Callouts & quotes from 2,101+ activist slides

"Zebra was asked twice about Fetch Robotics on the Q2'24 conference call, and we think the CEO failed to provide any concrete update or specifics other than a reference that customers are giving them an opportunity to sell solutions."

"While Maria Elena Lagomasino has overseen three problematic CEO succession processes as a director, Nelson Peltz has overseen several effective leadership transitions that have been well-received by shareholders and other observers."

"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."

"Despite the CEO offering expectations of “winning” in Europe at the beginning of the year, we find that profits were down materially. Even worse, we find that Amcor’s cash pool swung from a surplus of €62.7m to a deficit of -€34.4m."

"While Maria Elena Lagomasino has overseen three problematic CEO succession processes as a director, Nelson Peltz has overseen several effective leadership transitions that have been well-received by shareholders and other observers."

"We were shocked to discover that less than two months after VCM reneged on its financing commitment to ABML, Michael Vogel joined LiNiCo, a potential future competitor, as “CEO, President, and Founder” according to his LinkedIn bio."

"How at a meeting in the fall of 2013, CEO Indra Nooyi told Nelson that the acquisition of the bottlers was a "mistake," thereby conceding that $21bn ($17bn excluding the equity PepsiCo previously owned in the bottlers) was misspent."

""Well, the dating platform neu.de certainly makes for a great story. I think we made dating more socially acceptable through the enormous advertising prints in our out-of-home billboard campaign." — Dirk Stader, Media Ventures's CEO"

"Through accounting sleight of hand, a cash investment partially provided by Invesco, and a reverse merger into a soon-to-collapse U.S. nanocap led by a highly questionable CEO, BUR turned a loss at trial into a purported 195% ROIC."

"In our goal of owning thirst, we are excited about our many exclusive product launches in the US, including Celsius Watermelon Ice during the quarter and our first GHOST brand exclusive this month. — CEO of Alimentation Couche-Tard"

"“If you look at how these bills are inflated, in many situations...the vendor fees can actually exceed the medical cost of care. One, it’s absurd, and two, it basically obviates the purpose of any type of plan like this.” — HST CEO"

"By the way, they are ahead of our plan. We had an internal plan that we put together for the combined business... And they had a quarter that exceeded our expectations and we expect that to continue. — Roger Krone, CEO, Aug 4, 2020"

"Glass Lewis believes that separating the roles of CEO (or, more rarely, another executive position) and Chair creates a better governance structure than a combined CEO/Chair position. — Glass Lewis 2024 Benchmark Policy Guidelines"

""The best measure to judge a company's performance over time is growth of free cash flow per share, and we believe that's what drives long-term value for our owners." — Rich Templeton, Chairman and former CEO of Texas Instruments."

"Glass Lewis believes that separating the roles of CEO (or, more rarely, another executive position) and Chair creates a better governance structure than a combined CEO/Chair position. — Glass Lewis 2024 Benchmark Policy Guidelines"

"The CEO's claim of FLAWLESS being a "brand-new category" is suspect. ULTA categorizes its products as Depilatories – hardly a new category. Sally Beauty buries the product under lubricants "Cool Care" and above the First Aid kit!"

"CEO Adnani has regularly been talking about uranium on CNBC, but curiously the interviews do not focus on how exactly UEC will profitably produce and supply uranium along with detailed specifics about the capital costs necessary."

"In reality, it is a one-trick pony in liver, with zero chance in kidney, the most widely transplanted organ by orders of magnitude; OCS Lung, run by the CEO’s sister, is a colossal failure; and OCS Heart is currently in freefall."

""Every portable generator in North America is imported with the exception of the ones that we make in Jefferson, Wisconsin. So nobody else makes portable generators in North America, we do." — Generac CEO, Q3 2018 Conference Call"

"We continue to execute our innovation strategy, including making acquisitions that expand our self-service portfolio, accelerate Verint's cloud and automation capabilities, and are accretive to earnings. — Dan Bodner, CEO, Verint"

"Dissenting views have no place at the company...different interpretations of the science. You're picking up on it [the discrepancies]. I'm sure a lot of the science team there would do it differently, but it's all up to the CEO."

"Mr Christopher Jordinson, a former CEO of UCL Resources Limited (UCL), his nephew, Mr Joe Turner, and Mr Jonathan Breen were convicted and sentenced for their roles in an insider trading scheme which generated $20,000 in profit."

"An executive named Gene Reznik touted by CEO Siebel as heading up a key growth initiative recently resigned in Jan 2022. Based on our analysis, sales and alliance executives have short duration tenures, often leaving under 2yrs."

"“The permits are in process, the state, the county, the federal government, the city, have been nothing but supportive of us, and it’s all going well, you’ll see more press, it’s on us and we’re at the end of it” — CEO Interview"

""The oxygen therapy market in the USA, it’s three to four million oxygen patients. The growth is rather robust at 7% to 10% net growth annually." — Scott Wilkinson, INGN CEO, at the Stifel Healthcare Conference in November 2018."

"Brandon Porter, whose social media profile says he advises the CEO of a mid-sized advertising agency in the USA, frequently likes posts by Mr. Horowitz of Movers+Shakers. Specifically, he also likes posts related to ELF Beauty."

"Phillips 66's choice of only looking at Lashier's tenure as CEO hides the fact that Lashier's stint as COO led to >50% relative underperformance vs. its refining peers, given poor operations during the "Golden Age" of refining."

"Phillips 66's choice of only looking at Lashier's tenure as CEO hides the fact that Lashier's stint as COO led to >50% relative underperformance vs. its refining peers, given poor operations during the "Golden Age" of refining."

"“There has been no change in the scope of the audit.” — Mr. Walton, Allied’s CEO. “the accountant does not function as an appraiser and is not expected to substitute his judgment for that of the company's directors.” — ASR 118."

""what we have seen in the German an auction [sic] which is the equivalent of EUR 25 per megawatt hour for the full lifetime of the project being the lease payment alone, I think that is not sustainable" — RWE CEO Markus Krebber"

""Norfolk has long been an underperforming self-help story that simply can't figure out how to help themselves." — Stifel; "We see value in potential management change with Jim Barber as CEO and Jamie Boychuk as COO." — Barclays"

"It is unfortunate that a company as iconic as Disney and with so many challenges and opportunities has refused to seriously engage with us, its largest active shareowner, about board representation. — Nelson Peltz, Trian's CEO."

""After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we decided that it was better for our company to leave the Russian market. I also renounced my Russian citizenship," said Timur Turlov, CEO of Freedom Holding Corp. — Timur Turlov"

"Former employees of Quantumscape confirmed the color we received directly from VW, suggesting that VW was kept in the dark and that the QS CEO and Chief Sales Officer “just had it nailed” as far how to play the VW bureaucracy."

"In our opinion, Porch gave a long-winded and non-sensical explanation, as to why it booked $33m as stock-based compensation expense when Lowe's sold a portion of its equity for $4.0 million ($0.25 per share) to CEO Ehrlichman."

"Managing retail chains is very much a family affair for the Rossys - at both stores. Perhaps Neil was going to be anointed CEO of Dollarama regardless of the caliber of other potential candidates. Let's hope he's not Commodus!"

"CEO Gerstel's official biography does not mention that he was instrumental in growing Lumenis Ltd. (formerly ESC Medical Systems). His LinkedIn bio says he was VP of Operations, but an earlier bio says Chief Operating Officer."

"“The innovation is so deeply embedded in Apple's culture... It's deeply embedded in the values -- it's in the DNA of the company. And so I feel fantastic about it. There's no better place for innovation.” — Apple CEO, Tim Cook"

"According to BlackRock, it is in the best interest of their clients to have their capital invested in a company whose CEO has a serious criminal record for falsifying the financial statement of another publicly listed company"

"TO US, IT APPEARS THAT THE REAL REASON PHILLIPS 66 REBUFFED MR. GOFF HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS INDEPENDENCE FROM ELLIOTT, AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HIS INDEPENDENCE FROM CEO MARK LASHIER AND THE COMPANY’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS."

"According to BlackRock, it is in the best interest of their clients to have their capital invested in a company whose CEO has a serious criminal record for falsifying the financial statement of another publicly listed company"

"Spruce Point finds it highly unusual that all its executive officers serve at the discretion of the Board except the Financial Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, who serves at the discretion of Chairman and CEO Farrell."

"“...This stretch of beach will be branded a national destination with the same kind of recognition as Nantucket, Hilton Head Island, or Napa.” — Peter Rummell, CEO Q1 2007 Earnings Call (referencing WindMark and Port St. Joe)"

"“As we’ve discussed [on] prior calls, enterprise customers have been interested in a move to the cloud and what we’ve seen lately is that they’ve accelerated the cloud adoption and cloud purchases.” — Dan Bodner – CEO, Verint"

""This is the result of the recognition of some low-profit ACTIS sales." — Lasertec CFO, Oct 31, 2023, earnings presentation; "I cannot give you any information on gross profit." — Okabayashi (CEO), Oct 31, 2023, earnings Q&A."

"We give credit to Generac’s CEO for relentlessly promoting and evangelizing the investment story. The public should review his seven most recent CNBC appearances, especially his three “Mad Money” appearances with Jim Cramer."

"GFL uses Campus Auto Collusion for its vehicle and equipment refurbishment. This reconnects CEO Dovigi with Claudio Villa, who plead guilty at Earthworx in 2015 for dumping toxic dirt, while charges against GFL were dropped."

"The quick headlines are $3 billion of segment operating income by 2020, and free cash flow generation of up to $5 billion for shareholder return programs and debt repayment. — Richard Kramer, CEO of Goodyear (September 2016)"

"“AOL's CEO and CFO have realized significant value in terms of restricted stock vesting in the past two years while shareholders experienced a decline in the stock price.” — A leading independent compensation consulting firm"

"Spruce Point believes change is required at Maxar Technologies (Nasdaq/TSX: MAXR). Based on our research, we believe CEO Howard Lance should resign for inflating Maxar’s earnings through an aggressive M&A accounting scheme."

"The CEO and CFO are among the most evasive we have ever seen across any company during quarterly analyst Q&A's, with a pattern of vague, non-committal answers and tersely dismissing even the most basic requests for details."

"And if we were a business today that we're separated from our TiO2, we would be going into 2016 saying...2016 will be a record EBITDA margin year in the history of this company. — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, March 2016"

"The CEO appears keenly aware that single layer is a low bar, and has recently begun pushing a disingenuous narrative: we’ve proven single-layer works and NOW - “for the first time” - we’ll finally focus on multilayer cells"

"In contrast to the CEO’s lofty claims, former employees paint a picture of a company still struggling with the same basic, unsolved issues that have blown up previous attempts at a viable solid-state battery for 50+ years."

"Are we to believe that AT&T – a business facing tremendous pressure – is cutting spending on IT services "just because"? Is this not begging the question? Even if true, could the CEO have said this in fewer than 600 words?"

""Yes. Rodeo is a great asset. It's operating well at or above design rates. We're in the process of optimizing the cost structure there to get it as competitive as we can get it." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, March 2025"

""Yes. Rodeo is a great asset. It's operating well at or above design rates. We're in the process of optimizing the cost structure there to get it as competitive as we can get it." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, March 2025"

"We will generally vote for proposals looking to separate the CEO and Chairman roles unless the company has governance structures in place that can satisfactorily counterbalance a combined chairman and CEO/ president post."

"We believe that UEC is a “trust me” story from a promotional CEO with documented connections to bad actors, and a resource base that has never been proven to have economically viable uranium that can be produced at scale."

"The CEO touted each company's "strong culture of innovation" and the attractive profile of the transaction. As the following slides will show, former Snap executives tell a different story about Snap's innovation culture."