Callouts & quotes from 2,101+ activist slides

"I'm very confident in our sequential improvement in market share driven by innovation. I would differ with your characterization [of P&G not achieving material market share improvement]. I think we've made substantial progress in increasing the percent of our business growing market share. And I think that ties pretty directly to the innovations you've seen....We are continuing to invest in innovation. We've increased the spending on research and development the past three years and we're going to continue to make sure that we're building the capability to keep that innovation going. And the results in the marketplace are demonstrating that we're executing with excellence today, more so perhaps than the previous period you were talking about. So I'm confident we're going to continue this sequential improvement and you'll see it in the [market] sharing, you'll see it in the top line. — Bob McDonald, CEO, Earnings conference call, 4/24/13"

""I don't think we're talking about that publicly, but we do a lot of work with Ginkgo, I'll say. We've been intimately connected with them, and certainly, there are things that are outside their expertise, specific kinds of testing." — Current Joyn executive; "For Joyn, what they did is a number of Ginkgo's technical people got seconded over to Joyn, and a lot of them ended up becoming full-time employees there." — Former Ginkgo employee, longtime direct report to CEO Jason Kelly; "The goal for us is we're running lean, so we've also grown pretty rapidly, so it didn't make sense early on to have those functions... But it was a very intentional goal that we wanted to be really lean, and, in fact, if you think about the partnership with Ginkgo, it was a similar kind of thing. We didn't set up DNA sequencing or synthesis. We didn't set up robotics, all that. We're leveraging them. So, it was a consistent approach." — Current Joyn executive"

"“We have a perfect product to address putting information into the hands of the patient on a near real-time basis. We checked that box incredibly well.” — iRhythm CEO Blackford at Investor Day, 9/21/22; “It's not quite competitive to the degree that we would like it to be.” — iRhythm CEO Blackford at J.P. Morgan Conference, 1/13/25; “...I also have a very, very strong point of view that it's just not quite the right product for the market...” — iRhythm CEO Blackford on Q3 2024 Earnings Call, 10/30/24; “...based on your marketing materials, website, and other documentation, the Zio AT System is intended for “near real-time monitoring” and “high-risk patients,” even though the Zio AT System is not cleared for these indications. When used in this patient population, the Zio AT System may cause or contribute to serious injury or death because life-threatening arrhythmias may not receive timely treatment.” — Excerpt from FDA Warning Letter"

""IonQ and 1QBit are working together on applying quantum computers to solve previously intractable problems in a variety of industries and are excited to explore new possibilities resulting from the release of IonQ’s newest generation of devices," said Arman Zaribafiyan, Head of Quantum Simulation, 1QBit. "We design quantum machine learning algorithms to drive performance on near-term hardware," said Iordanis Kerenidis, Head of Algorithms International, QC Ware. "We collaborated with IonQ in implementing QC Ware's quantum classification algorithm on their system, and the excellent results attest to their unique approach and demonstrated performance." "We are excited to announce IonQ as a preferred quantum compute partner for our Singularity platform," said Enrique Lizaso, CEO of Multiverse Computing. "Together, two platforms will allow us to develop joint solutions to interesting, real-life problems in finance." — IonQ Press Releases"

""We also have the same information for clients that we lose, so we have our wins and we have our losses, where they go. Unfortunately, there really isn't -- I think we said this numerous times and it hasn't changed, that there really isn't one specific competitor or category, even... I wish could tell you that there is a specific pattern, but there isn't, which is a -- in my opinion, is a good thing. We don't see any one competitor that is creating an enormous problem for us, and we also don't see any one competitor where it is kind of easy pickings for us. I think it is fairly balanced across the board." — Carlos Rodriguez(1); "We typically get between 45% and 50% of our new units from ADP... I think our culture, product, and service -- we end up winning a lot. So, I don't know why that would change in the future, unless something dramatically happens, which I can't imagine what that is." — Scott Scherr (CEO, President, Founder)(3)"

"Sure. We do track it. We track it by brand. But for us, in our categories, new products can be everything from -- we're doing a study to have new claims on a package, and we update our packaging to have those claims to better connect with consumers to actual new technologies like Compound W, Nitro freeze or Nix Ultra, where we actually have new formulas and new products over time. So we have a very broad definition of it. And we keep an eye on the velocity and how those individual SKUs are performing out there. We don't publicly talk about a freshness index or having a target of having 20% of our sales come from new products, but just track on a granular basis the improvements in performance of every SKU that we launch every single year, whether it's updated packaging or new technology. So we'd rather manage it on that level, Mitch, than in total with a much narrower definition. — Ronald Lombardi, CEO, Q2 2020 Call, November 1, 2019"

"But I also think as we learn more about the AT -- or sorry, the MCT market, there's probably 2 markets within MCT. There's what we call sort of the buy and build market where customer accounts are buying the device directly from competitor of ours. They put it in their clinic. They're doing the interpretation, the reading right there in clinic, downloading the data. We don't offer that sort of business model. And Zio MCT is something that we're going to have to continue to evaluate how we address that segment of the market. I think that's probably 20% or so of the entire MCT market that we're still probably going to have to think through the right product market fit for how we get after that segment of the market. But there's still 80% of that MCT market that our MCT product, new MCT product is going to go squarely at and I think going to have tremendous success within it. — iRhythm CEO Blackford on Q2 2025 Earnings Call, 7/31/25"

"“The CEO came from Chevron Phillips Chemical. That is another thing I think they should look at. Take Mark Lashier, he's an expert there, and spin off that business.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “This last Q4 where Phillips came out and their refining margins were so weak, so weak. That is just fundamentally unacceptable... That is a CEO problem.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “We have had significant issues with Mark Lashier, who's the CEO. He is on the hot seat at this point due to these operational issues... There is an open question if he is the right man for the moment for me.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “Mark controls everything and that is not a good thing and as you can see that does not lead to strong corporate performance.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “He's doing what's right for his buddies on the Chevron Phillips side which is just not that shareholder friendly.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey"

"“And then can you just, I mean, there's been a lot of investor anxiety, I guess, over the potential for a recession in the U.S., at least. Can you just remind me how your business behaves in a recession? Is it actually a little bit countercyclical? Or can you just give a little bit color about the nature of your business in that kind of environment?” — Linda Weiser, WD-40 Analyst. “We're not recession proof, but we have been called recession resistant. And past history, I've been around for 30 years in the business. We've come through, we continued to invest in our business through the recessions, whether there will -- and the other thing that plays even more in our favor now is our geographic diversity. In 2008, when we had the financial crisis, our business was actually sideways, we actually grew a little, and if it wasn't for the collapse, if you will, of the pound-U.S. dollar exchange rate, we would have grown.” — CEO Ridge."

""Yeah, RUN also has the advantage of being on newer technology which scales more cheaply in terms of incremental margins." — Gary C. Butler, President and CEO; "So the number around that the difference between sales last year and this year is about 20 percentage points of additional new business coming in using our web entry systems versus Teledata which is our phone-in system." — Carlos A. Rodriguez, President, Small Business; "Really it's kind of the best of both worlds because the client gets better accuracy because you have real time payroll with real time validation of data, so you have fewer errors, fewer reruns and it takes down our labor component to both, it take the payroll and service the payroll and we think we're going to get a longer life client out of that because the overall quality and number of reruns and all those kinds of issues should be significantly down over time." — Gary C. Butler, President and CEO"

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we're not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You're not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That's not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest's dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn't want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that's the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, March 2024"

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we’re not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You’re not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That’s not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest’s dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn’t want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that’s the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, March 2024"

""This new alignment is the result of a very thoughtful and thorough process to de-layer our management structure, speed decision-making, simplify communications and reduce costs." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "Too many layers make you very averse to risk. You've got to be able to make fast decisions. We were like middle-aged people. We needed to slim down." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "We are reallocating our workload and assets in order to invest in areas of higher growth, including online and new launches." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "We are big, and we need big bets. I think that as we have become more layered, the culture here has become risk-averse." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman & CEO; "The current round of cuts is largely because of reallocation of resources as the company increases its online presence and consolidates some of its business functions." — TWX spokesperson."

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we're not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You're not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That's not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest's dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about 'our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn't want to charge your guests for their bags,' but why do you charge for the seats if that's the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, March 2024"

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we’re not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You’re not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That’s not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest’s dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn’t want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that’s the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, March 2024"

"“You're saying their using optical means that they're not getting the results from the Lasertec machine by itself. They have to use a second tool?” ... “Correct. Before Lasertec came out with their actinic tool, they needed to establish some way of inspecting the EUV masks. They used an optical tool from KLA... they need a combination of optical DUV and electron beam inspection to inspect the mask.” ... “TSMC was the first one to adopt the Holon tool, and I think Samsung, Intel, and most of the other customers in the EUV space are also adopting the Holon tool.” ... “I'm not quite sure to what degree they have succeeded in Lasertec tools to the production cycle, but from what I hear from this company, Holon said that hasn't been very successful so far. So, they are still ordering considerable quantities of Holon inspection machines.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec's CEO"

""If we have too many people, let's right-size fast; let's get it done by the end of the third quarter.' I explained that what I meant by right-size is straightforward: 'We have to benchmark our costs versus our competitors and then achieve best-in-class status'. I also remarked that we had to stop saying that IBM didn't lay off people" — Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM (1993 – 2002). "I've had a lot of experience turning around troubled companies, and one of the first things I learned was that whatever hard or painful things you have to do, do them quickly and make sure everyone knows what you are doing and why. Whether dwelling on a problem, hiding a problem or dribbling out partial solutions to a problem while you wait for a high tide to raise your boat - dithering and delay almost always compound a negative situation. I believe in getting the problem behind me quickly and moving on" — Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM (1993 – 2002)."

""We view nearly all aspects of the Red Lobster transaction as not particularly compelling..." — UBS, May 20, 2014; "Who Knew Lobsters Had Middle Fingers?" — Janney Capital Markets, May 16, 2014; "Destroying a business and giving it away for free is a familiar practice for CEO Clarence Otis." — Hedgeye, May 16, 2014; "Management's decision to ignore shareholder concerns and go forth with an undervalued sale of Red Lobster..." — Buckingham, May 16, 2014; "In short, in our eyes, "the taxman stole the show" by taking 25% of the gross proceeds." — Stifel, May 16, 2014; "Count us among the many who believe DRI is destroying shareholder value with this deal to sell Red Lobster for $1.6 billion post tax and transaction costs" — New Albion Partners, May 19, 2014; "It is unconscionable that the Darden Board would allow the Company to sell its Red Lobster business for what amounts to a 'fire sale' price" — Barington, May 19, 2014"

"“...the situation that we have right now, and we foresee into the future, which is strong, strong demand for our Parks products...we keep an eye out on those macroeconomic trends on recession, but we are not seeing any indication right now that it’s going to be impacting us...” — Bob Chapek, Former CEO, Disney. “...if you came down from Mars and looked at theme park numbers, you would not think there's a challenging macro environment. It is astounding.” — Jeff Shell, CEO NBC Universal Media. “...what drives our optimism for 2023 is solid momentum...we've always seen that good momentum leads to better next year's performance...I think it's a really good sign.” — Richard Zimmerman, CEO, Cedar Fair. “At the end of October 2022, our pass base was at a record level for October, up approximately 26% compared to October of 2019, a very healthy indicator of consumer demand for our parks...” — Michelle Adams, CFO, SeaWorld."

"“I also want to reiterate what our fiscal '23 targets are; 16% to 18% revenue CAGR, $2.4 billion in free cash flow, roughly a 40% operating margin, and again a sum of revenue growth in free cash flow that stays between 55% and 65%. We are confident in these targets at this point, and I want to make sure that you understand that it is our goal to achieve these to the same degree that we achieved our FY '20 targets that we set over three years ago.” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, 2020 Digital Investor Day; “We continue to manage our business using a Rule of Forty framework with a goal of reaching 45% or more over time. We are taking significant steps towards our goal this year and next. We think this balance between compounding revenue growth and strong free cash flow margins captured in the Rule of Forty framework is the hallmark of the most valuable companies in the world…” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call"

"“I also want to reiterate what our fiscal '23 targets are; 16% to 18% revenue CAGR, $2.4 billion in free cash flow, roughly a 40% operating margin, and again a sum of revenue growth in free cash flow that stays between 55% and 65%. We are confident in these targets at this point, and I want to make sure that you understand that it is our goal to achieve these to the same degree that we achieved our FY '20 targets that we set over three years ago.” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, 2020 Digital Investor Day; “We continue to manage our business using a Rule of Forty framework with a goal of reaching 45% or more over time. We are taking significant steps towards our goal this year and next. We think this balance between compounding revenue growth and strong free cash flow margins captured in the Rule of Forty framework is the hallmark of the most valuable companies in the world…” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call"

""Advances in security related technology have made it a viable option for reducing labor costs while improving the level of protection and service provided. Cameras, optical recognition, portable hardware, AI-driven applications, management software, and connectivity have all become integral parts of the typical protection solution." — Jamie Ridenhour, National Training & Compliance Manager, DSI Security Services; "The HVAC industry seems likely to be dominated by technology. From eco-friendly heating and cooling options to field service management (FSM) software that can increase operational efficiency (AI), virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT), technology will impact virtually every aspect of the HVAC business. HVAC companies need to determine how they can best leverage tech innovations to remain competitive in the face of heightened demands and a tightening economy." — Garrett Wilson, CEO, FieldBin"

"Your letter asserted that TransMedics prohibited transplant centers from training their personnel on the OCS procedure. This statement is not correct. To-date, we have trained more than 400 transplant retrieval surgeons for heart, lung, and liver transplants across the U.S. — TransMedics CEO Waleed Hassanein. "Originally, you could do operate the device yourself or use their service. I’ve heard this now, that more recently, they don’t allow you to do it...they won’t train you to do it...it is a little disconcerting. I don’t know why they would do it that way." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world. "Yeah, I think it is gimmicky...I don’t like the way they keep ratcheting down the screws, and as I’ve heard, if they’re not training programs to operate the machine and they’re forcing everybody to use the NOP program, that’s really unethical." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world."

""Two dynamics around Carvana which are less understood...one is, you have to think of them as just a dealership. Can they grow? Yeah, if they want to grow responsibly they have to grow like a dealership...they confused people for a while by [talking about their tech and website] but 98% of what they do is dealership stuff so don't get confused. The other dynamic is they're a subprime dealership...by serving that audience, it's actually a much more volatile boom/bust cycle than the rest of the car market." — Former Carvana senior executive; "And I think, we want to be careful to not be overconfident in our precise reads of what's going on, because I do think the environment is incredibly unique and therefore, like your certainty around assessing exactly what's happening should just be a little lower than it otherwise would be." — Ernest Garcia III, CEO Carvana at Wells Fargo TMT Virtual Summit, December 1, 2021"

""If we look at our business without our existing TiO2 division, we would be looking at 2016 as a record year for...EBITDA margins, a materially different and stronger company than we what we have today. Obviously, the conclusion of this separation is a very high priority for this company." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "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; "I've said this many times before, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the TiO2 industry as much as this is a business that when you start looking at the core performance, if you look at Huntsman without TiO2, we would be going into 2016 here...with some of the highest margins we've ever had in our history and with better than GDP growth." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO"

""With respect to ADT, that's a critically important relationship to us. They've said the same about the relationship from their side." — CFO, Investor Day March 2021; "Security was clearly the strongest. ADT is a terrific and significant customer of that business." — CFO, May 6, 2021; "Additionally, we have reached an agreement in principle at ADT to amend our current agreement to provide ADT with products through 2023" — CEO, Aug 4, 2022; "Based on this agreement, we expect our 2024 security hardware sales to ADT to decline by approximately $100 million compared with 2023 levels with a similar additional reduction in 2025." — CFO, Feb 13, 2024; "We saw better results than expected from ADT in 2024, and we also expect a better than previously communicated impact in 2025." — CFO, Feb 20, 2025; "This includes ADT with whom we recently signed a new multiyear commercial agreement." — President P&S, Nov 5, 2025"

""Nevro's always played a lot of games. Rami, their previous CEO, was a notorious [redacted]. He just wasn't very on the up-and-up....It's just a lot of smoke and mirrors. There's not a lot there. There's a joke going around that we're one annual NANS meeting away from proving that Nevro's high frequency cures Covid. No matter what it is, Nevro says their device treats that, They put this data out that people don't even read anymore. It always shows these ridiculous numbers. They'll come up with numbers to show that high frequency treats cancer. No one buys their data." — KOL and high volume implanter; "Nevro has one size fits all. I don't believe anything they say and I doubt that their PDN claims are going to be any better. Every Nevro study is the same. It's a bunch of shit and you might get some initial improvement and then the same problems a year later." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter"

"“If I’m TransMedics, I’m hitting up the surgeons because they’re going to surgery in the middle of the night. These poor surgeons are stuck, like okay, do I either continue to not sleep like I have in the last decade? Or do I have this solution where I can have somewhat of a lifestyle. It sounds to me like he’s probably preying on the transplant surgeons. That’s what I think. I don’t think it’s the administration. I think it’s going to the surgeon and then using the surgeon to bully the administration; “we’re going to do this.” ... “Well, it’s going to improve the outcomes, and we’re going to be able to do more of it, and we’re going to have less turnover, etc., etc., etc. In my experience, the administrators, they don’t know what’s going on half the time. So, I think they’re probably getting bullied by the surgeons.” — CEO of a major OPO (Organ Procurement Organization), longtime industry executive"

""We believe the “nimbleness” of Sika’s organization is a feature of its unique culture that has been enhanced under the tenure of CEO Jan Jenisch, who decentralized the organizational structure, introduced P&L responsibility at the country level one step away from the customer, and implemented a new incentive scheme and performance management system. We think Sika’s new freedom will only serve to improve the company’s reactiveness, making it even less sensitive to cycles." — Bernstein Research, April 2019; "In this section...we highlight the new geographical based structure...The Group’s previous structure relied on a matrix-based system with three sectors of activity (Innovative Materials, Construction Products and Building Distribution) while the new structure aims to facilitate more rapid decision-making while eliminating several approval levels for most decisions." — J.P. Morgan, November 2019"

"I wouldn't say a change in the competitive landscape, but I started to worry more about Epic as a competitor. They we starting to pull together their offerings in a more cohesive fashion to compete holistically with us. As far as the sales cycle, for enterprise deals, the cycle can be really long. More than two years and up to five years. If you're lucky eighteen months. It's not a simple sale process. We did see an affect on our business from COVID-19. A few enterprise deals come through due to COVID-19. — Former Vocera Sales Employee; "I would say it's stabilized. It's longer than it was before, but now that we've sort of transitioned the business where the bulk of the deals are on that same cadence, it's just a matter of building pipeline. So whether it's a 12-month or 18-month sales cycle doesn't matter in as long as you've made the transition to the new cadence." — CEO Lang, Q3 2021 Conf Call"

""In 2012, we added the guest experience captain to help our guests in the restaurant with all the aspects of their visit that were nonfood related" — Sally Smith, CEO, 5/18/16; "Many of us (home office employees) completely agree with your assessment...The GEC (Guest Experience Captain) role has shown negligible positive impact on store performance" — BWLD Corporate employee, 8/17/16; "We never have implemented [the Guest Captain program]. I think we tested it in a couple of stores loosely, not officially. But no, we don't use it, we don't do it at all anymore" — CEO of BWLD's largest franchisee, 3/10/17; "The Guest Captain position has always perplexed me as a customer. From my vantage point, the only function the Guest Captain ever performed was hovering in the dining area introducing him/herself as the Guest Captain...Seemed like a very frivolous/wasteful FTE in my opinion" — Customer, 3/8/17"

""So goods transport was the main focus area for both pallet and smaller goods within Fetch's primary focus area. Fulfillment was an application they're building out, and we're still building that out fulfillment application out. And we're seeing early traction in that. It's a small business today. It's a small business today." — CEO Burns, JPMorgan Conf May 24, 2023. "To compete in the fast-paced, high-stakes world of e-commerce, modern distribution and fulfillment center operations are introducing increasing levels of automation. Too often these automated systems operate independently, performing very discrete tasks and processes. This collaboration with Fetch to have a turnkey solution with Momentum gives those in the e-commerce industry a competitive advantage that will optimize productivity, increase operational safety, and provide significant return on investment." — Honeywell Robotics CTO"

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

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

""So Michael, you're right in that milk production is falling, but the approach that we've taken is we have a strategy where we're going to tap into 3 sources for our milk moving forward... we still feel confident that we'll be able to achieve the numbers that we originally committed to, which is to get to a 3 billion to 3.1 billion liter of milk over a 3-year period." — Kai Beckmann, Q4 2019 Conf Call. "If you recall, when we first acquired the Australian platform, we were targeting after the sale of Koroit around 3.1 billion liters of milk. That new normal is 2.7 billion liters of milk... So the new normal for us from the historic number of 3.1 billion liters is 2.7 billion liters." — CEO, Q3 2020 Conf Call. "So if you recall, we had targets of about 2.7 billion - 2.8 billion liters of milk to be processed. We're probably somewhere around 2.2 billion liters of milk." — CEO, Q4 2022 Conf Call."

""The CEO is a headwind to a turnaround. Firing him is the tailwind." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "I would rate them as the worst-performing management team in the airlines." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "They need a new look across the board and you are only going to get that with [a CEO] who is not from Southwest." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "I have zero confidence this team can get this right and certainly not in the timeframe that is needed." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "Having the current CEO drive the process for a new strategy is not a good idea." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "You need a really different leader to right the ship." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "I don’t think this is the right CEO to lead the company and I would view his removal positively." — Top 10 Active Shareholder; "So it is really [the CEO] has not done a good job running the company." — Top 10 Active Shareholder"

"“We think that this business -- that parts of this business are very attractive from a growth basis. There's tremendous synergy with our existing business... We see areas of opportunity to further technology with our surfactants technology, our amines technology and with some of our other technologies that we have in house, we see opportunities to expand into the textile industry here and move further downstream.” — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, February 2006; “When you think about our three differentiated businesses, we have good intermediate positions in MDI and we have formulation businesses that really bring it right down to the customer level... And we believe this Textile Effects business will give us that formulation approach that is close to customers, particularly in Asia, where we can move beyond the intermediates into the more formulation area.” — Kimo Esplin, CFO, February 2006"

""And can you just comment on the spreads that you are making on your product these days, how you're pricing to customers, just given the price of feedstocks, the canola oil, going up?" — Jonathan Tanwanteng, CJS Securities. "Yes. Let me say 1 more thing in terms of kind of longer-term before I address that one specifically... canola oil is going up in price. About half of our current contracts have escalators in them that allow us to pass that on to the contracted customer. We put that language in every contract that we had that was multiyear. So in the 1-year contracts that we did, we didn't have that in there, but we had hedged... And we are also aggressively looking at alternatives, which we know there are a lot of alternatives, but obviously, we're looking for economical -- more economical alternatives, if you will. So that's an ongoing project." — Stephen Croskrey, CEO Danimer Scientific"

""Could you sort of give us an overview of how that's going? I think there was a lot made of kind of Amazon moving to the capital region. How much competition are you seeing from kind of the tech industry?" — Analyst Barcap Conf Feb 2020; "Yes. Look, hiring's tough. Again, this is one of the areas that we view is the thing that keeps our CEO and CFO up at night... So them coming to DC maybe intensifies that competition a little bit, but the idea that we've never seen Amazon before, and we've never competed for talent until they announced HQ2 is just not true." — Former VP Booz Allen Response; "Early indication is that our fourth quarter productivity levels may remain closer to historical norms... This was critically important because the labor market, as we often appreciate, is very competitive. Pre-pandemic and in the midst of COVID, it has remained so." — CFO Comments Q3 2021 Jan 29, 2021"

"How much of the sales of that business are from consumables versus the kit itself? — Analyst Altobello, Waterpik Deal Call 7/7/2017. (CEO) That's a good one. I couldn't tell you the answer to it. (CFO) Yeah, we'll get back to you on that one Joe, it's a good question. — CEO and CFO. Two questions, one I was wondering if you could talk about maybe the online percentage of sales that you're seeing in Waterpik at this point and kind of the strategy that's there. — Analyst Gere, Waterpik Deal Call 7/7/2017. (CEO) As far as – I don't recall what the percentage is of e-commerce, and we'll have that for you on a later call, but you know, as Rick said, it's not insignificant, so it's meaningful to the total. (CFO) Yeah, off the top of my head, Jason, we said, you know Church & Dwight were around 3%, I think those guys are high single-digits, but we can clarify that on the next call. — CEO and CFO"

""It's not just about cost, as you well know. And on the cost side, our people are very efficient." — John Hess, Chairman & CEO Hess, April 2012; "Not really familiar with what you are talking about [in response to question about Hess closing gap with other Bakken operators]. I will tell you that our data shows us as very competitive with other operators in North Dakota [Bakken]." — Gregory Hill, EVP Worldwide E&P Hess, April 2012; "Essentially [we are] always focusing on how we're working on the cost side of the margin equation... [the bakken is] our oil factory, [we]continue to work on our oil factory way of driving down costs." — Harold Hamm, Founder/Chairman/CEO Continental, October 2012; "The big focus is driving down costs." — Michael Lou, CFO Oasis Petroleum, November 2012; "Our focus right now is getting our well cost down." — Jim Brown, COO Whiting Petroleum, November 2012."

""It typically took over 12 months to make the decision on licensing, there were a lot of people involved. At other companies it would take half as long. Since it was a very long process, a number of times, especially small companies, would just move on." — Former Bristol-Myers Executive; "Starting a clinical program took too long. By the time it took to write a protocol and committing to do a program, a lot of things had changed, some things had gotten approved, and some programs became obsolete. I remember one program took five years for us to complete." — Former Bristol-Myers Executive; "We are moving in a speed now in R&D that frankly, we had never contemplated before... we've had about a 3 percentage point improvement. So what we paid 19% of sales for in 2014, we now pay 16% of sales for. And that's real progress for us." — Robert Bradway (Chairman & CEO of Amgen, January 2019)"

"And the strategy was land and expand, we discussed the fact that we have a very broad portfolio of better-breed solutions, and we also have a large customer base. We acquired KANA and we got their customer base. So we saw a great opportunity to land and expand within the customer base and as well as new customers. And it actually worked very well for us last year where we achieved double-digit organic growth as we were executing on this land-and-expand strategy last year....What became clear to us now after a couple of quarters of looking at the trends is that while our customers are very interested in working with vendors that have a broad portfolio and moving faster towards transformation, the approval cycle does take longer, and when they approach management, they need to go back and defend the proposal and go through a long explanation and so forth. — Dan Bodner, CEO, Verint"

"Effective April 2019, the Company adopted a formal “clawback” policy applicable to annual and long-term incentive awards made to the CEO, CFO and any other key member of executive management as identified by the Board or CEO. Under this policy, the Company may seek to recoup incentive compensation paid to covered employees to the extent that such compensation was granted, vested, or earned based on financial results that the Company is required to restate as a result of material noncompliance with any financial reporting requirement under federal securities laws. In March 2022, the Company expanded the policy to allow recoupment of incentive compensation paid in the event of gross negligence in performance or misconduct resulting in a violation of law or Company policy, where such acts resulted in significant financial or reputational harm to the Company. — 2022 Proxy Statement"

"“Grossman doesn’t have a strategy. This is what concerns me. This is why I don’t own a penny of Nevro. Keith Grossman may have wanted to flip it in six months. If you do not know the neuromodulation space and you’re listening to the Board tell you that Rami [prior CEO] screwed this up. You think, I’ve talked to Kasra Amirdelfan [implanter who is the #1 recipient of Nevro payments*] and David Caraway, their Chief Medical Officer, these guys are high on it. I can come in here and look like a rock star and just not be an [redacted] like Rami, and I can flip this thing in no time because I know the investment community because of my history. I would bet that that’s about the due diligence that Keith Grossman did, and he was sold hook, line, and sinker. Now he’s going to have to roll up his sleeves and say, ‘What do I do with this thing?’” — Longtime C-level executive in the space"

""The start-stop nature of NFL games means that the latency issues that arise from data providers offering a feed from television coverage don't come into play as they might do in other sports... The fact remains that most betting on a match, even in-play, is on the final result. Thus, the case in favor of new types of in-play bets is, as yet, only the stuff of start-up pitch decks." — BettingUSA.com (June 14, 2021); "I do believe the data is being over-valued, and the NFL is not familiar with the challenges of running a profitable sports betting business." — Matt Para, sports betting consultant (BettingUSA.com article); "What I can say to you, is that on a cash basis we anticipate the NFL to be breakeven in 2021, and cash generating thereafter. And indeed, on of course, the life of the contract we anticipated to be profitable." — Mark Locke, CEO (GENI earnings call Q1 2021)."

""Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Can you help me out on what's the average FICO score of your buyers that are using financing on your site? And how has that trended as you've doubled since IPO, or actually call it massively more than doubled? Also, can you - it doesn't look like Ally is now taking all of your loans based on my calculations, are you selling to others now as well? And if so, who and what type of loans are you selling to other people than Ally?" — Nat Schindler, Bank of America; "Yeah. So first on the FICO question, I would say our FICO continues to look a lot like the broader used car market. So if you look at other leading retailers or just kind of used car sales in general, we've got a very similar FICO distribution to any of those retailers and that's been very stable across time, nothing to call out there." — Ernie Garcia III - CEO, Carvana"

""Lastly, as a reminder, last week marked the one-year anniversary of our Fleet ownership. The acquisition continues to perform in line with our expectations, and our focus has fully shifted towards our long-term brand-building strategy." — Ron Lombardi, CEO; "If you look at Fleet this quarter, you mentioned consumption still pretty strong: mid-single-digits plus. Fleet sales were down 1% in this quarter. They are up 3% year to date." — Raymond James; "Yes, so from a sales perspective for Fleet, US sales continue to be strong. It's the international sales, where we primarily work through a distributor business. And we see sales variability with distributor businesses from quarter to quarter on a regular basis. So again, that's why we take you back to the mid- to high-single-digit consumption trends for Fleet overall, which we feel comfortable with." — Christine Sacco, CFO"

"Michael Gambardella: “Yes, good afternoon. Another question for Mr. Kleinfeld. Since you've been on the Board for almost 5 years now, you have had a say in some of the strategic issues of the company. But since you have taken the role of President, Chief Operating Officer [October 2007], you have gotten into a lot of the segments in a nitty gritty way. What, if you were the CEO of the company what would be the one thing that you would change in the way the company is run today to try to maximize value for the shareholder?” Klaus Kleinfeld: “Right. Michael, the good news is – I mean, we have a team here that's really working together as a very, very close team. And frankly, I mean, I would most likely not have come on board if that wouldn't have been the case. So I feel a good bit of responsibility of, what we are currently doing.” — Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, April 7, 2008"

""The other thing and Mike, I don't know if you want to comment on this, but with our SaaS-based products we're investing not only for future functionality but for scalability, so the computer hosting costs, which have been a relatively significant portion of the cost are coming down on a per unit basis fairly dramatically and we expect that to continue in the future." — Gary C. Butler, President and CEO; "That's correct. Typically 15% year-over-year reduction in hosting costs and the fact that they are SaaS-based, and our clients are always on the same version of a platform means that we don't have the expense of other software companies of maintaining different versions of the software." — Mike Capone, VP and Chief Information Officer; "I have to stop the bragging now or we're going to get too many margin improvement questions." — Gary C. Butler, President and CEO"

"It's like an imaginary...if I was to ship this to your lab, I would put this shell around it. But inside it's just skunkworks. It's just a bunch of wires, a bunch of stuff, very much handmade, very ineligible... I don't even know if that's real or if it's a mockup. I've been inside the lab. I'm just trying to think if that's really real. I think it's just an outer shell that they may have one of, but it's not really real. — Former executive; I don't know if you've been to a trapped ion lab before, but they're always just a big optics table, and there are a million pieces everywhere. I've seen the picture of the box. I think we actually just put a box around it [laughs], probably as a promo thing... That [the CEO's comments on a rack-sized box by 2023] to me, that seems totally absurd; just hearing it, it seems absurd to me. — Ex-employee, member of technical staff"

"“We look at some of [these small cell deals] and we're looking at them and saying, boy, we either were getting some completely wrong or this is going to end up poorly for some folks.” — CEO Dan Caruso, August 2017; “A lot of the [small cell] deals that we've looked at don't – they're not justified by that first tenant...not all of the deals that we've looked at have been such where we were confident that there was a good investment, where whether it was the commercial terms of the first tenant and the lack of confidence we had and the durability of that, just based on the rights or whether it was just the fundamental economics that they were looking for, or it was our knowledge of the likelihood of getting a second, third or fourth tenant based on the competitive dynamics and who's already working with whom within that market.” — CFO Matt Steinfort, November 2017"

"“Together, we can deliver unprecedented benefits to customers, combining the benefits of scale, trust and data.” — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO; “In terms of synergy, it's really what we were just describing earlier, really what you are now able to bring together with the two companies is the customers' entire financial identity where they can use their data to get access to the best personal loans that are right for them, the best credit cards that are right for them, the best by the way, insurance, it could be home insurance, auto insurance, renters insurance because when the customer doesn't have all their data in one place...” — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO; “Intuit enables us to strengthen this ability by allowing customers to add income data to that profile, enable members to see more offers through which they qualify.” — Ken Lin, Credit Karma Founder and CEO"

"“Due to the superiority of our workflows, Amgen has shut down legacy cell line development process and converted wholly to Berkeley Lights, and we're working through a similar process in antibody discovery. I think this is a great example of how we expand across our customers' organizations…” — BLI CEO, 1/12/21, JP Morgan conference; “They [Amgen] had a big problem there. And we solved that problem. Now Amgen, the -- all cell lines are coming out of Amgen are made on Berkeley Lights Beacon, right?” — CEO, 3/4/21, Cowen conference; “And case in point is that we worked on cell line development with Amgen early on. That was one of our early partners. And once they got a hold of our technology and saw how they could use it, they've dramatically -- they've switched wholesale over to Berkeley Lights to make cell lines at Amgen.” — BLI CEO, 3/24/21, KeyBanc conference"

"TaskUs has grown to an organization of over 270 professionals with offices in Los Angeles and Manila. Today, the vision is to create thousands of high quality, sustainable jobs across the world to support the most exciting companies of tomorrow. — Vimeo Video, 9 yrs ago; Bryce Maddock is the Founder and CEO of TaskUs, a leading provider of outsourced customer support and Big Data services. TaskUs is the secret weapon behind countless internet companies with the power of TaskUs fledgling startups are able to cut costs and scale rapidly, achieving a profitable and sustainable business model. Over the past three years, Maddock has grown TaskUs from a team of two founders working out of their garage to an international service provider with over 400 full time employees working at offices in Santa Monica and Manila, Philippines. — CEO Blog, Wayback Machine, Jan 2013"

""Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger has at least a cordial relationship with ValueAct CEO Mason Morfit, who is married to actress Jordana Brewster. Known for her role in the Fast & Furious films, Brewster has owned a home near Iger in the tony Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Iger and Morfit have gone on hikes together, according to the people, while Morfit and Brewster attended a screening of the Disney film Flamin' Hot in Los Angeles last summer." — Bloomberg, November 2023; "I have known Bob Iger since the time of our Fox investment (he was across the table during the Fox / Disney deal discussions in 2017). Over the years, I have used him as a sounding board for our investments in New York Times, Nintendo and a few others...I got excited when he returned to Disney a little over a year ago..." — Mason Morfit, ValueAct Co-CEO and CIO, January 2024"

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

"Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger has at least a cordial relationship with ValueAct CEO Mason Morfit, who is married to actress Jordana Brewster. Known for her role in the Fast & Furious films, Brewster has owned a home near Iger in the tony Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Iger and Morfit have gone on hikes together, according to the people, while Morfit and Brewster attended a screening of the Disney film Flamin' Hot in Los Angeles last summer. — Bloomberg, November 2023; I have known Bob Iger since the time of our Fox investment (he was across the table during the Fox / Disney deal discussions in 2017). Over the years, I have used him as a sounding board for our investments in New York Times, Nintendo and a few others...I got excited when he returned to Disney a little over a year ago... — Mason Morfit, ValueAct Co-CEO and CIO, January 2024"

"“Thanks for the question. So on the safety side, as many of you, I'm sure know, monitoring for safety data in the post-marketing setting is quite different from clinical trial settings. So one typically relies on reports from caregivers or health care providers and the patients that you're treating are also often not as controlled and may have more comorbidities, et cetera. So we are pretty early in the launch. But that said, I can tell you that we have not seen anything in the post-marketing setting that is different from the clinical trial setting. So there are no new safety signals. And once again, just to reiterate, what we have seen with the discontinuation rates at this time are substantially lower than what we have seen in the clinical trials. And Jim, I'll let you take the revenue question.” — Soleno CEO Anish Bhatnagar, Aug 6, 2025 earnings call"

"“First and foremost, we're providing them with the tools to achieve significant impact with patients, which is incredibly empowering. We do this through a user-friendly EMR platform, mobile apps that allow for ease of access and predictive clinical education to support improved decision making.” — CEO Dudum on Q3 2022 Earnings Call; “These people are interfacing with beautiful technology to treat their patients and have that flexibility to do it as they are walking their dog right around their block.” — CEO Dudum on Q3 2021 Earnings Call; “And the way that it works is that we have very flexible contractor hours. So physicians can jump on the platform. Most of the time, it's on their iPhone or on their computer from home or they're going for a walk, right, with their dog and they're talking to patients.” — CEO Dudum at 11/11/21 Citi Healthcare Conference"