Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"Speculated that Soleno removed critical investigators as authors on papers and buried them under acknowledgments, and played hardball by keeping them in the dark about the status of the papers."

"Something appears very shady. How is it possible that ShopKeep and Upserve recognized $31.4m of transaction expenses pre deal-closing, while LSPD only recognized $6.5m of expenses post-closing?"

"Despite Herbalife's claim that its compensation structure in China is different from other markets, the pro forma Contribution Margin in China essentially mirrors those in the rest of the world"

"The FDA’s reviewer’s conclusion – shown below – exhibits no awareness that a 2 point reduction in ESS is a failure: “HARMONY 1-bis provides confirmatory evidence of pitolisant’s effect on EDS.”"

"neither Harmony nor Bioprojet has ever shown this to be the case, which means there is no evidence for the key claim and that their advertising and marketing is therefore false, in our opinion."

"Comp plan paid reps for off-label referral forms; highly prevalent practice across the salesforce; open secret in the company; was brought to “senior leadership” attention on numerous occasions"

"Notwithstanding the strategic benefit of an extensive branch network across Hong Kong and China, BEA HK’s fee income business falls below its peer group average, on both a gross and a net basis"

"Spruce Point recently interviewed a company that considered using DV, but eventually decided not to use their services. A major pressure point was their inflexibility and classification system."

"Trial investigator #5 highlighted the enormous discontinuation rate close to 80%, and admitted that the trials were basically unblinded because the side effects were so obvious and significant."

"Zoetis’ share price has increased 44% (including dividends) from the inception of our position in July 2014, and 28% from our average cost basis prior to the position being made public, to date"

"QTT claimed that we are dishonest, yet they failed to disclose that 5 of Shanghai Jifen’s subsidiaries had their equity frozen by the Chinese courts the day before their response was published."

"Today, however, poor execution and leadership’s stubborn unwillingness to evolve the Company’s strategy have led to deeply disappointing results for shareholders, employees and customers alike."

"We believe that INS’s common stock is uninvestable, given that these significant and material related party transactions in our view cast doubt onto the integrity of INS’s financial statements."

"the idea that data centers are the “silver bullet” market for SOFC (and by extension for Ceres) appears structurally flawed and overly optimistic given current technical and market constraints."

"It was clear that this building was far from any kind of production or manufacturing. At best, some areas may have been staged for pictures to be used in a future press release, in our opinion."

"We see a large disconnect between the high costs and high margins and how they can co-exist with each other. This was our first clue that something might be amiss with the company’s financials."

"TSMC views Lasertec as merely a niche R&D tool that is not suitable in a fab: “we call it a lab tool, R&D tool...not a production tool...because you have a lot of limitations for productivity.”"

"I think they will never cancel those POs because some of those POs are basically there because of the investment they got. It's just there because they owe Intel money, so that's what they did."

""For Mr. Andersen, those relationships included ordinary course commercial transactions between our company and an entity for which Mr. Andersen is a director." — XPO 2016 Proxy Statement, p.18"

""For Mr. Andersen, those relationships included ordinary course commercial transactions between our company and an entity for which Mr. Andersen is a director." — XPO 2016 Proxy Statement, p.18"

""Bolloré has a track record of using minority holdings to pursue control and profit goals, as demonstrated across Bouygues, Aegis and more recently, Vivendi itself." — Glass Lewis, May 25, 2018"

"Explain the comment “ensuring technological sovereignty in France” in the Atos press release of 16 February 2022? How important was this factor to Airbus in negotiating the agreement with Atos?"

"Mafia scanning concession / As a doctor Olti Pezzini bought 49% stake in a concession worth USD 316 million to 490 leks. Who is hiding behind the ICMS and the Salus hospital ?! — Media Headline"

"“... in the latter part of the second quarter 2021, we are scheduled to temporarily take the Kentucky plant off-line to implement several debottlenecking initiatives.” — DNMR 1Q21 earnings call"

"“We are highly confident BWLD could refranchise their owned stores at a multiple of 6.0x or higher and estimate a refranchising process to 90% could take as few as 18-24 months” — Cypress Group"

"Celgene will make an upfront payment of $1.1 billion for the privately held San Diego company, the companies said in a statement Sunday, confirming an earlier report in The Wall Street Journal."

"“a change in certain vendor arrangements where we [ELF] now take ownership of inventory at shipment from China versus when it enters our U.S. distribution center.” — ELF Beauty, 2Q FY2024, 10-Q"

"“There’s a huge market dislocation with energy” — Amir Adnani; “Nuclear energy is back in a big way” — Amir Adnani; “Attitudes in favour of nuclear energy are at an all-time high” — Amir Adnani"

"intends to refine compensation and incentive programs for senior management to more directly emphasize same-restaurant-sales growth and free cash flow. — Darden Restaurants, Inc. (Dec 19, 2013)"

"Mr Harwood KC submitted that the Developer fell short of its duty of candid disclosure in failing to explain to the Court how, internally, it calculated the capacity of the proposed solar farm."

"Wir hatten zumindest das Gefühl, wenn Du – wie Phillip [Westermann Meyer] gesagt hat – ein bisschen Eier hast, kannst Du auch als Außenwerber im Online-Bereich ein bisschen aufräumen. — C. Sch."

"“Your letter contained extremely serious accusations and we are responding to these accusations with the same level of seriousness and with factual evidence.” — TransMedics CEO Waleed Hassanein"

"“purchasing fewer retail vehicles means fewer low age units are added to the website which other things being equal, increases the average age of our inventory.” — Carvana 4Q shareholder letter"

"In the light of the line of challenge which has succeeded, I will quash the Planning Permission and the NMA, so that the decision is remitted to the Planning Committee — Legal Judgment Excerpt."

"“to this day, the electric table, the superior alignment technology...are ASML’s bedrock...its super-fast, super-precise stage and alignment have been unique selling points for decades.” — ASML"

"In fact, RUN investor relations referred to tax equity as “effectively debt”, which underscores our concern that RUN is, in essence, selling the ITCs or using them as collateral for financing."

"With recent catalysts, including promoting the partnership with DraftKings for the NFL deal, now behind Genius, we believe going forward, there are more downward risks than positive catalysts."

"The FIGS origin story is riddled with small inconsistencies. While we acknowledge the business has grown, we believe such inconsistencies are indicative of a general inattentiveness to detail."

"We believe this should be considered a related-party transaction. We believe this is an excessive perquisite for an employee, even if a portion of the land is being used for business purposes."

"As AMT has not hedged its currency risk we believe that this could cause further devaluation of revenue and assets in the future and will most likely lead to AMT performing below expectations."

"Our expectation is that a larger number of the Brazilian towers will need to be redeveloped in order to add more tenants to towers and that the total cost will be approximately US$100 million."

"At the risk of this report seeming to be a love letter to Jay Brown, we quote him regarding the incompatibility of the REIT structure with the risks of emerging and frontier market cash flows."

"Crown Castle’s tower business has been an “enabler” for excessive fiber capex. Peers chose to exercise much greater prudence in allocating capital and ensure that fiber projects earned returns"

"CP's share price increased 429% (including dividends) since inception of our investment in September 2011, and 335% from our average cost basis prior to the position being made public, to date"

"Restaurant Brands International’s share price increased 176% (including dividends) since it merged with Justice Holdings and from our average cost basis prior to the position being made public"

"Absent intentional manipulation, the rising allowance trend could indicate XPO's declining ability to collect from existing customers, or sales being recorded from lower quality new customers."

"Exiting product business in this fashion allows Tessera to: Realize substantial upside if mems|cam achieves commercial success. Begin more active licensing activities for DOC patent portfolio."

"The combination of Riot's inability to increase bitcoin production and perpetual stock sales has resulted in sustained declines in both bitcoin production per share and bitcoin held per share."

"In this context I would like to comment briefly on the attack by the Muddy Waters hedge fund a few weeks ago. Until April 21, 2016, I was in fact not aware of the term "activist short seller"."

"Monolithic was intent on developing a 50,000 sqft property from scratch, and even purchased raw land, that it fortunately flipped at a profit. This will be a one-time gain reported in Q3 2019."

"ADP frequently touts its “service” capabilities as a differentiator. The substantial majority of what ADP externally calls “service” is actually “support” for product and back-end deficiencies"

"While the Company acknowledges it must focus on gaining younger customers, we believe CTC is lagging its peers at attracting millennials. Overpaying for acquisitions will not solve the problem"

"Not only would a partial or full monetization of real estate unlock substantial value, it would also accelerate SIX’s debt paydown, provide cash for buybacks and quicken dividend reinstatement"

"We wonder: now that he no longer needs to disclose sales of PETQ shares, how much has he been selling? Why does he appear to still be active in a number of his (many) other business interests?"

"While PetIQ's growth target was initially set at 20%, this figure was gradually tracked back to 15% without much explanation, and without any announcement that its growth estimate had changed."

"So from my personal opinion, IperionX, where right now, and I think this is what they're good at, they're good at marketing. Personally, I believe, to me it's more a marketing story right now."

"So from my personal opinion, IperionX, where right now, and I think this is what they're good at, they're good at marketing. Personally, I believe, to me it's more a marketing story right now."

"Muddy Waters, LLC has amassed irrefutable evidence that CCME is a substantial fraud, and that management is engaging in a cover-up replete with further dissemination of fraudulent information."

"Khosla’s track record is legendary – just not in cleantech or EV batteries, where an unusual number of his investments made bold QS-like claims of a breakthrough, only to be exposed as frauds."

"The former employee characterized the claim as believable as someone declaring 200 miles per gallon for a gasoline-fueled car, and explained in detail why the CEO’s statements are not credible"