain improvement per se, but let's actually build novel products or start from scratch... Ginkgo was always a higher risk but more sexy projects. Zymergen was just kind of ho-hum.” — Former Ginkgo director level employee; “I think both companies were always looking jealously at each other or trying to one-up each other. But I don't think there's a large differentiation between the two companies per se besides that historical philosophy... they're more similar to each other than they are different.” — Former Ginkgo director level employee"

"“...operating priority is simply execution...I use data to drive decisions, I set clear targets...I set the competitive benchmarks and I continuously raise the bar.” — May 2, 2013 Investor Day said by Ellen Kullman; “Relative to our five year, long-term rolling growth targets (7% rev growth, 12% earnings growth)..., we believe these goals are both appropriate and achievable. We fully endorse management’s plan to achieve them and are encouraged by progress against them.” — Letter to Trian from Alexander Cutler, DuPont’s Lead Director dated March 5, 2014; “Returning capital to shareholders has always been a priority at DuPont” — March 23, 2015 Letter from Alexander Cutler; “Trian...nominated...its own director candidates...to advance Trian’s high risk agenda to break up and add excessive debt to the Company” — March 23, 2015 Letter from Alexander Cutler."

"“Ginkgo was kind of allowed to do what they wanted to do for the first period of the company [Joyn] at least, and that was really something that Jason Kelly and the group really sort of had pushed for, especially in Motif, at Allonnia, and the subsequent ventures, Ginkgo really needs to control these entities because if they can't then—what they want is for these subsidiaries or for these joint ventures, these supposedly independent companies to be obligated to use Ginkgo services, and Ginkgo services are very expensive.” — Former director-level employee; “From a business perspective, they want all the revenue, and they want to control the entity, for sure... the whole Ferment Consortium, this $300 million slush fund to start child companies of Ginkgo, I would say for sure Ginkgo controls all of those almost certainly.” — Former director-level employee"

"“Yeah, simply put, yes.” — Ex-Twist employee in manufacturing, now a research professor; “As far as I know, there’s nothing like a microchip involved. Other people use microchip-like things for the synthesis of DNA oligos.” — Current Twist customer, professor with a protein therapeutics lab at a major university; “The business is based on service. On that front, I think that they are just average. That’s my observation. I don’t think that they are anything special. The only thing unique is that at initiation they could synthesize a million different oligos at a much smaller scale...They have some sales pitch, but even I am not 100% sure that actually is a real advantage, even when promoting that it sounds good, but in reality, I don’t know whether it translates to a better product or better outcomes.” — Former Twist employee, director-level"

"I worked on the actinic project. I've worked on the DUV project, and I worked on the electron beam project. I worked on all three of those. I know them all very well...I would say that Lasertec definitely launched the actinic mask inspection capability sooner than KLA did; however, there are alternatives. In fact, there was an award announced at last year's EUV mask event about the work that KLA and others have done about supporting EUV mask inspection with other methods. So, there are alternatives for the inspection. Having said that, I do think that the actinic mask inspection is the best way to do that if the system is well-engineered. I do think there are current alternatives. KLA has an electron beam system, and they have a D2B system, and KLA is working on an EUV system. — Ex-KLA director of engineering focused on EUV mask inspection"

""The Board of Directors sincerely appreciates the constructive perspectives Jeff has brought to our group...he has been a valuable contributor to the Board and provided a focus on the long-term best interests of the company and its shareholders. We thank him for his service and wish him continued success." — Nigel Travis, Chairman and CEO of Dunkin' Brands; "On behalf of our management and Board of Directors, I want to thank Jeff for his significant contributions to Office Depot and its shareholders. Jeff has been an integral part of our accomplishments and provided important perspectives that helped to define strategies that position the company for long-term growth and profitability. I have appreciated our time working together and wish Jeff well in his existing and future projects." — Roland Smith, Chairman and CEO of Office Depot"

"“The Board of Directors sincerely appreciates the constructive perspectives Jeff has brought to our group...he has been a valuable contributor to the Board and provided a focus on the long-term best interests of the company and its shareholders. We thank him for his service and wish him continued success.” — Nigel Travis, Chairman and CEO of Dunkin’ Brands; “On behalf of our management and Board of Directors, I want to thank Jeff for his significant contributions to Office Depot and its shareholders. Jeff has been an integral part of our accomplishments and provided important perspectives that helped to define strategies that position the company for long-term growth and profitability. I have appreciated our time working together and wish Jeff well in his existing and future projects.” — Roland Smith, Chairman and CEO of Office Depot"

""The strong leadership of President and CEO Yoshihiro Hasebe, and with the appropriate oversight and advice from the current Outside Directors" — Kao Corporation. "What we want to hear from the Company is why we should expect the next step to be different." — Foreign Buyside Analyst. "How do I rate the strategic competence of management? I would give them a zero. Actually, can I give them a negative? They failed to deliver on guidance and the board made no change to management. It’s horrible." — Foreign Buyside Analyst. "My sense is none of the management team are really what you would call ‘professionals’… they should bring in specialist personnel with knowledge of global business" — Domestic Buyside Analyst. "The management team's abilities are extremely low… Global skills are practically non-existent." — Domestic Buyside Analyst."

""It is time for shareholders' voices to be heard, for accountability to be introduced in the Taubman Centers boardroom, and for a clear message to be sent to the Taubman family that shareholders will no longer tolerate abysmal corporate governance, misguided operations, lavish developments and inferior total returns," said Land and Buildings Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Jonathan Litt. "Taubman continues to deliver suboptimal value for shareholders with 57% stock underperformance versus Class A Mall Peers over the last five years. We believe our two independent and highly-qualified director nominees, Charles Elson and myself, will bring the fresh perspectives and objectivity that we believe is currently lacking on the Board and can help reverse this trend of value destruction." — Jonathan Litt, Land and Buildings"

"Iger told board members he didn't think Chapek needed to audition for the role... Iger told [Chapek] that instead of the one-on-one board interviews, Disney's lead independent director, Susan Arnold, would be in touch... She and Iger had both recommended Chapek for the job, and the board had approved. — CNBC. Mr. Iger, then still under contract as executive chairman, didn't move out of the office he kept at Disney's headquarters in Burbank, Calif. He called strategy meetings with Mr. Chapek's underlings without inviting the new CEO. — WSJ. The executive change came together quickly, blindsiding Chapek and his closest allies. Disney's board reached out to Iger on Friday [November 18, 2022], without any other serious candidates in mind to replace Chapek as CEO, CNBC's David Faber reported Monday, citing sources. — CNBC."

""[Bob] Iger had personally selected every member of the board, which is surprisingly lacking in media and entertainment experience. Iger is personally close with several of them, including Nike Executive Chairman Mark Parker and General Motors CEO Mary Barra [who is on Disney's Compensation Committee]. In addition, the wife of another director, Michael Froman, then vice chairman of Mastercard and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had been housemates with Iger's wife..." — CNBC, September 2023; "[G]iven the many challenges [Disney faces], Parker will be spreading himself thin" as Chairman of both Disney and Nike, and "only a handful of executives", including Rupert Murdoch [who recently stepped down from serving as Chairman of Fox and News Corp.], chair two S&P 500 companies." — Reuters, January 2023"

"“Up to 65 now is our limit... and who knows, maybe we’ll increase that even further...most people that are using machine perfusion now are using it for older donors.” — Transplant surgeon and transplant program director at a leading Northeast academic center; “30%...the older peak, we’re not in the business of transplanting people with 70-year-old livers, like other places do. I know Methodist does a lot of older donors.” — Transplant hepatologist and director of the liver program at a Midwest academic center; “Yes., 100%...the donors are becoming increasingly older. I would not be surprised if a large majority of folks are above that age range.” — Senior medical employee at OrganOx; “DCDs over the age of 55, I would say, are probably more than 50%.” — Transplant surgeon at a high volume West Coast academic center"

"I don't know the CEO at all. I don't know him personally. Have I actually seen him, met him? Yes, but I don't have any personal connection. I honestly don't have any personal connection to anyone at this company. I've never had an email from TransMedics...honestly... there's no conflict of interest...I don't know what their stock is doing....I am not by any means an insider to that circle...I do not have any involvement...if I was someone that TransMedics in any way engaged with and I was involved with activities that they in any way sponsor...which I absolutely never have...I literally have never received as much as an email or communication from TransMedics other than updates on the data that they have or anything like that. — Transplant hepatologist and director of the liver program at a Midwest academic center"

""In November, we announced Bob Iger's return to the role of Chief Executive Officer. While remaining focused on the ongoing evolution of our core operating model, the Board gave Bob a dual mandate for his two-year term to rebalance investment with return opportunity while retaining the focus on the creative talent that defines Disney and to assist the Board in ongoing leadership succession planning." — Disney's 2023 Proxy Statement; "Success and succession are fundamentally different objectives for CEOs. Someone in Mr. Iger's seat has too many competing interests and conflicting incentives to handle both... the guy who gets you lost in the woods isn't the right guy to find your way out." — Charles Elson, Founding Director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, December 2022"

""[Dr.] Klaus Kleinfeld serves as both the CEO and chairman. The combined role is increasingly discouraged by investors believing instead that the separation of these roles provides more effective board oversight. As an enhanced safeguard, the company has individual designated Patricia Russo as the Lead Director. However, Ms. Russo is overboarded, serving as Lead Director of GM, chairman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and is a director at Merck & Co. This calls into question the time she has available to lead the independent directors. Another issue is the fact that Chairman and CEO [Dr.] Klaus-Christian Kleinfeld, who is also overboarded, serves on the board of HPE with Ms. Russo. This can make it difficult for the lead director to act independently." — MSCI ESG Research, Inc., December 19, 2016"

""The Arconic Board has repeatedly demonstrated a clear commitment to good governance. It created Alcoa Corporation as a Delaware entity with a state-of-the-art, shareholder-friendly governance profile. It is seeking shareholder approval to declassify its board and eliminate all supermajority voting requirements, and if the requisite approval is not obtained, it has committed to propose a Delaware reincorporation that would achieve that result. This Board—which consists of a majority of directors who joined the board since the beginning of last year including three directors selected by a major activist shareholder—deserves the full support of investors who embrace best practices in corporate governance." — Joseph A. Grundfest, Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School, March 2017"

"We have a cold perfusion pump for kidneys. They cost less than $2,000 each so that just gets absorbed into the OPO cost, but it's $2,000. — Transplant surgeon and transplant program director at a major academic center in Pennsylvania; The bills from TransMedics could be $110,000-120,000, and that’s in addition to the transplant center’s organ acquisition fee that they’re getting from the OPO, which in itself is $50,000 to $70,000. — Prominent surgeon, leadership role at a major West Coast academic transplant center; We were looking at the cost of an organ on the NOP of over $100,000 - that’s not including the organ. That’s the cost of just procuring the organ through the TransMedics program. — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world, based at a leading Midwest academic center"

"“These independent directors agreed to join our board, because they believe in our outstanding plan, and they recognize that our plan is the right plan for all of our shareholders.” “We have had this strategic transformation, as my remarks noted, underway, really going back...since I became Chairman...In fact, Elliott got on the train after it really left the station...This is a culmination of a multi year strategy...” — John Hess, March 4th 2013(1); “While this letter presents Elliott’s perspectives, Shareholder Nominees will form their own, independent views on the Company, its assets, and its strategy. These five accomplished individuals bring deep knowledge and experience in areas that are severely lacking in the existing board.” — Elliott Letter to Shareholders, January 29th 2013(2)"

"“A hospital comes in and says we want to use NGS to detect the mutation... It takes them probably three to six months to develop those assets and validate those.” — Ex-Twist director-level employee; “It involves a lot of people just given that from sequence origination to supporting their algorithms to go to their chips, and then the post-manufacturing formulation, QC testing. It touches a lot of hands, and it is laborious.” — Former employee now at a key competitor; “It takes them months to turn around a pool, and it’s a full-scale synthesis, so it’s quite expensive... If you don’t like the pool once they’ve made it for you, the rework time on it to make another pool and tune it is the same months and the same cost.” — Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles"

""While this letter presents Elliott's perspectives, Shareholder Nominees will form their own, independent views on the Company, its assets, and its strategy. These five accomplished individuals bring deep knowledge and experience in areas that are severely lacking in the existing board." — Elliott Letter to Shareholders, January 29th 2013. "These independent directors agreed to join our board, because they believe in our outstanding plan, and they recognize that our plan is the right plan for all of our shareholders." "We have had this strategic transformation, as my remarks noted, underway, really going back...since I became Chairman...In fact, Elliott got on the train after it really left the station...This is a culmination of a multi year strategy..." — John Hess, March 4th 2013."

"“These independent directors agreed to join our board, because they believe in our outstanding plan, and they recognize that our plan is the right plan for all of our shareholders.” “We have had this strategic transformation, as my remarks noted, underway, really going back...since I became Chairman...In fact, Elliott got on the train after it really left the station...This is a culmination of a multi year strategy...” — John Hess, March 4th 2013. “While this letter presents Elliott’s perspectives, Shareholder Nominees will form their own, independent views on the Company, its assets, and its strategy. These five accomplished individuals bring deep knowledge and experience in areas that are severely lacking in the existing board.” — Elliott Letter to Shareholders, January 29th 2013."

""These independent directors agreed to join our board, because they believe in our outstanding plan, and they recognize that our plan is the right plan for all of our shareholders." "We have had this strategic transformation, as my remarks noted, underway, really going back...since I became Chairman...In fact, Elliott got on the train after it really left the station...This is a culmination of a multi year strategy..." — John Hess, March 4th 2013; "While this letter presents Elliott's perspectives, Shareholder Nominees will form their own, independent views on the Company, its assets, and its strategy. These five accomplished individuals bring deep knowledge and experience in areas that are severely lacking in the existing board." — Elliott Letter to Shareholders, January 29th 2013"

""On May 22, 2013, Starboard entered into a Settlement Agreement with Tessera Technologies, Inc. pursuant to which the six Starboard nominees, which included only one Starboard employee, would constitute a majority of the 10 person Board. One of the incumbent directors who remained on the Board was Rick Hill. Hill was Chairman of Tessera and by far the most vocal opponent of Starboard’s involvement in Tessera. After being on the Tessera Board with Starboard for six months, Hill did a complete one-eighty and even agreed to be a member of Starboard’s dissident slate at TriQuint Semiconductor. Since the Starboard slate went on the Board, the Company’s stock has appreciated by 43.15% versus 16.22% for the S&P500." — The Activist Report's “The Independent Majority” article, August 2014"

""On May 22, 2013, Starboard entered into a Settlement Agreement with Tessera Technologies, Inc. pursuant to which the six Starboard nominees, which included only one Starboard employee, would constitute a majority of the 10 person Board. One of the incumbent directors who remained on the Board was Rick Hill. Hill was Chairman of Tessera and by far the most vocal opponent of Starboard’s involvement in Tessera. After being on the Tessera Board with Starboard for six months, Hill did a complete one-eighty and even agreed to be a member of Starboard’s dissident slate at TriQuint Semiconductor. Since the Starboard slate went on the Board, the Company’s stock has appreciated by 43.15% versus 16.22% for the S&P500." — The Activist Report's “The Independent Majority” article, August 2014"

"“One CEO whose board includes Mr. Peltz has publicly disclosed what it’s like to deal with activists such as Mr. Peltz: ‘I think the single biggest disconnect that I found is that many activists simply sit in conference rooms and do calculations and analysis, independent of the reality of the fact that we are dealing with human beings and people’s lives.’” — P&G Shareholder Letter, September 20th, 2017; “My quote was taken out of context. My statement was referring to the many activists who have not run businesses or are not close enough to the realities of operating a business. I was not referring to Nelson Peltz, who is a knowledgeable director, an experienced operator and, as a member of our board, is fully informed about our business.” — Irene Rosenfeld, September 20th, 2017"

"In our opinion, except for the effects of the question described in the In the Basis for Qualified Opinion section of our report, the accompanying annual accounts present fairly, in all respects significant, the image faithful of the heritage and of the financial situation of the Society to December 31, 2024 — Deloitte Auditor Report. The attached report does not contain the information required by Article 260 of the Capital Companies Law and the General Accounting Plan, in relation to the amount of advances and loans, as well as salaries, allowances, pension obligations or payment of life insurance premiums and other remuneration of any kind accrued by the Directors and the members of the Senior Management of the Society in the exercises 2024 and 2023 — Deloitte Auditor Report."

""This pattern suggests that Phillips 66's board is using these repeated proposals as a distraction tactic while failing to deliver tangible governance reform that shareholders seem to support." — Professor Mark DesJardine, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business; "Phillips objects to the Elliott proposal, weakly arguing that it 'contravenes well-settled principles of Delaware corporate law and would be highly unlikely to withstand scrutiny in Delaware courts... The problem with this argument is that it ignores the simple fact that directors are free to resign their board positions at any time, and nothing in the Phillips charter or bylaws possible can be construed as preventing directors from voluntarily offering to resign.." — Professor Jonathan Macey, Yale Law School and Yale SOM"

"“Then they had an industrial group...that was literally trying to redesign the programmable logic controller to be a cloud-connected PLC of the future...the product quality on the hardware side on fleet is very different than industrial...We were taking some of our fleet products and putting it into industrial and the product quality just wasn’t quite there for that market...” — Third Bridge Interview with Former Samsara Director, Product Management, 9/29/21; “...there was an industrial kind of team for a while that focused on manufacturing and using cameras that were the second iteration really of the Samsara fleet product...It kind of stamped out. I think it probably would be considered a miss today.” — Tegus Interview with Former Samsara Senior Account Executive, 6/20/23"

""And in the specific case of HMA, we think that this is precisely the sort of action that could fix long-standing problems. In short, we think that Glenview is pursuing precisely the correct course and believe that it can be successful in building a consensus among HMA shareholders to nominate new directors and change the course of the company." — CRT Capital Group LLC, June 12, 2013; "We believe HMA shares will trade higher if the Board adopts any of a number of possible shareholder friendly actions... Given the recent poison pill adoption, it does not appear that the Board is currently amenable to such overtures, but the possibility remains that an activist could call a special meeting to introduce a replacement slate of directors." — Citi, June 12, 2013"

"“Mark Ghobrial has definitely grown his program, more than doubled its size. The guy in Mayo Clinic at Scottsdale has more than doubled theirs. Part of it is that they’re willing to take organs that others haven’t been willing to - older donors, all that stuff.” — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world, based at a leading Midwest academic center; “So, a place well-known for using TransMedics nationally is Mayo Scottsdale. Scottsdale went from being a medium-sized program to two years ago being the largest transplant program by volume in the country. I believe that was mostly through the expanded use of organs, specifically OCS, is my understanding.” — Transplant hepatologist and director of the liver program at a Midwest academic center"

"“There’s no real business there”; “They don’t have those products” “I think the big hiccup or red flag right now is you could say, where are those products? For a company that’s been around for 13 years, it seems to me, if I was going public, I’d have this long list of amazing products—they don’t all have to be billion-dollar products, but something that looks tangible that says, we have succeeded and provided value to our partners and provided a good return on investment. And they don’t have that story. They don’t have those products. And so, do you believe that they are going to build those products and are going to have some success? Or do you believe that it’s just a smokescreen? There’s no real business there.” — Former director-level employee"

"On January 9, 2026, in response to a proposed offer price of ¥18,600, it was deemed that the price “still significantly deviates from the price level envisioned by the Company’s board of directors and the Special Committee, and must be largely increased also from the perspective of securing minority shareholders...in light of the fact that there is an increasing trend in the share prices of TMC and the Three Toyota Group Companies owned by the Company, the Tender Offer Price must be proposed factoring in the risk of price fluctuations up to the scheduled announcement date of commencement of the Tender Offer...” — Appendix 7 (The Process of Negotiations Before the Report) to the Toyota Industries Special Committee report dated January 14, 2026."

""Harvey Golub is everything that you would want in a director. And one of the things that I appreciate most about him is that he has always respected the space between the Non-Executive Chairman and the CEO roles. He challenged me. He held me accountable. But he did not try to do my job for me… And he has challenged us to sharpen our strategy, and better execute that strategy by holding us to high performance standards. He often tells us, ‘This is what you said you would do. Are you delivering and, if not, why not?’" — Douglas Conant, former CEO of Campbell Soup Co, September 2009; "Harvey Golub has done an absolutely sensational job, and we're probably $4 billion better because of it." — Warren Buffet, 1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting"

""The entire Meetrics team is thrilled to join forces with DoubleVerify – a rapidly expanding, global organization with a best-in-class verification offering," said Dr. Philipp von Hilgers, Co-founder and Managing Director of Meetrics. "Since 2008, Meetrics has established itself as a leading, Europe-focused ad verification company," said Dr. Max von Hilgers, Co-founder and Managing Director of Meetrics. "We acquired a company called Meetrics to strengthen up our Western Europe, Germany, Nordics business last year They were a local provider of similar solutions, not as robust of course, but similar solutions in those markets. So we basically acquired some amazing customers and some amazing people in those markets." — BMO Conf March 3, 2022"

"“I heard Waleed’s head almost exploded” — Prominent surgeon, Director of leading academic transplant center. “Whether I use TransMedics or whether I put it in a cooler of ice, I still get $300,000. But when I put it in the cooler of ice and bring the organ, my margin on the case is, let’s say, $100,000-120,000 or something. When I do it, and I then use the OCS device, my margin on the case is $10,000” — Transplant surgeon and transplant program director at a leading Northeast academic center. “All of this is very true and it very much eats up your margin...you are eating up a very, very substantial amount of the margin, no doubt about it.” — Transplant hepatologist and director of the liver program at a Midwest academic center."

"I don't get it because Nevro's device is a piece of crap. I think people are picking up on it... The company couldn't care less about explant rates. They know. It's obvious. They don't want to hear from doctors because they already know this stuff. They've made a conscious decision. They don't give a shit. They just want to sell the company. — High volume implanter and KOL; Nevro keeps explant rates very well hidden from the field reps... The explant rate was a hell of a lot higher than [the stated] 2%. I don't know that people asked for it, because ignorance is bliss. I didn't want to know. Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to. My peers in the field felt the same way. — Former Nevro regional sales director"

"“All of the engineering and that synthetic biology happens in Boston. So, there’s that. I do think that was a bit of a power move…” — Former director-level employee; “Joyn was sort of set up as a, I mean, it was the first big joint venture, and it was set up to be independent. At the time, Ginkgo HR facilitated things, and there was some outsourcing of those types of G&A functions to Ginkgo, like they had kind of a part-time CFO, kind of independent contractor types that worked in different administration and executive functions. So, it wasn’t entirely run by Ginkgo, but it did leverage some kind of Ginkgo’s people in those roles, and it did use the same software systems and things like that.” — Former director-level employee"

""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; "It is our intention within the 24-month period to be able to take this combined business, this pigments business... and have a normalized EBITDA in excess of $0.5 billion" — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013; "We continue to remain focused as a Company and our Board of Directors on deleveraging. I think that when you look at our targets going out 2015 and 2016...our leverage ratios go to our long-time stated objective of 2.0 times our EBITDA." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013"

""The ‘key goal is to dismantle the alleged deception and unfairness built into how Herbalife does business. As the company rewrites its advertising claims and restructures its compensation system, we’ll be watching’" — FTC blog 7/15/16; "An order that requires Herbalife to restructure its business from top to bottom – and to start complying with the law" — FTC blog 7/15/16; "A major restructuring of business operations" — Edith Ramirez, FTC Chairman 7/15/16; "It’s no longer business as usual at Herbalife" — FTC blog 7/15/16; "The FTC’s settlement significantly restructures Herbalife, changing – top to bottom – how it does business" — Statement of Lois Greisman, Associate Director, FTC Division of Marketing Practices"

"“The key goal is to dismantle the alleged deception and unfairness built into how Herbalife does business. As the company rewrites its advertising claims and restructures its compensation system, we’ll be watching” — FTC blog 7/15/16; “An order that requires Herbalife to restructure its business from top to bottom – and to start complying with the law” — FTC blog 7/15/16; “A major restructuring of business operations” — Edith Ramirez, FTC Chairman 7/15/16; “It’s no longer business as usual at Herbalife” — FTC blog 7/15/16; “The FTC’s settlement significantly restructures Herbalife, changing – top to bottom – how it does business” — Statement of Lois Greisman, Associate Director, FTC Division of Marketing Practices"

"“No. You can get it from other companies... There’s nothing we can’t do easily—it would be a similar process, a similar approach, similar synthesizing. DNA is like traditional chemistry, just typical DNA synthesis method using phosphoramidite. So, there is no advantage.” — Former Twist employee, director-level. “They’ve certainly positioned themselves as a commodity provider. They certainly have positioned themselves as maybe not quite McDonald’s. They’re like an In and Out Burger, maybe.” — IDT ex-regional sales manager, left recently. “Twist is for their very low-priority screening projects to where they don’t have the ability to devote their internal resources.” — IDT ex-regional sales manager, left recently."