""He says anything. I just read an interview with him in World Biz Magazine and he talked about it like he's excited by working with product managers. There are no product managers at IonQ. It's just complete crap [...] And they just continue to lie. Peter just lies. There's very little that he says that's the truth." — Former executive; "At that point in time, obviously, it wasn't public yet, but there was worry in the company about hype and what Peter was saying... He made some comments in the 'Wall Street Journal' about quantum theory and Siri Apple assistants and then made some comments about quantum computers solving rubric's cubes and things like that. Just kind of weird things to make it more publicly hyped up that wasn't really grounded in reality." — Former employee, physicist; "One of the big things is Peter sows all this hype in the community and in the public, and it upsets the scientists at the company. The scientists are kind of upset about the hype... Peter is sometimes with these - that makes the scientists very uncomfortable. The time scales for something like that are just so much longer off. He had a talk a couple of years ago or a year ago where he talked about these rack-mounted computers at server farms, rack-mounted quantum computers at server farms. And that really made people pretty uncomfortable." — Former employee, physicist"
Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides
Every emphasised callout and every pulled quote, extracted slide-by-slide. Search by keyword, filter by slide type or by source.
""High marks for management. CEO Mark Donegan has a manufacturing background and graduated from the GE manufacturing management program in 1979, two years prior to Jack Welch becoming CEO. His chief success prior to taking the reins at [PCC] was at the helm of Wyman-Gordon, a [PCC] subsidiary where he led the business to historically high operating margins and growth. We think the most notable aspect of Mark Donegan’s career was his ability to manage a manufacturing concern profitably through the aerospace decline in the 1990’s." — Goldman Sachs, October 10, 2007; "From there, we want to take that baseline cost structure and we want to go back into the market where we want to drive for market share. We'll also take and add to that the ability we have on vertical integration... So market share is key and then we take that and drive that back across the assets that we created more capacity... We're not looking for just sales growth. We're looking for key assets that give us an expanding portfolio, attack our costs, long-term market share gain and growth." — Mark Donegan, December 3, 2014; "[PCC] generally leverages superb execution for market share gains through pricing strategies and long-term contracts. We believe [PCC] is one of the best operators in our space, as operating margins are generally above peer companies." — Bank of America, June 4, 2014"
""Well, obviously, NGEN is a needle mover for us, right? That's a $400 million a year in revenue. That's -- I was talking to some folks in the back, there is a lot to play out on something like that, but that certainly provides us kind of step function potential upside. And that is why we think we can take markets that are growing at 3% and 4% and produce 5-or-better percent organic growth. So it is things like NASA NEST, also another big annual revenue, it is NGEN, it is those kind of big step functions that allow us to really outperform the market." — Roy Stevens, Investor Day, May 14, 2019; "So for example, if you think about it, on contract growth and the growth of kind of the smaller contracts that range from $10 million to $500 million, that will give us a core growth rate of 4% to 5% organic. Layer on top of that things like the ramp-up of the NGEN program that can yield us between 2 and 3 points. There's going to be a couple of points undoubtedly from the carryover of backlog work from COVID-19. That can be as much as $250 million, $270 million. And then other new business wins like the STAMP program that is still under protest and RHRP and others, that should yield us -- the larger programs, that you yield is another 2%. So that racks up to easily a 10% to 12% organic growth for next year." — CFO Reagan, Credit Suisse Conference, Dec 2, 2020"
"Your letter characterized our NOP program as a means to reduce access to the OCS technology and increase prices and profitability. This is not correct. Contrary to the Your letter accused TransMedics of pressuring hospitals to utilize our more expensive logistics. This couldn’t be further from the truth. TransMedics presents the logistics quotation to transplant centers using our NOP service. The transplant centers then have the final say on whether they want to use our services or not. We are confident, given the above efficient way of operating our fleet, and our cost-sharing model with transplant centers that our quotes are lower than competitors who use the outdated brokerage model. Your letter painted an inaccurate picture of the charter flight logistics for organ transplants in the US and accused TransMedics of creating a logistical network with newer aircrafts to unjustly increase cost on our clinical users. Again, this is not correct. Here are the facts. Transplant centers had the option to either use NOP or continue to operate the OCS on their own by sending their own teams. Over the past 24 months, more and more centers elected to transition to NOP due to its more efficient cost profile, better clinical outcomes, and the ability to increase their transplant volumes without surgical fatigue of their staff. — TransMedics CEO Waleed Hassanein"
"Freight affects the gross margin. Normally, Oatly pays the freight. If the freight is paid by the customer, no problem. We tried, in the beginning when we were small, we had no power to have customers pay the freight. Also, there was a big problem in the system, but I was able raise the topic with the team to fix it. We had negative gross margin. I said, what is going on here, how can we produce losing money? In the system, there were issues with tracking items. We had so many warehouses, there was no control or coordination....We tried to fix it, and that brought big changes in the freight and improvement in gross margin. Originally, we used standard cost (inventory accounting) and the standard cost wasn't established properly. Raw materials, labor and clearly the big factor and issue was overhead. It was just a percentage, but it was totally out of proportion. So we went to a different system. We tried to go to ABC (activity-based costing) but the plant was too new and we didn't have enough expert people, and we couldn't do it. I think the Company is very aware that this is an issue, especially now in a public environment. The cost needs to be released (chuckle), that information has to be accurate. I think now with the people and the team Blackstone is building, that's something they know how to work with. — Former Oatly Accounting Professional"
"They think Omnia's going to be a big thing. I just don't see it. Grossman even said on the earnings call that non-high frequency is utilized only 15% of the time. There's nothing new...Nevro does not feel that a lot of these other waveforms are going to be utilized with Omnia. It is rather to provide physicians with the perception that they have more options. The utilization of low-frequency and other waveforms besides high frequency will be very low, because one, a lot of Nevro's people don't know how to program those patients well because they've been utilizing the high-frequency algorithm and two, most of the time Senza is what people want. — Senior Nevro ex-sales executive; The market's not changing because of Omnia. The spinal cord stim market is what the spinal cord stim market is. You're not going to get more patients because of Omnia. Right now, you're just playing around in the same old market you've always been playing in, the same market I've been playing in my whole career, and the market's not really changing. — Former Nevro territory manager, one of the longest tenured SCS reps; I don't hear anything, from my team or anyone in my territory, that Nevro's adoption with Omnia is now so much better. Some doctors are trying it out but I haven't heard anything revolutionary about it. — Former Nevro territory manager now at a key competitor"
"I believe it has been inflated. In order to get a stock up, you need to show that a market is at a certain growth level. That's my belief. It's my solid, firm belief, and it's because I've been dealing with these same patients and doctors for 25 years. The market for the number of new implants is not growing as fast as what investors are being told. That's my belief. — Former Nevro territory manager; Umm...probably to a degree, right? I don't...you know... I think some of the data sources weren't always the full picture that they needed to be. I wouldn't say picking and choosing perhaps but there was, which I'm sure happens in all kinds of angles sort of leaning more heavily on data that maybe people thought supported a narrative and then, to some degree, sure. So, I think, again, it was a triangulation of different data sources, right? The payer data. I mean, I would say the payer data, Wall Street and analysts and other physician market research, and you know, I think...I don't know how would I characterize it. I think it was—I don't know. I think at a specific point that you were referring to, I think—I don't know. I think there were different times where different data sources were weighed more heavily and I think that weighing of different data sources was at times skewed. — Former Nevro employee involved in calculating market growth figures"
""So Danimer, Full Cycle, Newlight, you name it, we can produce PHA, but how consistently can you produce the same grade of PHA day in and day out regardless of climatic conditions, regardless of any operational snafus, if the power surges or power goes out, how does that impact your consistency? So, again, if I were you, I would ask those questions of any producer, from a quality control and quality assurance perspective. And then, of course, it's price." — Senior Executive Danimer Competitor; "When a CPG guy like Pepsi or Nestlé makes a decision on something like this, what are they doing? I mean from what I gather, the differentials and sort of product characteristics of the top guys is pretty minimal. What are they looking for? Are they looking for scale? Are they tendering out on a cost basis? How are they making those decisions right now?" — Question; "It's scale, it's cost and it's a reliability of inputs. And when I say reliability on inputs, I mean, availability and quality. So the biggest thing that Pepsi is afraid of is that they go-to-market and they say, 'By the way, our place bottles are biodegradable.' And then something happens where the central plant for Danimer goes down, and then they have to start using regular oil-based plastics. And suddenly, all their marketing is wrong and they've done false advertising." — Industry Expert"
""Jamie was an exceptional partner to me for many years, especially when I promoted him to operations chief at CSX. He was a driving force behind our operational transformation into a top-performing rail, thanks in large part to him successfully implementing operational improvements that were critical to generating strong efficiencies. He is one of the best operators I've seen in the rail industry, and any Class I would be fortunate to have him as COO." — Jim Foote, Former CEO of CSX; "When I think about Jamie, I think about one of the country's top railroad operators. His ability to take operational strategies from ideation to implementation to ongoing management is second to none. If I was looking to turn around a railroad or put a new network in place to improve service and value creation, Jamie would be my first call. He is at the top of the next generation of transformative railroad leaders." — Tony Reck, Former CEO & Chairman of P&L Transportation; "Jamie has demonstrated great skill in producing industry-leading results in service, safety and efficiency gains throughout his 20+ year career. As a board member of CSX, I was able to see firsthand how he is truly an expert in rail operations and a stronger leader of large organizations." — John McPherson, Former CSX Director, Former CEO of Illinois Central and Former COO of East Coast Railway"
"The guys that you would consider key opinion leaders in the field like [3 names redacted] - if they weren't going to get paid, you're not working with them. A KOL is a marketer in disguise as a physician, They pit companies against each other to get more out of each. They'll say, “I don't need to meet with your regional manager or VP. I want to meet with your CEO because to get me working with you, I need to have high-level communications on how much I’m getting paid.” ... If they don't get paid, they're not in the game. That's almost what it has become like with the big KOLs, not just with the number of implants that they do, but the clout that they have in the pain management community. ... I was privy to conversations like, you've got to make sure he does X volume over this period of time or we can't have him as a KOL. But I don't believe it would have ever been anything in writing. If the doc didn't ante up over that period of time, they would have cut him off. The verbal conversations would never have been with the territory managers. It would have been the area vice president's, with a couple of people in the room. ... I hoped that all of this was going to go away with clinical evidence. That's what my stupid belief was. I truly believe money trumps the evidence every day of the week, unfortunately. — Former Nevro district sales manager"
""While we are just getting started, we are proud of the scale we have achieved to date. In 2020 our customers completed approximately 31 million remittance transactions using Remitly." — Remitly IPO Prospectus. "We manage more to revenue per transaction, profit per transaction, LTV. And when you look at it from that lens, it's business as usual in Q2. No major shift in competitive pricing. It wasn't due to any sort of pricing pressure." — Remitly CEO Q2'24. "And what we're focused on is things like ARPU and specifically average revenue per transaction, the profit per transaction and fewer trends there as much as how we think about modeling the business." — Remitly CFO Q1'24. "For them (Remitly), the biggest challenges are I think players like Wise. Then on the pricing side, something like Atlantic Money, I don't know whether you've heard of them, that's a fairly new player with even lower pricing..." — Former Remitly Regional Head, Tegus: Nov 11, 2024. "Our discipline and focus in reducing unit costs allowed us to lower prices in the first half of FY25, which was the main driver of the cross border take rate reducing by 11bps YoY to 56bps in Q3." — Wise Plc Trading Update Jan 16, 2025. "Across all providers/corridors/payment methods we examined, pricing was down on average to 3.25% (vs. 3.46% last Q)." — J.P. Morgan Research Feb 3, 2025."
"“CapEx for the year was $27 million, including $13 million for Wilsonville, mostly for equipment deposits and facility improvements...Our CapEx for FY '22 is projected to be $80 million to $90 million with approximately $75 million investment in Wilsonville.” — James M. Thorburn, Twist CFO; “CapEx for the quarter was $22 million, mostly associated with our Factory of the Future investments.” — James M. Thorburn, Twist CFO; “CapEx for the quarter was $22 million, mostly associated with our Factory of the Future investment...In terms of CapEx, we're projecting approximately $90 million to $100 million for CapEx. So that should help you frame the cash burn. So if you step back and look at that, it's approximately around about $260 million for the year...I mean, obviously, a good chunk of that is being invested in ramping up R&D for biopharma, reinvesting in the core business. We're investing about $40 million in Data Storage. And obviously, for overall CapEx, the bulk of the CapEx investment, approximately $75 million of the $100 million this year is for the Factory of the Future.” — James M. Thorburn, Twist CFO; “CapEx for the quarter was $40 million including approximately $30 million for the factory of the future. And this now brings a [sic] factory to future CapEx investment to approximately $73 million.” — James M. Thorburn, Twist CFO"
""It illustrates when you have a down market like the refining sector has been in the last couple of quarters, how important having a diversified portfolio and a diversified value chain is to a business like ours." — Q2'16 Earnings Call, 7/28/16; "Across that entire complex, we were able to really lessen the amount of RIN exposure....[T]hat gives us tremendous advantage having all of these options in order to be able to meet or exceed our RIN requirements." — Barclays CEO Conference, 9/6/16; "$1 billion of cash flow, of EBITDA within Speedway takes care of all of our dividends and takes care of all of our interest on the debt." — Barclays CEO Conference, 9/6/16; "Speedway is MPC's most ratable distribution channel, provides a solid base to enhance overall supply reliability and allows us to optimize our entire refining, pipeline and terminal operations." — Q2'16 Earnings Call, 7/28/16; "In periods of volatility...we have a great flexibility and optionality to be able to move our products into the market, away from those markets, probably faster than anyone else in our business. And of course, that leads to a synergy or that leads to the value." — Barclays CEO Conference, 9/9/15; "Our large integrated platform provides us excellent access to price-advantaged domestic crude oil and low-cost natural gas." — Q1'15 Earnings Call, 4/30/15"
"[...] we believe a change in management and refreshment of the board at NSC are warranted and could stimulate improved operations and thus equity performance. For these reasons, we intend to support the election of dissident nominees Betsy Atkins, James Barber, Jr., William Clyburn, Jr., Sameh Fahmy, John Kasich, Gilbert Lamphere, and Allison Landry. — Neuberger Berman; We see value in potential management change with Jim Barber as CEO and Jamie Boychuk as COO as proposed by the activist investor Ancora... especially given the historical margin underperformance of Norfolk Southern. — Barclays; We believe the status quo at NSC will lead to continued underperformance of the railroad. We also believe that Board refreshment and Jim Barber's and Jamie Boychuk's leadership are essential for enhancing safety and for ensuring outstanding long-term achievements for the benefit of all NSC's shareholders and other stakeholders. — EdgePoint Investment Group; It appears NSC is making the case that changing the Board and management would pose significant risk to service and safety. But in reality, NSC has already endured the most service and safety challenges in recent years, including the unfortunate events of East Palestine last year, and defective chassis across its network that impacted service and posed safety risks in 2021. — Deutsche Bank"
""The salesperson is controlling the customer, it's a tabletop sale. You know that salesperson is going to direct that sale to the residential solar financing company that pays them highest price. Yeah. There's no differentiation either, even the colors are the same. Just to prove it to yourself, get a copy of Sunnova's contracts and compare that to SolarCity's. There's just not that much different. The salespeople want to maximize their gain and they'll sell that contract to the highest bidder." — Former Sunnova Employee; "I think if people look, Sunnova discloses to be paying exclusivity payments to channel partners. So in order to prevent the channel partner from shifting the volume to other players and bidding it out fluidly, they have been making advanced payments to these channel partners to secure volume, which is important and is prudent in the sense that if you don't have the volume you can't get scale. I think it's a good idea, but it's diluted to the equity of the business because you're buying the volume. It just means you're just paying an advanced payment to lock it up. But the next time, that goes on for a year, and next year I guarantee you that channel partner is going to be talking to Sunrun, SolarCity and a couple of the other players out there to see if they can get the same deal." — Former Sunnova Employee"
""it's a little bit wait and see...I've been using off-label GLP-1's in this space a little bit recently" — PWS endocrinologist #10. "I've had a few patients that have responded well, and mechanistically, it does make sense... definitely appetite suppression that's been associated with it... there's a very good usage for it...I've been impressed with the data so far, and I am looking forward to getting more experience with it." — PWS endocrinologist #10. "by definition, many of these patients are going to be susceptible to full-blown diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance... obviously, I don't think it's a miracle drug... hirsutism, that always is an issue...the potential for hyperglycemia...and again, because many of these patients are diabetics to begin with, that is something that there is some concern for that as well..." — PWS endocrinologist #10. "I tend to be a little bit suspicious as well"; "the thing that concerns me the most is that I was not aware...I had my concerns, but you're giving me a lot more concern that the people who are most in the know and most involved seem to be very, very uncomfortable with it"; "the trial itself is small...you're basically making me go back and look at all the data again, because now I'm much more concerned about some of the things that you bring up...." — PWS endocrinologist #10."
""PFE best positioned for top-line growth among large cap pharma with the pipeline capable of replenishing 41% of the FY17 revenue base by FY25 (vs. peers 7%), well in excess of the 16% of sales exposed to generic/biosimilar headwinds (vs. peers 42%). While near-term growth will be depressed by the loss of Lyrica, we believe investors will look through this to a period of renewed growth. Post-Lyrica LOE, we model revenue CAGR rising to 7.7% (FY20-25) from 2.7% (FY17-20)." — Atlantic Equities, November 27, 2018; "Perhaps the greatest legacy of outgoing CEO Ian Read is a reinvigorated R&D pipeline that should sustain top-line growth beyond key patent expirations. We expect new CEO Bourla to leverage this significant boost in late-stage R&D assets to a level that could preclude the need for M&A or financial engineering" — Oppenheimer, December 11, 2018; "Pfizer has had pipeline success in 2018 with surprisingly good data from Tafamidis, Tanezumab meeting efficacy endpoints in smaller duration phase-3 trials but with questions on safety remaining, early encouraging data from next-gen JAK's for Inflammation and advancement of 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine into phase-3. We believe these events have a played a key role in changing the narrative on Pfizer from an M&A/Split story to a pipeline/growth story." — UBS, January 22, 2019"
""PFE best positioned for top-line growth among large cap pharma with the pipeline capable of replenishing 41% of the FY17 revenue base by FY25 (vs. peers 7%), well in excess of the 16% of sales exposed to generic/biosimilar headwinds (vs. peers 42%). While near-term growth will be depressed by the loss of Lyrica, we believe investors will look through this to a period of renewed growth. Post-Lyrica LOE, we model revenue CAGR rising to 7.7% (FY20-25) from 2.7% (FY17-20)." — Atlantic Equities, November 27, 2018; "Perhaps the greatest legacy of outgoing CEO Ian Read is a reinvigorated R&D pipeline that should sustain top-line growth beyond key patent expirations. We expect new CEO Bourla to leverage this significant boost in late-stage R&D assets to a level that could preclude the need for M&A or financial engineering" — Oppenheimer, December 11, 2018; "Pfizer has had pipeline success in 2018 with surprisingly good data from Tafamidis, Tanezumab meeting efficacy endpoints in smaller duration phase-3 trials but with questions on safety remaining, early encouraging data from next-gen JAK's for Inflammation and advancement of 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine into phase-3. We believe these events have a played a key role in changing the narrative on Pfizer from an M&A/Split story to a pipeline/growth story." — UBS, January 22, 2019"
""[Verint] didn't have a good feel for the rate or pace of change and how quickly, in the last 12-18 months, how the cloud has become ubiquitous. It's not an 'if' question anymore, it's how quickly can we migrate to the cloud. I think Verint has missed the signals there – and, to be honest, inexplicably so." — Verint Customer; "Two to three years ago, I would have put [Verint] in a clear leading position. Now, I do not view them in a lead position, as I have them as one of three or one of four. They are going to play catch-up over the next two years. They should have had the foresight to lead the push into the cloud. And they missed that opportunity. Their market share will have declined from previous levels because of the fact that they missed the opportunity with the cloud." — Verint Customer; "Verint, in my opinion...I have worked with them for 18 years.... It's a little bit of 'shame on them' that they have missed the cloud play." — Verint Customer; "[Verint] is behind the curve." — Verint Customer; "There is still growth in the SMB space that I think NICE is better poised to take advantage of because of the inContact [acquisition] and transition to the cloud that Verint hasn't been fully able to leverage." — Former Verint Employee; "I think Verint has dropped the ball completely in terms of cloud." — Verint Competitor"
""Our liver transplant surgeons don't use TransMedics. I think a lot of people don't think you need it on the liver. Cold storage works very, very well. Ischemic times can be 8 hours. They've turned that operation into a quasi-elective case...Our liver guys are not interested at all in using it." — Cardiac transplant surgeon at a major Midwest academic center; "TransMedics and OrganOX are examples of normothermic machine perfusion, which is the most expensive way to preserve an organ. Less effective in preservation but still pretty good is something called hypothermic machine perfusion, for example, Bridge to Life or LifePort. And that costs significantly less. It provides better preservation than just putting it in a cooler of ice. But for many cases, you don't need the Cadillac to transport the organ. You can get by with a less expensive version." — Transplant surgeon and transplant program director at a leading Northeast academic center; "There's not a ton of utilization of their heart device out here on the West Coast." — Executive at a leading OPO, longtime industry veteran; "I do think and I hear the same from our heart surgeons. They do not care much for the machine and prefer other modalities for their hearts...they're going to continue to lose cardiac volume." — Transplant surgeon at a high-volume academic center"
""We cannot believe that CEO Andrew Mackenzie will be considering any medium to large-scale M&A... which management has been questioned on at previous conference calls and have said they look at, is to collapse the DLC structure." — Barclays, August 19, 2013; "By combining portfolio simplification (asset sales) with structural change (dismantle the DLC), we believe BHP can kill two birds with one event stone, providing modest structural upside (10%+) while also enhancing long term strategic flexibility." — Credit Suisse, June 17, 2014; "DLC Structures are not permanent. Based on our analysis we have seen that DLC structures are not intended to be permanent structures and nor are they beneficial for shareholders forever. We believe that now is an appropriate time for BHP to consider unifying the DLC structure." — UBS, July 14, 2014; "New proposal will lead to wastage of future franking credits... We believe certain Australian shareholders may consider the leakage of franking credits to plc shareholders, which they are unable to monitise, as disadvantaging Ltd shareholders." — JP Morgan, September 22, 2015; "Given it no longer supports itself and it has lost it strategic purpose, sure then the time has come to think very seriously, and with firm purpose, about consolidation." — Australian Financial Review, January 26, 2016"
"“Waleed’s sister is in charge of the lung program....she is the one that I have witnessed do this. We had some lungs in that situation where the accepting center declined; the bronch was not good. The lungs were contused when they were recovered and I was able to witness some of those conversations myself....these calls are 100% happening...I saw her on the line with a transplant surgeon who’s trying to weigh the clinical outcome for her recipient. And Amina would be on the line with her, just insisting that these lungs would have a good outcome after they were transplanted. I was thinking, ‘How do you even know that?’ This is confusing. I’m also not a surgeon, but it just seemed well beyond her scope to insist, badger a surgeon who made a decision that transplanting this organ could put her patient in jeopardy and to sit here for 15 minutes working to actively convince them to make a different clinical decision, I’ve never seen anything like that...confrontational, speaking over people, really speaking as if she’s their boss, their attending surgeon, insisting that organ will have a good outcome and that they’re jeopardizing the patient’s safety if they don’t transplant it, and it’s all because ‘you don’t understand the machine. You don’t understand the machine.’” — Executive at a leading OPO, longtime industry veteran"
""As a reminder, we've been working on a number of finance alternatives to eliminate the need for new restricted cash or PPA deals where Plug Power finances the assets directly. In some, or likely all, of the new financing scenarios the cat profile of the transaction will be much better. The accounting rules dictate we cannot recognize revenues up front as we've done with traditional sale-leaseback arrangements. The presentation of adjusted numbers is intended to show our performance as if we finance a transaction as we have in the past. Again, we believe it provides a clearer picture of the sales and implementation progress of the Company and a consistent comparison to past performance." — Andrew Marsh - CEO, Plug Power; "Before I get started, I want to highlight that beginning this quarter, Plug Power's quarterly financial results will no longer include the non-GAAP measures of adjusted revenue, adjusted gross margin, adjusted EBITDAS, or adjusted EPS to reflect the impact of deployed Power Purchase Agreement transactions under alternative financing arrangements. However, we will continue to provide supplemental information to all external stakeholders as we believe it's important we convey the company's overall progress in growth and cost-downs and to maintain complete transparency." — Andrew Marsh - CEO, Plug Power"
"Waleed’s sister is in charge of the lung program....she is the one that I have witnessed do this. We had some lungs in that situation where the accepting center declined; the bronch was not good. The lungs were contused when they were recovered and I was able to witness some of those conversations myself....these calls are 100% happening...I saw her on the line with a transplant surgeon who’s trying to weigh the clinical outcome for her recipient. And Amina would be on the line with her, just insisting that these lungs would have a good outcome after they were transplanted. I was thinking, ‘How do you even know that?’ This is confusing. I’m also not a surgeon, but it just seemed well beyond her scope to insist, badger a surgeon who made a decision that transplanting this organ could put her patient in jeopardy and to sit here for 15 minutes working to actively convince them to make a different clinical decision, I’ve never seen anything like that...confrontational, speaking over people, really speaking as if she’s their boss, their attending surgeon, insisting that organ will have a good outcome and that they’re jeopardizing the patient’s safety if they don’t transplant it, and it’s all because “you don’t understand the machine. You don’t understand the machine.” — Executive at a leading OPO, longtime industry veteran"
"“Doctors have been using spinal cord stimulation for PDN for a while, but notoriously it’s very bad for the foot. It doesn’t get to the foot. You can’t get spinal stimulation into the foot without having to stimulate everything along the way, Stimulation doesn’t change the plumbing. Diabetic neuropathy causes pain because there’s shitty blood flow which affects the nerves, which get rewired and interpret it as pain. What’s going to happen with Nevro is what happens with every other spinal cord stimulator for the foot. You can’t get to the foot, so you have to jack up the current, and then you get tolerance and [any pain relief] goes away.” — KOL and high volume implanter; “For diabetic neuropathy, DRG is 100 times better than any other neuromodulation system. Without question. Nevro has one size fits all. It’s not even a question – DRG is the answer, at least anything neuromodulation-related for neuropathy. At least with DRG you are going to have increased blood flow because it’s a real system.” — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter; “The other thing is that a lot of patients with diabetic neuropathy have pain in their feet, the actual feet themselves, and I personally don’t believe Nevro is the best for the feet as the Abbott DRG is better.” — KOL and high volume implanter, who still uses Nevro moderately"
"<Q - Conrad Werner>: Hi, there. It's Conrad calling from Macquarie. Just a couple of quick questions, please. The issue that you had with Territory Resources, which impacted the operating income from supply chains in Metals, are there any other risks like that still sitting there on the balance sheet, if you like, whether in Metals or in Energy? I mean you mentioned in Yancoal that you didn't see much incremental further write-down risk, but are there any more issues like Territory in there? And then, could you just split the fourth quarter loss from associates into how much came from Agri and how much came from Yancoal? Thank you. <A - Yusuf Alireza>: Thank you, Conrad, for your question. So Territory is, just to clarify, is an iron ore mine in Australia. We put it on care and maintenance because of the price falls. As you know, we're an asset light firm, but that doesn't mean we don't have any assets on our balance sheet. We've gone through as part of our year-end process and reviewed in great detail the operating assets that we have on our balance sheet and have [ph] felt (35:45) we have impaired them as we did in previous quarters. So looking at what we have, looking at the amount of exposures that we have in associates, at this point, we don't see any other issues on any of the other exposures that we have."
""CLEAR has been able to grow as a result of the airline partnerships when you look at their airport growth following the Delta partnership and then their airport growth following the United partnership as well as Hawaiian expanding in Hawaii, Portland expanding after the Alaska partnership. There tends to be a high degree of ability to launch airports accompanied by airline support. Why? Because while the airport may be interested in having another retailer, which that's what CLEAR is for an airport, another retailer that pays revenue share, the airport is not willing to move forward with introducing CLEAR in the checkpoint without the TSA support and the support of the airline that manages that checkpoint. So while the checkpoint is a TSA environment, the TSA delegates some entity, usually an airline or a consortium of airlines, the management of the queue and the allocation of space ahead of the TSA point, therefore the airline needs to have a vested interest in sacrificing real estate of the lines and creating additional lines and creating additional segmentation for its own benefit. So that's how CLEAR has been able to grow so rapidly at Delta hubs and Delta Airports as well as United and so forth because these airlines move lean forward in supporting the entrance of CLEAR." — Spruce Point research interview"
""While Box was once one of the fastest-growing companies in software (70% growth at $225M+ in ARR at IPO), growth has dramatically decelerated, even prior to COVID. Growth did improve in the most recent quarter (with some COVID headwinds fading), but we do not believe Box will be able to sustain double-digit growth and find its FY24 12%-16% revenue growth target difficult to underwrite... Part of the reason we struggle to underwrite Box's story of accelerating growth and expanding margins is the fact that Box has discussed initiatives to accelerate growth in the past, but not delivered on it, and has had several different target models, consistently needing to walk them back... Based on our due diligence, we do believe that Box has competitively differentiated technology for content management at the enterprise end of the market and like the company's vision but take the view that a mixture of competitive pressures (namely OneDrive) and an underperforming GTM motion are the primary contributors to the company's underwhelming execution. Additionally, considering the nature of Box's solutions, if the rise of remote work and digital transformation trends haven't yet translated into an improved environment for the company we are not sure what Box needs to see to start executing." — RBC Capital Markets, July 2021"
"It's a very unique situation in the PWS community because Miller is a destination for these families. As I've been taking care of these patients over the last ten years, there's other interventions that are not evidence-based that she promotes. She promotes these things as really important. And so, patients will go see her, and come back and want to start these non-evidence-based supplements. And some of it has some data, and it's all pretty benign and cheap, to be honest. So, a lot of us are pretty agnostic about these interventions that it's just like whatever. But she's a proponent of these loosely evidence-based interventions for Prader-Willi Syndrome. And I feel like patients come back with a lot of requests, oftentimes, that are a little bit maybe out there that they're asking me to co-sign as their doctor that they see throughout the year. And most of the time, I do because they're generally benign things that they're convinced are going to be helpful. And so, in the backdrop of this whole diazoxide thing.... some of my patients go see this doctor once a year, and they see me the other times of the year because they think that they're seeing the world's expert in PWS. — Pediatric endocrinologist, leads one of the largest PWS clinics in US with 30-40 patients; 11 endocrinologists, major academic center"
""It was dependent on the National Foundry, the number of machines in quantum computers is the same as the number of traps. Back then, when I was working there, it was a huge bottleneck with the number of traps because we were not making them." — Ex-IonQ employee, senior member of technical staff; "I’m pretty confident; yeah, all the pictures, it’s identical. I’m pretty sure they started off using Sandia’s ion traps [...] This, to me, looks like a trap that was modeled after a Sandia [...] It’s definitely very similar to one of their traps; it was called an HOA, a high optical access trap. Everything since then is kind of similar because that was a great design." — Ion-trap expert, ex-Sandia employee; "Yes. It’s a well enough—it’s microfabricated. Microfabrication is a well-established technology. So yes, and it’s just math to design it, and then you have to go through testing, and you might have to iterate. But in the end, it’s math to design and experience, but all of these guys have experience, they can all do the math, and they all have access to excellent microfabrication technologies. Because of that, no, it’s not special, not any more special than the next quantum computing company unless you found out someone’s doing it in their garage and then you need to bail." — Ion-trap expert, ex-Sandia employee"
"Several new charter and bylaw provisions were implemented at the time of the company's IPO on Jan. 23, 2015, which fall short of what many investors would consider best governance practice. These provisions include a vote requirement of 80 percent of the outstanding shares to amend certain provisions of the charter and/or bylaws; a classified board structure; no special meeting right; and no right to act by written consent... In this case, the company first disclosed the amendments to the charter and bylaws it intended to put in place at the IPO in a draft registration/Form S-1A statement filed on Jan. 6, 2015 (less than one month before the IPO). — ISS 2016 Report; The Company's governance structure includes several provisions that significantly limit the rights of outside Class A shareholders... The combined effect of these provisions will be to severely limit the ability of shareholders to effect change at the Company or to realize a takeover premium....As the board has not provided its public shareholders with an ability to ratify any portion of this troubling governance structure, we recommend that the Class A holders signal their disapproval of these excessive restraints by abstaining from the lone member of the governance committee currently standing for election, Ms. Evan. — Glass Lewis 2015 Report"
"“There’s a structural problem that the people who are leading the company [the Business Unit President’s] are designed to lead service and implementation as the primary focus with a matrix for other [functions]. The other leading SaaS companies, service and implementation are utilities. They can matrix in. It’s the exact opposite at ADP… If you only control service and support, you’ll try and improve margin with that. Show 100-200-300 bps and do it on the backs of people, throw some efficiency service tools. They are incapable of fundamentally transforming the customer experience from a service business to a SaaS experience, they don’t control the tools.” — Former DVP, Business Transformation; “Only three people [beyond Carlos] really looked across the entire business: head of IT, head of sales and the CFO. If doing your thing was bad for the overall business, but good for your business, that’s what you’d do because that’s what the incentives drove… I would integrate the service and implementations teams. [There is] an opportunity to restructure, get product complexity down. Look at the segmentation, figure out if this is right. Each BU has its own CFO, Finance, HR, etc. [It] creates a lot of internal waste. [ADP] should un-segment this business… There is so much replication.” — Former Senior Executive"
"“publishing in this area for 20 or 30 years” — Trial investigator #3; “very much involved with Soleno over the years” — Trial investigator #3; “I’m asked to speak to parents, but quite often I speak to clinicians.” — Trial investigator #3; “encouraged them not to continue” — Trial investigator #3; “not on the basis of effectiveness” — Trial investigator #3; “would struggle with” — Trial investigator #3; “I would very surprised if it’s a blockbuster” — Trial investigator #3; “others who clearly feel closer to how I have felt about it” — Trial investigator #3; “I feel that a treatment is possible, but I don’t think it’s this treatment...Vykat doesn’t that.” — Trial investigator #3; “to be frank, my feeling was I don’t think anyone improved” — Trial investigator #3; “so, I have been very skeptical about it” — Trial investigator #3; “we knew he was on DCCR - and he put on a lot of weight...so clearly, this was not effective” — Trial investigator #3; “then another person on the trial, she was putting on weight” — Trial investigator #3; “yes, yes, yes” — Trial investigator #3; “I actually thought it probably wouldn’t be approved...I thought they would be much tougher...and I think there was a very powerful campaign [by associations/families]...families are desperate to see treatment.” — Trial investigator #3"
"“It’s easy to have a battery perform well in the laboratory and meet the specs and to show feasibility, but come to industrialization, that's another story. The battery business is just like that. It's easy to demonstrate, but it's difficult for industrialization.” — VW employee; “First of all, it’s easy to do it in the laboratory and in a small scale and with a low-capacity cell. You can do it perfect actually. You can control the material so precisely, and also you can pick a good sample when you do it in the laboratory. But when you come to industrialization, and you have a machine that may produce hundreds or thousands or ten-thousand cells a day on a big scale, how are you going to control this kind of process to make sure that it still reaches the quality level? That's the challenge. It's nice to have a small-scale, gentle test, perfect in the laboratory. When you come to industrialization, all kinds of issues pop up.” — VW employee; “We have only seen simulations under perfect test conditions. What needs to be seen is taking the single cell into a bigger pack, into a battery system with all the requirements we have, and then it needs to be tested to see if it's still behaving the same, not just looking at a pure testing environment in an institute, but under real-life conditions.” — VW employee"
"“Short is generally 20 base pairs. You need 4 on each end at least to create the overlap in order to stitch them together, which means your payload is—each one of these is about 10 to 12 base pairs, which means you’re going to need a lot of little pieces. Every time you come to stitch those together, there’s a potential error. The wrong pieces may connect because they’re too close in what they look like. And so now, the wrong one is in the wrong place, and it starts to connect, and it’s a different whole set, and that happens often. Or, they overlap incorrectly, so even if you miss by one, it’s off. Those things are happening when you have this massive pool, and they’re all trying to come together, and you’re trying to create this reaction to bring them together. It ends up being what could be very high error rates because even if we’re off by one on that stitch, that’s one in, a 12 payload, it’s one every 20. It used to be that people were ordering an average of about 1500 to 2000 base pairs, but today, everybody’s claiming they can go up to 10,000. So, even in just 1000, there’s a good chance that you’re having 50 errors. That’s a lot. That’s a different gene. So, you have to have error correction that can come in and fix those.” — Founding member of Gen9, a virtually identical company to Twist"
"“The real problem for me, to make anything practical, to make quantum computing practical, you need 500 qubits; you need thousands of qubits with really high fidelities. How do you get there - any quantum computing company will get to the 500 or thousands of [qubits with] decent fidelities? I didn’t find any solid answer. If we went back to how classical computers were in the ‘60s, big chunks of silicon. I believe that’s what’s truly lacking in the quantum computing world. Someone needs to come up with a way to scale things up to the point that it’s going to be practical. The way I see it right now, I don’t see a really good way to do so.” — Former IonQ employee, senior member of technical staff; “It is a scientific toy. In terms of its computational capacity, it’s worse than your cell phone. When I say worse than your cell phone, a cell phone is at least 15 to 20 years old because you just don’t compare it with modern cell phones that are very powerful computational machines. If you compare the computational capacity of IonQ’s best available trapped ion quantum computer to a classical machine, then yes, it would be worse than a 20-year-old phone. It would probably be equivalent to a computer from 1950 to 1960.” — Leading quantum computing researcher who has published papers with IonQ’s founders"
""The estimate of net realizable value of inventory is impacted by assumptions regarding general semiconductor market conditions, manufacturing schedules, technology changes, new product introductions and possible alternative uses, and require management to use significant judgment that may include uncertain elements....The principal considerations for our determination that performing procedures relating to the valuation of product inventory is a critical audit matter are (i) the significant judgment by management when developing the estimated obsolescence used for determining the net realizable value of product inventory and (ii) a high degree of auditor judgment, subjectivity, and effort in performing procedures and evaluating management's assumption related to the future demand for product inventory." — PriceWaterhouse Coopers (KLA 10K Aug 2023); "Inventory – Valuation [...] Auditing management’s estimates for excess and obsolete inventory involved subjective auditor judgment because management’s assessment of whether a write down is required and the measurement of any excess of cost over net realizable value is judgmental and considers a number of qualitative factors that are affected by market and economic conditions outside the Company’s control." — Ernst& Young (Lam Research 10K Aug 2023)"
""When I first became involved with the discussion of partnering with TransMedics for their liver and their heart OCS device, and then lungs after FDA approval...yes, it does come at a cost, but we were upfront, first users of the device because we had a backyard relationship with them, but also, we, at my institution, were trying to be innovators across all fronts, and that's also one of the reasons why we wanted to partner with them. As the relationship evolved over the years, the tune has changed. It has become less about what can we do together and trying to figure out the best way, the best logistical setup, and the best-aligned incentives to achieve our mutual goals to become more about utilization at all costs, meaning sometimes there would be situations where I get involved at 2:00AM on a Saturday because so-and-so had said we want to use the OCS device and then now the entire team takes a hold of the entire logistical setup and I find out down the line that something where it's a typical we fly out the teams, we take the procurement team with us with the modules, and now it's upwards of like $180,000 to almost a $200,000 all-in with the procurement team decision that was made without any one of us involved." — Veteran transplant administrator/executive at Massachusetts General Hospital"
"“Saving Klaus from Paul Singer is top priority for its management. Drain the swamp. Let Elliott Management’s recommendations prevail. Too many good people are getting hurt throughout this Company.” — Glass Door, 3/17/17; “Arconic managers are being told not to pay their vendors. Several have not been paid since last July...and MANY have not been paid since October 1st.” — Email sent to Elliott, 3/27/17; “Your company might want to somehow request financials in regard to payments to vendors, etc. Arconic is either trying to make itself look good for a sale or the inflated stock price.” — Email sent to Elliott, 3/16/17; “I have been a supplier [redacted] to Arconic. Payable terms have been 60 days for the life of the company’s supply agreement with Arconic. However, it seems in conjunction with the announcement of the proxy fight, Arconic unilaterally changed payable terms to 120 days. I believe the change was made to goose up reported results for the first quarter, and that the company might also be hiding vendor invoices.” — Unsolicited Phone Call to Elliott, 3/8/17; “In a last-ditch effort to save his job, [Siemens CEO] Kleinfeld released quarterly earnings figures late Tuesday, two days earlier than planned, to underscore the company’s financial health.” — The New York Times, April 25, 2007"
"“When Nevro first launched, we looked at this and said, "There could be something to a high rate of stimulation. You're basically flooding the zone. What a great idea." And then you start going through the study design, and you start looking at real outcomes, and there were so many problems. Huge problems with their study, the Kapural study in 2015. There were so many problems that we just shook our heads in some of our small doctor groups.” “If you're a lazy implanter and you don't want to look for the right spot to implant and actually program patients, Nevro is perfect for you. You put the leads in exactly the same spot every single time, don't have to do any work, the rep turns it on and there you go. This requires physicians that don't care what the outcomes are, that are greaseballs, or that are just lazy.” “Some people use statistics to bend the truth. We catch Nevro on the little things, but the overall gestalt is that their device needs to work for a long period of time. We know from the Kumar study that stimulating with one modality, one waveform, fails as time goes on. You need to come up with something else that the body doesn't get used to. We've known that for years. Nevro is just starting to figure that out. They're behind on the eight-ball.” — High volume implanter/speaker/KOL"
"“At ADP they use ‘Service’ and ‘Support’ interchangeably. They don’t understand that distinction. They don’t differentiate. Their notion of service is ‘how quickly we answer the phone,’ the number of ‘one-and-dones,’ repeat callers, etc.” — Former DVP, Business Transformation; “What they call ‘service’ is mostly support. The executives don’t understand this. They count as service: ‘you tried to run it, it’s not working, walk me through how to do this again...’ Why are you talking to the client? If you’re talking to the client because something you’re doing is broken, I’d argue you’re not providing a service.” — Former VP, Product Management; “70% of all calls or cases are for Tier 1 type support... If your product has better self-service administration tools so the client can make those changes themselves, you could get rid of a lot of folks... 80% of questions that came in are because of basic product limitations. Half of all your [Tier 1] support calls [70% x 80% = ~56%] would go away if you build a better product or enhance your [existing] product... [ADP] makes up for that with more ‘support,’ a little more hand-holding. They layer in some additional value-added services, but it’s offering ‘service’ to offset product limitations.” — Former DVP of Product Launch & Business Transformation"
""If you look at true burst, they want you to be about a level up T8/9 which is the sweet spot for burst. So if your electrodes aren't covering that and you try to do burst, you're not going to hit it. For different frequencies, you need to be at the right place on the spinal cord to get that stimulation. If you're at T9/10 where you put your Nevro, you might get it depending on where the affected problem is. You might get the upper thigh but for lower leg, probably not. And you may get other paresthesias that you don't want. You try to do a tonic, but you're to get all rib simulation. The idea that you put it in at T9/10 and get the other frequencies to work is very 50/50." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter; "I've seen some cases where Medtronic was implanted after a Nevro device was in there, I think their docs get a little sloppy with their lead placement because there is no paresthesia. They just kind of put the leads up, pretty much midline, and it's good enough. That was why docs early on were interested - I don't have to wake up the patient during the procedure. If Nevro continues to do sloppy lead placement and try to switch to classic low frequency stimulation, they're going to run into all sorts of problems and unintended consequences." — Medtronic SCS regional manager"
""It’s rare to see a device not working at all, but I’ve seen with Nevro at 6 months that it’s not helping patients." -KOL; "The biggest reason for Nevro explants is device failure. That’s probably the biggest reason, over 80-90%. And then infection rates. But it’s almost always failure. Anecdotally and from the data there’s a range, but it seems to be within about a year. But some of them fail later, within three years." -KOL; "High frequency seemed to have a lot of traction when it first started off. We’re trying to figure out if the initial pain improvement is still there, a year out, two years out, five years out. It seems like a lot of the high frequency implants have been explanted, or exchanged for something else." -KOL; "Abbott is currently doing a study called Prolong. The study’s not specifically going up against Nevro. It’s just using the Abbott device as a salvage therapy for failed spinal cord stimulation patients. But, most of the salvage appears to be for Nevro patients. I think almost 50% of the enrollment so far in the study has been Nevro patients. Abbott’s study was never meant to be a superiority study. The study wasn’t meant to bash Nevro. But Nevro didn’t like that the overwhelming majority of patients that needed to be salvaged in the study were all theirs." -KOL"
""I know a doctor down the block who was doing a lot of Nevro. He only does procedures when he gets the dole. You have to grease him to get his business. I don't operate that way and everyone knows it. Consulting is one way, teaching is another. You can get a ridiculous amount for teaching. Then they have these round tables that are junkets." — KOL; "Nevro will put doctors on studies because it's a way to boost income in their practices. They'll throw a lot of money your way. They'll put you on these consulting contracts and give you a bunch of speaking things and everything else and it's basically like a reward system. If you're doing a lot more Nevro, you get more speaking engagements. [Name redacted] gets a ton of seeking opportunities because they know he's very influential in the field. Nevro was giving [name redacted] easily a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and they gave him stock, so you can look that up. He openly has stock, to keep him implanting [Nevro's device]." — High volume KOL and former Nevro user; "They figure out from their rep 'What does he [the doctor] like?' Companies use those levers to engage with you and say 'Yeah, we got these opportunities, would love to get you on board' and talk about those things." — KOL and one of Nevro's highest volume implanters"
"So all those things, we feel, will function to get us in that intermediate term back to those double-digit margins. — Richard Kramer, CEO of Goodyear, Nov 14 2017; When we are able to recover the margin we've lost from a price versus raw material perspective, that is going to mean a return to something like we saw during that 2014 to 2016 period. And we're confident that we can get back to those levels and work to go beyond. — Darren Wells, Former Goodyear EVP / CFO, Jan 16 2019; I think the question for us and the drive is to think about what it takes to get ourselves back to double-digit margins. And we see a lot of opportunity, as we combine Goodyear and Cooper to take cost out... there are some near-term opportunities that are very big. — Darren Wells, Former Goodyear EVP / CFO, Jun 16 2021; We think it is very realistic intermediate term to get to that double-digit type margin again... the electric vehicle tires are going to be the next seed that helps us continue in that direction... — Darren Wells, Former Goodyear EVP / CFO, Feb 14 2022; ...that will put us in a really good spot to get to that 8% in, call it, the near term... And with 10%, it's a realistic possibility in more the intermediate term, call that 3 to 5 years. — Darren Wells, Former Goodyear EVP / CFO, Aug 5 2022"
""As an international entity, one would expect a nuanced understanding of regional markets. However, the track record of disastrous business decisions stemming from this ignorance is deplorable. It's disheartening to witness a company that fails to adapt to diverse market dynamics, making it challenging for employees to thrive in their respective regions. Secondly, the CEO's leadership is archaic and out of touch with modern business practices... Moreover, the company's apparent disregard for constructive feedback is alarming. Despite multiple negative Glassdoor reviews, there seems to be no initiative to introspect and address the root causes. Instead, employees are coerced into writing positive reviews, painting a false image of the company's internal atmosphere." - Dec 18, 2023; "The CEO often discusses plans and strategies, but these talks rarely translate into concrete actions, leading to frustration among employees. This has resulted in a high turnover rate, with experienced staff leaving and new hires struggling to piece together the remaining knowledge, ultimately starting from scratch." - July 12, 2024; "Driven by one man's ego. No strategy beyond acquisitions" - July 28, 2022; "CEO is a power crazed tyrant with absolutely no regard for employee wellbeing." - April 12, 2023"
"“Joke – A Playground for Fake Reviews, Shady Tactics And Scammers” — Australian tech journalist. “Last year I emailed them many times regarding a company by the name of Maxen Power, they employ staff based in Pakistan whose sole job was to write fake and bogus reviews (their own employee told me this).” — Blog commenter. “For years, we tolerated Trustpilot’s shady practices, robotic customer service, and overpriced subscription model in the hope that they might evolve into a fair, transparent platform. But after seeing firsthand how they’ve enabled malicious, fake, defamatory reviews, extorted small businesses, and used AI to silence legitimate complaints—we’re done. Finished.” — ADVICIFAS. “Trustpilot promises to be ‘free and open’—in reality, they are the exact opposite, holding companies at ransom, and outright violating their own terms, as well as the law.” — Ryan Badger. “Trustpilot has become a joke. Spam reviews, fake claims. They don’t care about small businesses anymore.” — Rishi Chowdhury. “Flagged fake reviews that were clearly spam. Got auto-responses and nothing removed. Meanwhile, legitimate reviews were taken down.” — James Williams. “All those website that advertise ‘2000 reviews on TrustPilot’ ‘5 star rating out of 10,000 reviews’ THEY ARE ALL PAID FOR” — RSH."
"I mean, in even the highest volume accounts, no more than two. No more than two. — Former Procept Executive, Nov 2024; My guess is never, and here's why...I know the numbers...[there are] dedicated cystoscopy suites in most hospitals. They're only used 30% of the time because another surgeon can't use the room...So the room is available 70% of the time. And at academic hospitals and Kaisers, there's usually one or two BPH folks. So that's all we have. And we're not looking to hire more because all the money's made with prostate cancer and kidney cancer. I'm the BPH guy and they don't want another one. So I don't see any reason to have two... — Major Hospital Urologist, Nov 2024; those low volume [hospitals], they're just hard. They really are. — Former Procept Sales Rep, Nov 2024; from a hospital standpoint, convincing a hospital to buy a machine for one indication and just one indication for one specialty is sort of silly... especially in these community hospitals...we have eight different specialists in our hospital using the da Vinci robot five days a week. For Aquablation you need to have buy-in from at least a few urologists from your group. If you just have one urologist using it, then he's using it maybe one day a week maximum. — Community Hospital Urologist, Nov 2024"
"Can they solve dendrites at scale? Can they solve it to be cost-effective? One of the solutions was to make the separator thicker, and that typically reduces the performance of the cell, and it quickly negates a lot of the advantages that solid-state gives because now you've got a separator that's super-thick, and all the cell is occupied by separator and all the advantages of energy density and everything go out the window. If they say they can make a separator that works, but they won't tell us how thick it is or how it performs or how long it performs—they still haven't done anything in a multi-layer pouch, which I would say is super-concerning to me from a timeliness perspective. Not having anything in a multi-layer cell is a real concern for me. — Former employee; The key thing that you need to understand about the dendrites is this separator that they have in that photo, it's thinner than a strand of hair. If you're not careful and a dendrite does form and creates a spike in the battery, you're just going to shatter that. It's thinner than a piece of paper, and it's got the solidity. They're trying to find out what's the good balance of whether it should be hard, whether it should be soft, what type of materials that they should be looking at. — Another former employee"
""People know I don't take money and other doctors aren't so much like that. If you look up [name redacted] in my area on doctors for dollars he gets paid for talks. He tells reps to their face wont that he won't prescribe unless they put him on as a speaker. He goes 3 talks a day at $3,000 each. [Doctor name redacted] is Nevro's whore for California. He does lots of studies for them. They promote him. He gets on their papers. He's not part of the KOL crowd. [Prominent Nevro implanter] is a guy who takes money." — KOL; "It's borderline unethical what they do with [name redacted]. They pay him all kinds of stock options. He runs a lot of meetings and programs. He was the head of [redacted]. He makes a lot of decisions on papers and conference presentations. You could blow the whistle on these guys. NANS finally beat on these guys but they're still doing same stuff. He's now doing that with [company name redacted]" — Key Nevro pivotal trial investigator; "The physician that's on stage at a society meeting is usually a consultant for the company. [Name redacted] as an example out of San Francisco, during Nevro's rise, was one of their strongest consultants. He's coin-operated, and he will say what he benefits from, as do most of these guys." — Longtime executive in the SCS space"
""In 2003, Hess's ROACE of 7.6% is the lowest in its peer group and is well below Hess's cost of capital of 10%-12%." — UBS Warburg (September 22, 2000); "Hess announced a broad-based restructuring program involving reductions in overhead and capital expenditures...Regarding the stock, we maintain our longstanding Neutral rating. Investor interest is not expected to become material in this company until returns resemble the cost of capital on a sustainable basis." — Morgan Stanley (December 14, 1998); "Exploration expense is significantly above average...Hess, with a market capitalization of $4.5 billion, had 1997 exploration expense of $373 million; in comparison, Exxon, with a market capitalization of $175 billion, had exploration expense of $753 million. (In other words, Exxon's exploration expense is only twice as high as Hess's, while its market capitalization is almost 40 times as high)." — Goldman Sachs (September 4, 1998); "While Hess has not been an earnings story for many years now, the absence of profits is getting stale." — UBS (January 23, 1998); "Given the continued inconsistency in Hess results...we would not add to positions at these levels" — Smith Barney (October 23, 1997); "Hess continues to be the perennial turnaround story." — Paine Webber (May 7, 1997)."
"“...Mint is an amazing application... Mint has a chance for you to take a snapshot and understand where you are financially with all your accounts at one point. And within that, what we see is high levels of engagement, weekly active use and people rely on Mint to see all their accounts in one place.” — Greg Johnson, Intuit Executive VP & GM of Consumer Group, at Barclays Conference, 6/4/19; “No, no. They will be -- ultimately, they will be separate. They will not be combined into one app only because I think our focus is, we have a huge opportunity to ensure that we can fuel Credit Karma's growth, and we don't want to have any distractions other than ensuring that they can deliver for customers so they will be separate apps.” — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO, on FQ2 2020 Earnings Call; “And then last thing is prime. Prime customers are one of the largest monthly active users, and they're the least engaged because our typical focus in the past has been subprime and near prime. And now by putting Mint and Credit Karma together, we're building out prime capabilities. So those are priorities that gives us a lot of hope over time, we're going to get back to our 20% to 25% long-term expectation you said.” — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO, at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, 3/7/23"
""Nevro's customers want to try Saluda. They are the early adopters that like all the new technology. Nevro is being put in a box. New technology affects them more than anybody. The impact that Saluda has on Nevro is going to be significant, because their customers are the ones who say 'Hey, I need something different. Saluda is going to recruit some good commercial leaders and now all of a sudden, Nevro is not the new technology anymore." — Former Nevro executive; "The dynamic that's going to happen next is Saluda's launch. I know things have been delayed for Saluda because of COVID. They wanted to initiate their commercialization now, but it's going to be a little while. They are going to gain an adoption rate, I think, similar to what Nevro did in their first 36 months, and people are going to want to try it. The reason is their key relationships in the physician community. I don't really view Nevro as the new kid on the block anymore. They've been around long enough for physicians to say, 'The results are bad and I'm going to explant this product.' It's been through a life cycle. They have the share that they have and they're trying to compete with hand-to-hand combat. I see them losing three to five points of share, which is a lot." — Senior executive in the SCS space"
""There's someone I talk to that the previous year, he was like top 15 in the company and this year, he had two bad quarters, and they slapped him with a performance improvement plan. He's like, what? He had a doctor that was a psychologist—this was one of those whale doctors that I talked about...he was like, this is crazy. He's like, I performed really well last year. What's going on here? It seemed like they were getting even more aggressive than they did before. And he's a good rep." — Ex-Harmony territory manager for a large state in the Midwest; "So, it did fall off...my performance did slip off for that quarter, but in previous quarters, I had done well. Yes, there were a lot of representatives that their performance had fallen way off. My question is, the very successful territories had speakers in them and, you know, when you pay somebody to do talks for you, you tend to get—it's harped upon, it cannot be quid pro quo but, let's be honest, to a degree, you pay somebody a stipend to do a talk for you, and you continue to do that, they tend to look to use your drug. I'm not saying that they're going to use it in inappropriate places, but they look to use your drug more frequently. So, those people were successful." — Ex-Harmony territory manager for an eastern state"
""So about two years ago, we really started to push a more balanced approach between accessing unconventional hydrocarbon resources, oil and gas, to balance the high impact exploration program..." — John Hess, November 2010; "We have done a lot of work over the last 10 years to restructure our own Company significantly..." — John Hess, July 2011; "This change essentially began in 2009 and should be largely complete in 2014." — John Hess, July 2012; "On our July call, we explained that Hess was in the midst of a five-year transition... completed by the end of 2013." — John Hess, January 2013; "..our current board is comprised of highly accomplished directors who deserve credit for initiating the multiyear transformation that started in 2010 and that continues today." — Jon Pepper, Hess spokesman, February 2013; "the major moves to reshape our portfolio... will have been completed by the end of 2013." — John Hess, January 2013; "we'd say 12 to 18 months [March 2014 to September 2014]." — John Rielly, SVP & CFO, Hess March 2013; "...I mean, it's early in the process, but our guidance would be that we'd complete these sales by the end of 2014." — John Rielly, SVP & CFO, Hess March 2013; "monetization of our Bakken midstream assets expected in 2015." — John Hess, March 2013"
""We expect to have only 2 ERPs by the end of 2022, down from 8 ERPs in 2018 around the time of our spin." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, March 2021. "And we are in the position that we're in today because we made those investments. And this year, there's going to be another chunk because we're building out the new ERP system that I think is going to drive sort of the next wave of initiatives and enablement around the business." — Anthony Trunzo, Fmr CFO, Feb 2023. "In August, we implemented a modern ERP platform in our U.S. business, replacing an over 40-year-old system." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, Nov 2025. "And then the third big piece of not doing it is the amount of dollars that you have to spend... you're either upgrading your ERP system or you're spending an exorbitant amount of money on middleware, right, trying to get old systems to connect with new systems, which, by the way, is oftentimes not possible, not even possible." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, Nov 2025. "And so we had all of these kind of platforms, right, whether they were digital tools, whether they were going to drive further enhancements online, design capabilities, AI applications that we just had to keep on the sideline. Unable to actually deploy and use." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, Nov 2025."
""And with respect to the Meridian Speedway, we are focused on protecting our shareholders' interest there and our customers' interest because that is, as you know, part of the fastest route between the Southwest and the Southeast, which are the 2 fastest-growing regions of the U.S." — Alan Shaw, 29th Annual Transportation, Airlines and Industrial Conference, May 17, 2022; "...you can read our filing. It's that's really focused on protecting our customers' rights and our shareholders' rights with respect to our access to the Meridian Speedway. It's been a growth driver for us, and it's in a lot of demand from the customers that had interacts with on a daily basis." — Alan Shaw, J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference, Mar. 16, 2022; "...the STB provides us a form to protect our customers and our shareholders' interest... for us, it's really centered around the Meridian Speedway, which is part of the fastest route between the Southeast and the Southwest, which are the two fastest-growing regions in the country. We're convinced that that is only going to continue to grow. And we're going to make sure that we protect our shareholders and our customers' interest there. It's a big part of our plans moving forward." — Alan Shaw, Norfolk Southern 4Q21 Earnings Call, Jan. 26, 2022"
""We are making changes to the business model that will not only improve our way of doing business but also improve our results. This period of transition for the company is an important chapter in our history and one that will make us stronger. Some of these changes, however, take time to be digested and implemented by our members and as a result, this has affected our performance for the short term, yet we manage for the long term, and we firmly believe that the changes we are making are all the right ones for the healthy growth of our company, and they give us tremendous confidence for our future" — Michael Johnson, 11/4/2014; "We've implemented a number of build-it-better initiatives. We haven't had a build-it-better program for many years but recently, we've accelerated that partially in response to some of the outside noise. So when you got things like the nomenclature change, and then you follow that with the simplified pricing, and then you follow that with a greater level of claims training and enforcement, and then you roll in these marketing plan changes, I think it's the accumulation of efforts that's just causing a temporary reset as we have -- as our members out there just get used to the new situation and just a new game plan." — Des Walsh, 11/4/2014"
""In talking about cap rates -- I mentioned this last quarter, but I think it really is worthwhile saying -- and that is if you look back on the 40 years that we've been doing this and kind of follow cap rates, from 2005 to 2008, we were buying kind of in the 8.4% to 8.7% cap rate range, and in those years bought about $1.5 billion worth of property. And I'd probably estimate that we were 75 to 100 basis points in cap rate above where the one-off market was, which was really a function of buying in bulk and you get a better price and a better cap rate." "From 2003 to 2004, the caps were around 9.5, and if you go back to when we went public in '94 and take it to 2003, I went back and looked, and the cap rates from during that period were always between 10 and 11. And then going back and looking at transactions going all the way back before '94, cap rates were pretty much always up 11% or so." "So I really think that kind of the 7 and 8 caps that you saw at retail and even some of the 9 caps on the institutional transaction, like a lot of assets in many different areas, were a function of the abundant and cheap financing that was out there, and it shouldn't be too surprising to see cap rates moving up again." -- Tom Lewis, Realty Income, CEO, Q2 2009 Conference Call"
""However, logic suggests that once the plc:Ltd discount exceeds 14%, as it presently does (although only slightly), it becomes incrementally harder to justify an off-market Ltd buyback to a large portion of the total BHP Billiton shareholder base" — Macquarie, February 17, 2011; "If the DLC were to be collapsed, then every dollar returned via a buyback would be done through the buyback of Ltd shares which provided sufficient franking credits existed, could be done at a ~14% discount to the prevailing share price on the day." — UBS, July 14, 2014; "Despite having a comparable average dividend yield of ~2.5%, over the past 10 years, Exxon returned a further ~US$225bn via buybacks taking its overall average annual dividend and buyback yield to 7.3%" — Macquarie, July 29, 2014; "No capital return (this time) We think the market is (quite) disappointed with the lack of buyback / capital return." — Bank of America, August 19, 2014; "Despite >US$30b spent, failed tilts at RIO and Potash Corp and overpaying for US Shale suggest M&A is not BHP's raison d'être." — Citigroup, May 27, 2016; "At spot prices BHP would have even stronger free cash flow generation, largely thanks to iron ore, and be able to significantly increase shareholder returns." — Citigroup, Feb 21, 2017"