Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"At the early stage Intel is the one that pushed them. They heavily invested, and instead of having a program that will take five, six years for development, they laid it down and said, you need to ship it in three years. Lasertec said there is no way that we can develop stuff that fast. So they used a Japanese connection. They went to Ushio, which was the only company that had a source that has enough brightness. — Former KLA executive in a leadership role in their EUV mask inspection group"

"Actually, [the offset loan] is part of the treasury management of the company. We had some arrangement with a major commercial bank in china. The bank provide a loan 200 million USD. At the same time, the money will be transferred into RMB and deposited totally in the bank. And also, we enter into a forward contract to convert RMB into USD as of the maturity date of the loan so this means there is no risk and we are guaranteed a fixed return from this arrangement. — CFO of Man Wah Holdings"

""In the past it was always interpreted fairly if an injury on the job occurred. Now, as employees have seen, if you report an injury the company will come back with the argument that the injury only occurred because the employee was negligent in following safety rules no matter the situation. Not following safety rules is cause for dismissal. So, employees have gotten the message not to report injuries or problems... retaliation against whistleblowers is rampant." — Former UNP Executive(1)"

""Here's the shell game on this one. The shell game is that they're comparing their battery to what is available in the marketplace today. But that's an irrelevant comparison... there are other players that have achieved five minutes." — Former employee; "50% in 15 minutes isn't really accurate... So they're sandbagging a little bit on the state of the art. Certainly, they're not better than the conventional technologies that QuantumScape wants to have something." — A second former employee"

""My skepticism comes from how often they were able to do it and what yield. When I was there, it was really hard to get a full cell that was repeatedly performing for a long period of time... it's one thing to show it on the research level and another thing to show that it can be scalable." — Former employee; "I don't believe that they can do that pretty consistently. It's not a robust process at the moment... And from the people that I still talk to, they can't." — Another former employee"

"“I am a former employee. Left on good terms with the company. But the frustrations I had with the lack of communication and infrastructure had me shaking my head often. With more than 20 years in the restaurant industry, I was quite taken aback to learn that my two supervisors - a direct, and a vice president - had NO restaurant experience. And these were the people "leading the charge." It provided a lot of frustration to both me and my peers” — Former Buffalo Wild Wings Employee, 4/11/17"

"Secondly, Colleen is a big-picture thinker and someone who's not afraid to operate in gray areas, and, Although she is very detail oriented, articulate and a rule follower, she's also helped Zebra teams like mine operate with extreme financial responsibility within our existing structures by sitting down, understanding what we need and identifying areas where we can tailor accounting practices to our business processes versus having to re-engineer business processes. — Zebra Blog Interview"

""I guess my first question, Eli, you had a comment where you said that you have a number of projects moving to production from development phase... what's the pipeline for new projects to replace the ones that are moving into production?" — Ashwin Shirvaikar, Citigroup; "...usually a successful project leads to other successful projects, and as we are expanding our offering.... And projects, usually when they come to fruition, they don't go to zero." — Eli Gelman, President and CEO, Amdocs"

"With the anticipated sale of INVISTA, DuPont will be a smaller company with the potential for higher growth and profitability... But unlocking that potential means doing things differently. If we are to meet our earnings growth objectives - which we will - we cannot support the complexity and cost entailed by diverse and specialized organizations and processes. The actions we are announcing today are necessary to the near- and long-term competitiveness of DuPont. — Press release, 12/1/2003"

"Nelson was a terrific colleague on the Heinz Board. His focus was on constructive contribution. He added keen insights and a colorful wit to our board discussions. Nelson is a problem solver who understands strategic opportunities and he works in a collegial manner with his fellow board members to achieve the company’s goals. I relished my experience working with Nelson. — Leonard Coleman, Former President, National League of Professional Baseball, and former Director of H.J. Heinz Company"

""The million dollar question is what’s this retail business worth? ... When UAP was trading, they were trading at about 9x. If you look at Tractor Supply ... they are trading at a multiple of 11x ... I’ll just keep hammering at you until we get [the multiple] up to what we feel is a reasonable number" — Agrium CEO Michael Wilson, 2011 Investor Day; "Agrium's Board has not been able (or willing) to quantify, explain, or defend the current company structure" — Credit Agricole / CLSA, 11/5/12"

"Nelson was a terrific colleague on the Heinz Board. His focus was on constructive contribution. He added keen insights and a colorful wit to our board discussions. Nelson is a problem solver who understands strategic opportunities and he works in a collegial manner with his fellow board members to achieve the company’s goals. I relished my experience working with Nelson. — Leonard Coleman, Former President, National League of Professional Baseball, and former Director of H.J. Heinz Company"

"Nelson was a terrific colleague on the Heinz Board. His focus was on constructive contribution. He added keen insights and a colorful wit to our board discussions. Nelson is a problem solver who understands strategic opportunities and he works in a collegial manner with his fellow board members to achieve the company’s goals. I relished my experience working with Nelson. — Leonard Coleman, Former President, National League of Professional Baseball, and former Director of H.J. Heinz Company"

"“is the best way to do that” — An ex-KLA director of engineering. “a well-engineered system is more important than the wavelength” — An ex-KLA director of engineering. “the DUV tools actually do work [for EUV masks]...those tools work really well and have been well-engineered for a long period of time.” — An ex-KLA director of engineering. “made essentially their own...in-house inspection system...so did Intel...Intel doesn't talk about it, but they did” — A leading EUV lithography expert."

"Gandler: "Okay, great. And last question. Bemis' working capital to sales is twice Amcor's, roughly twice Amcor's. Is there something structural there or is that an opportunity you guys have identified as well?" CEO Delia: "I would say it's an opportunity we've identified as well.... Look, is it going to get to our level? I don't know. But what we see without question, without hesitation there is the cash synergy opportunity from optimising working capital." — Analyst Gandler and CEO Delia"

"The IMT segment includes the financial results for the Premier Agent and rentals marketplaces (including StreetEasy rentals product offerings) as well as Other IMT, which includes our new construction marketplace and revenue from the sale of other advertising and business technology solutions for real estate professionals, including display, StreetEasy for-sale product offerings and ShowingTime+, which houses ShowingTime, Bridge Interactive, dotloop and interactive floor plans. — 2022 10-K"

"Adam Goldstein himself said on social media April 4th, 2024: 'Joby does have the most amount of flying experience in the industry, albeit on an experimental uncertifiable aircraft. The clock starts ticking once you start flying conforming aircraft. Everything else before that is just practice'. And we could not agree more, Adam. You are right, this is the basis for an apples-to-apples comparison, and your clock is not ticking because you do not have a conformal aircraft. — Grizzly Research"

"“actinic is not going to be sufficient for mask inspection because sub-resolution assist features will become necessary...those features you cannot detect with actinic light...ultimately an electron beam solution is required...they need features on a mask that are smaller than 13.5nm...higher resolution than EUV is required...and people are working on an electron beam solution...KLA is one of them.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec’s CEO"

"On May 4, 2020, we completed the divestiture of the Security & Detection Systems and MacDonald Humfrey Automation solutions business ("airport security and automation business") to Leidos, Inc. for $ 1 billion (net cash proceeds of $ 950 million after selling costs and estimated purchase price adjustments), subject to final customary purchase price adjustments as set forth in the definitive sale agreement, and recognized a pre-tax loss of $26 million during the quarter ended July 3, 2020."

""We closed our acquisition with Stripe! Together we're scaling digital dollars to businesses everywhere. Stablecoins aren't the future—they're already transforming how people move money today." — Zach Abrams, cofounder of Bridge, on X. "It's been incredible hearing from users just how big of an impact stablecoin infrastructure is already making. We believe stablecoins will play a critical role in turbocharging cross-border commerce." — Neetika Bansal, business lead at Stripe, on LinkedIn."

"We're committed to achieving a $1 billion run rate sometime in FY '21... and I know you guys can all do the math, but if you take the outer edge of that and look at $250 million of revenue in Q4 of that year, that would be a 23% compounded annual growth rate. So we expect to be growing at least that fast over the next few years. And in terms of how that breaks down, we're expecting our existing customer base to drive the majority of this growth. — CFO Dylan Smith, BoxWorks, September 2016"

""We have reviewed the procedures used by the Board of Directors in arriving at its estimate of value of such investments and have inspected underlying documentation, and, in the circumstances, we believe the procedures are reasonable and the documentation appropriate." — Arthur Andersen LLP (previous audit language). "[W]e have written that we believe these allegations are unfounded and uninformed and have attempted to produce as much factual rebuttal as possible." — Merrill Lynch report."

"Listen, why are we not going to take action against this employee that we fired is because that's not we want to be focused on from the management team, and that's not what we want to do with shareholder equity and shareholder capital. Our focus is to deliver results. At the end of the day, our stakeholders will judge us not by an anonymous blogger, right, but by our results. If he's broken any laws, then I think it's the regulators' responsibility to pursue that. It's just- — Mr. Alireza"

"“Twist is not a big vendor, and they cannot offer many different things. They have their market, which is laboratories in universities, smaller startups, and some part of pharma, but they will not suddenly grow like crazy...what could happen in the future is that they go bankrupt or they collapse because at some point, if they are selling everything at a lower price, I don't know how they are going to compensate for that.” — Novartis, a large Twist customer, scientist in a leadership role"

""According to the National Bicycle Dealers Association's 2017 report, the number of independent bike dealers (IBDs) in the US has decreased from 4,256 in 2010 to 3,700 in 2016, a total decline of 13 percent." — Bicycling.com. "Harley has for years failed to increase sales in the United States, its top market accounting for more than half of its motorcycles sold. As its tattooed, baby-boomer base ages, the Milwaukee-based company is finding it challenging to woo new customers." — CNBC/WSJ."

"Other expenses that are not directly attributable to a particular segment are based upon allocation methodologies, including time estimates, revenue, headcount, sales targets, data center consumption and other relevant usage measures. Due to the integrated structure of MSCI's business, certain costs incurred by one segment may benefit other segments. A segment may use the content and data produced by another segment without incurring an arm's-length intersegment charge. — MSCI SEC filings"

"“It's hard to quantify it succinctly. So I think maybe a longer off-line conversation. I would tell you that the Engage opportunity is quite large. Those deals tend to be very large software deals, because they're typically going house-wide or hospital-wide. And once they make the decision to do these kind of clinical integration, they want to standardize it across the health system. And so those end up being very, very large software opportunities.” — CEO Lang Response, Q3 2021 Conf Call"

"“Ginkgo wanted to pretty much control everything and be in charge.” — Current Motif executive; “The amount they charged us, there was no negotiation.” — Current Motif executive; “Exactly. I would say that the person that was the director of R&D, pretty much overseeing the project, was actually a Ginkgo employee at first, so he had really little say because he was an insider from Ginkgo, so he couldn't really tell them what you're doing is not the perfect thing.” — Current Motif executive."

"So, it's a great question. So I'll take it in the order that you asked it. So there are two things with sample size... And that's why just a raw sample size matters, and so compared to the competition in the devices out there, broadly, we think we look at more samples. We know we look at more sample size, there's just more urine, there's just more fecal material prepared to look at. So I think that's good. The second part of your question. And I'm sorry, I just forgot. — Kevin Wilson, CEO"

"Regarding non-food activities, our sales have declined in the context of soft discretionary spending by Brazilian households. Nevertheless, we succeeded in limiting the decline in sales of Via Varejo in Q4 2015 compared to previous quarters, thanks to targeted action plans aimed at finding a better price positioning, particularly through more effective promotions. As in 2015, our priority for 2016 is to maintain a positive operating FCF for all our Brazilian Activities — Casino Management"

""I am aware of the medication and have seen some of the data presented and looked at the paper. I have about 3 to 5 PWS patients at the moment. We do trials, so I expect we were contacted about the trial. We actually did it in our journal club with our group. And then I was just both at the European and the US peds-endo meetings. And I actually spoke to Dr. Miller. And, obviously, they were trying to educate/sell the drug." — Pediatric endocrinologist, division chief at an academic center"

"“I know that if it was one salesperson telling me this, that would be a different story. But whenever, you know, a third of the people are coming out and saying, 'I can't believe what this sales manager just said to my provider that I've been calling on now for three years. I mean, literally threatened them not being a speaker anymore if they didn't pick up the volume.' And I'm just like, 'Dude, they can't say that.' 'Well, they did.'” — Ex-field reimbursement manager working with Harmony"

"TSMC, but they did some things. They generally made essentially their own inspection system and in-house inspection system, and so did Intel. Intel doesn't talk about it, but they did. ... everybody was doing this, some quietly and some more publicly. Samsung, we knew, but Intel and TSMC all did the same. ... Samsung still uses it, and so does TSMC, and most likely Intel does it too. But Intel is very quiet about what they do. — Leading EUV lithography expert close to Lasertec's customers"

"“As a condition precedent to Sonera’s purchase of the participatory interests in KazNet, KazNet will acquire two limited liability partnerships in Kazakhstan, namely Aksoran LLP (“Aksoran”) and Instaphone LLP (“Instaphone”). Aksoran and Instaphone each holds certain radio frequency permits that are capable of being deployed for the operation of a WIMAX business in Kazakhstan. Once formed, the KazNet group will own and operate a WIMAX business in Kazakhstan...” — Kcell Prospectus, page 58."

"Spruce Point observes that Mr. Chadha has also removed reference to his role as Leidos' Chief Accounting Officer from his public LinkedIn biography. We observe he served in various accounting and financial reporting roles at Computer Sciences Corp during a tumultuous period when its executives were charged with accounting fraud and assessed a $190m penalty. Curiously, the fraud involved inflating unbilled receivables – the same accounts ballooning at Leidos with inconsistent explanation."

"All I’ve seen are the summary stats...I haven’t seen anything on an individual basis...so yeah, it does worry me that things are not published, for sure...and there are odd things like the papers don’t describe insulin resistance at all anywhere...something very weird going on...their leptin goes massively down despite there not being a huge change in fat mass...something odd there...they haven’t really shown that insulin resistance gets bigger...they don’t report...and I don’t know why."

"“Dongfang Trading Co. Ltd in the most recent two years almost doesn't have any revenue,” the aforementioned tax bureau insider informed me, “It's just like a shell company.” — Tax bureau insider; “My ownership was withdrawn in 2004,” Liu Zhen Yong responded. — Liu Zhen Yong; “Li Jian Jun comes from Beijing”, “This is a Beijing company”, and “Apart from this company, we have suppliers from other places such as Beijing.” — Liu Zhen Yong; “Some people have ulterior motives.” — Liu Zhen Yong"

""The HAMR process has a bit more steps, which is something that is never, from a material process perspective, more steps is never great." — Materials Science Expert; "I think the headline here is that there's three and a half times more capacity than sales for six four powder." — Materials Science Expert; "So I would never, as a former engineer, I would never try to launch a company saying, I'm going to come out with new fasteners from a technical standpoint." — Materials Science Expert"

"“And apologies if you said this already I'm kind of multi-tasking a couple calls here, but can you comment on what Matrox did specifically in a quarter on growth and maybe where they're at year-to-date?” — Analyst Giordano. “So I think that I said earlier in the call that, we're happy with the machine vision progress we've made with the Matrox acquisition... So we're pretty happy with the progress overall, I think that we're excited about the machine vision business overall.” — CEO Burns"

""Nelson was quick to recognize that removing Snapple from a bureaucratic Quaker Oats culture would enable entrepreneurialism and innovation. The result was a dramatic sales turnaround and more than quadrupling of company value in just 3 years. And I experienced first-hand at Heinz [as a Director] how Nelson emerged from a hotly contested proxy battle to become an incredibly respected and valued Board member." — Mike Weinstein (CEO of Snapple from 1997-2000; Heinz Director from 2006-2013)"

"All of our foreign subsidiaries currently operate in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar and a significant portion of our consolidated cash balance is denominated in these foreign functional currencies, particularly at our U.K. subsidiary which operates in Pound Sterling. As a result, our cash and cash equivalents balances are subject to the effects of the fluctuations in these functional currencies against the U.S. Dollar at the end of each reporting period. — WD-40 2019 Annual Report"

"The implementation of the systems and processes will proceed on a staggered basis over a multi year period with the initial go-live rollout having occurred in 2010. We have implemented the Blue Ocean program in our Swiss and Chinese operations and now have approximately one-third of the program completed as measured in users. We expect to implement Germany and the United States over the next two years and will then have more than half of the Company's users on the system. — 10-K Feb 2012"

"2015年3月30日，华忆公司（甲方、出租方）与天河学而思（乙方、承租方）签订《天河购物中心租赁合同》两份（针对涉案物业的三层、四层各签订一份，除租赁标的物不一致外，其余条款均一致），约定甲方分别将坐落在甲方同意将涉案物业的三层、四层出租给乙方课外辅导和人力资源培训业务使用，建筑面积均为2344.82平方米（含分摊共用建筑面积）。租期8年，2015年4月1日至2015年5月31日为免租装修期。2015年6月1日至2016年3月31日，月租金额（含管理费及税）257930.2元，110元/平方米，年租金（含管理费及税）2579302元；2016年4月1日至2017年3月31日，月租金额（含管理费及税）257930.2元，110元/平方米，年租金（含管理费及税）3095162.4元。1、租金以合同年为结算周期，由乙方在每年3月5日前以银行转账到指定账户的方式缴付下一个合同年租金给甲方。逢法定假日顺延至假日的次日。2、应甲方资金分配需要，租金缴纳需分配至两个账户中，租金账户分配情况如 — Chinese Court Filing (2017) 粤 01 民终 18443 号."

""I know because of the NVIDIA connection. I have to tell you, they have flat revenues for the last three years – sounds a little like SoundHound. I'm going to take a pass on that one." — Jim Cramer. "While we appreciate the opportunity to be featured on Mad Money and understand the fast-paced nature of the program, ZJK has achieved more than 33% average annual growth over the past three years which is far from ‘flat’ by any financial metric, as Mr. Cramer suggested," — ZJK CEO Ning Ding."

"“Hi, Tim. Good morning. So the tax accruals comes and accounted the way our businesses structured. As I've shared in the past, we have a U.S. entity and we've got global operating subsidiaries, right. So the global operating subsidiaries, which are really this -- that do all the work for the parent company have to be compensated and the way we compensate them is on a cost-plus basis and that creates, that essentially results in the profit in the operating subsidiaries.” — Former INOD CFO"

"“So on the other hand, what I would also say, the major advantage of our new structure is that it gives us full transparency on where we stand with our profitability on a stand-alone basis for our businesses... And this, of course, got blurred in the past because people were looking at the integrated margin. This is over. We will look at stand-alone margins. And I think personally, this will be a very big lever to improve profitability.” — Thomas Toepfer, CFO of Covestro, September 2021"

"BRISTOL MEYERS SQUIBB employee #1: BMS originally funded BLI and championed it; one of their largest customers; now "not being used much"; a waste of money; scientists are skeptical and reluctant; no value proposition; onerous and unusable. — Bristol Myers Squibb Employee #1. BRISTOL MEYERS SQUIBB employee #2: Pitifully small TAM; already saturated; "very expensive doorstop" prone to "lot of false positives and negatives"; overpriced vs. alternatives. — Bristol Myers Squibb Employee #2."

"“a lot of [doctors] that don't know about the drug”; “I really haven't spoken to those others in the study...it's not something we typically do, but it's something I need to do now...most of the enthusiasm has come from the families about the drug...put it that way...they heard it from Prader-Willi Syndrome foundations...that's where they're hearing it from...they're hearing it basically from pro-drug positions.” — Division Chief for pediatric endocrinology at a major NE academic center"

"“the speakers that you’re talking about...they’re doing to give it to excessive daytime sleepiness patients because you can find a lot of those, and it’s an unclear diagnosis, and you can put them on it.” — Neurologist in New York with 70-80 narcolepsy patients. “I don’t know why there are 30 or 40 narcolepsy patients...in Flint, Michigan...no idea why...but she’s doing it, and she’s making a crap ton of money doing it.” — Ex-Harmony territory manager for several states in the Northeast"

"As our business grew rapidly and substantially, it made perfect sense to start building our own distribution capabilities, i.e., an in-house advertising platform. The benefit of owning an in-house advertising platform is not only enhanced monetization efficiency as we can improve advertising technology for better matching of supply and demand which results in higher average revenue per user ( ARPU ), it also allows our business to become independent and obtain long-term viability. — QTT"

"As the Tribunal has clearly stated, the dispute manifestly depends on questions of competition law, and private law rights cannot be relied on to give effect to an exclusive agreement which violates competition law. We welcome the fact that the Competition Appeal Tribunal's judgment has upheld Sportradar's submissions, and that the competition law claim will proceed to be determined first and in the specialist forum. — David Lampitt, managing director, Sports Partnerships at Sportradar"

""The determinant of whether the [Lightower] transaction is value-creative beyond the inherent tower/fiber multiple arbitrage will depend on the company's ability to replicate, if not surpass, the return profile of its macro business across its fiber footprint." — Barclays, July 2017; "Our ROIC trends are robust, even with our continuing investments in younger assets with significant long-term upside but lower initial tenancy and cash flow." — CFO Tom Bartlett, American Tower, July 2018"

"One-Stop Project Destination with Immediate Availability. We carry an extensive range of products, including flooring and decorative accessories, as well as installation materials and tools, to fulfill a customer's entire flooring project. In addition, we have adjacent categories such as vanities, bathroom accessories, shower doors, and custom countertops. Our stores carry a large in-stock assortment and job size quantities to differentiate us from our competitors. — Floor & Decor 10-K"

"“We are using very differently configured and engineered chips so that the chips are the most different, and then depending on the application for a workflow, they do have to change out optics, need a different objective, need different light sources... And then, the chips, we're quadrupling the number of pens or changing the geometries so that we can better trap cells or other reagent speeds and the like. Those are significantly different in many cases.” — Gingko Bioworks Executive #2"

"I think that the response was as good as could be expected from QIN and investors/speculators must now weigh up the merits of each argument. For me, I view QIN as a genuine business vs. a ponzi scheme, but one that is operating in a completely new sector (Sandalwood plantations) and thus with an elevated amount of risk that a well establish business in a mature sector. This, however, represents a potential increased reward too if QIN is ultimately successful. — HotCopper forum user JID"

"From Phillips 66's April 24 Letter: Elliott, who is compensating its purportedly independent nominees, denied Phillips 66 access to those nominees for interview and evaluation, despite multiple attempts from Phillips 66. In fact, one of Elliott's nominees told representatives of Phillips 66 that he was instructed not to engage directly and instead referred the Board to Elliott itself. Does this action further reveal an expectation of loyalty rather than true independence? — Phillips 66"

""The only way a correction takes place is to have household formation exceed new construction by a significant amount for a significant period of time. We've had it for quite a while. And when you see these figures of 500,000 or 600,000, that means we're sopping up housing inventory. And I don't know exactly when that hits equilibrium, but it isn't five years from now. I know that. And I think it actually could be reasonably soon." — Warren Buffett (July 8, 2011 Bloomberg TV interview)"

""Our growth in Florida and Puerto Rico alone has been exponential," said Kristen Helsel, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Pika. — Kristen Helsel; "Pika's systems have set the bar for excellence in the Puerto Rican energy storage market," said Juan C. Díaz-Galarza, Vice President of Operations at Dynamic Solar in Puerto Rico. — Juan C. Díaz-Galarza; "Individual Indicted And Arrested For Conspiracy Against The United States To Provide Kickbacks" — USDOJ, District of Puerto Rico"

"“My question is really on the sum of the parts discount in the stock... I think it's fair to say the most diversified refiner in the space, and you combine that with some stock underperformance over the past decade. So I guess I'm a little surprised that there's not more talk about potentially looking at selling some refineries or simplifying the business overall. And really, my question is just on how do you plan to monetize the sum of the parts discount?” — TPH&Co., November 9, 2022"

""We are definitely being stretched.... demand is definitely stretching our ability to supply. And we've not quite caught up with that demand curve yet." — Larry Blanford, GMCR CEO; "As we have continued to add portion pack production capacity in Q3, we were able to fulfill customer demand that had pent-up in the system over the prior two quarters." — Larry Blanford, GMCR CEO; "We continued to also experience spot outages of portion packs with our customers." — Larry Blanford, GMCR CEO"