Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

""XL was not vertically integrated at all, most everything was outsourced, so, it'd be very difficult for me to see them having the core competencies to develop a full EV... It's not like XL is going to crack the code on that; many have tried and few have succeeded. I am very bearish on their ability to do that." — Former XL Employee D; "I think any company of that kind of size that's not building full vehicles would have a hard time competing with Ford... if they had experience like Tesla did or something, that would be a different story." — Former XL Employee F; "There's a lot of people making those moves [into EV] right now. There's some pretty fierce competition that will lead to some interesting tech. As an installer, I think that's good. Does XL have something of true value, a patent on something? I can say, probably not... I don't see a meaningful reason why XL will be around in ten years. But in the meantime, they're there and I use them." — Current XL Upfitter; "One of their main flaws is the way the systems are assembled—they have all these parts they hand-assemble at a small facility in Illinois... It's cute when Harvard is in your backyard and you want to deliver them a van, but the process they have right now is not scalable." — Former XL Employee C"

"We ended up selling our entire position in DND. I simply couldn’t stomach the risk that management wouldn’t try to pull something in the midst of your activist campaign. — Former shareholder (Sept 2024); Matt keeps saying he wants to delever the balance sheet to 4x but in the meantime, he keeps making acquisitions and increasing the leverage. We have told the Board for years they need to pay down debt, but they just don’t get it. — Top 10 shareholder (June 2024); As long as Matt is involved, I am not touching this stock. — Former shareholder (June 2024); The Board is a joke. Colleen seems like a nice person, but she is in over her head and can’t manage someone like Matt. Matt controls this Board and unless we have a clean fresh reset, nothing will ever change. This is why this stock trades at such a discount to the peers. — Top 20 shareholder (June 2024); I asked Matt in December 2023 if he would issue equity to delever the balance sheet. Stock was around $14 per share. Matt replied – at this price, no way, it’s way too cheap. Barely a month later, company announced a bought deal at $12.10 per share. — Top 10 shareholder (May 2024); Matt says one thing and does just the opposite. It’s so frustrating. The stock is uninvestable. — Former shareholder (May 2024)"

"“I think that the severity of edema and cardiac risk probably is being underplayed. The risks are real and significant, and probably underplayed to some degree, and the benefit is mild at best...I am a little bit surprised about the approval, that it was able to be approved. I get that there are no medicines currently approved in the space. And so, having anything is better than having nothing is the thought process there. But this is not a drug that is going to be a game-changer in this space. I think that there are so many different medicines on the appetite side of the ledger, on the weight management side of things in development, that I just don't think that I'm going to be turning to this very often. I was planning on trying it on at least somebody to get some clinical experience with it. I was not involved in any of these research studies. I don't have a lot of experience with the medicine, obviously in Prader-Willi, and I have my small cohort of folks who have used it for hypoglycemia. But the simple fact is, I would, now that we've had this conversation, I think I'm going to be even more careful about my patient selection, which I probably always was to some degree, but even more so now.” — Endocrinologist in TX, private practice with 5 PWS patients"

""We find it odd management believes value can be created by separating the business into two mature companies." — KeyBanc, December 20, 2013; "...But we continue to believe [management's] plan doesn't address RL problems for investors... We believe the most favorable outcome for investors under the current plan is a sale of RL, but short of that we see risk to the downside if investors inherit RL shares." — UBS, March 3, 2014; "We believe Red Lobster has a valuable asset base that makes Darden's overall real estate portfolio materially more attractive than it would be without it. We fear management's current plan to spinoff Red Lobster is reactionary and lacking integrity." — Hedgeye, March 12, 2014; "Moving forward with Red Lobster sale or spin. Unless the separation helps drive a significant improvement in operating results, we don't envision this being very accretive to valuation." — Oppenheimer, March 3, 2014; "It remains unclear to us why the combined valuation of the separate companies would exceed current DRI valuation." — Bank of America, March 3, 2014; "Despite Opposition, Management is Moving Forward in Divesting Red Lobster: Overall, we believe the Street is disappointed by the divestiture of Red Lobster on its own." — Sterne Agee, March 21, 2014"

"“We find it odd management believes value can be created by separating the business into two mature companies.” — KeyBanc, December 20, 2013; “...But we continue to believe [management’s] plan doesn’t address RL problems for investors... We believe the most favorable outcome for investors under the current plan is a sale of RL, but short of that we see risk to the downside if investors inherit RL shares.” — UBS, March 3, 2014; “We believe Red Lobster has a valuable asset base that makes Darden’s overall real estate portfolio materially more attractive than it would be without it. We fear management’s current plan to spinoff Red Lobster is reactionary and lacking integrity.” — Hedgeye, March 12, 2014; “Moving forward with Red Lobster sale or spin. Unless the separation helps drive a significant improvement in operating results, we don’t envision this being very accretive to valuation.” — Oppenheimer, March 3, 2014; “It remains unclear to us why the combined valuation of the separate companies would exceed current DRI valuation.” — Bank of America, March 3, 2014; “Despite Opposition, Management is Moving Forward in Divesting Red Lobster: Overall, we believe the Street is disappointed by the divestiture of Red Lobster on its own.” — Sterne Agee, March 21, 2014"

""Nevro has boxed themselves into a corner and now they’ll die of a thousand cuts. because unless they start seeing some increased sales, which they’re not going to at the price point that they’re at, because the high-volume doctors are not going to overpay for Omnia. Maybe the diehard Nevro guys hold on, but how many of those diehard guys are also consultants for the company? How many new customers are they getting? Who are they converting from Boston, from Medtronic, from Abbott? Where are those customers? And you don’t see it." — Former Nevro executive; "The only reason why Grossman stabilized the salesforce was because the stock price went up and those reps had options. Those options were in general in the high 60’s...that’s $200,000-$300,000 to those reps, so they’re going to stay. Interesting enough, most all those options are going to expire at the end of this year and its going to be a bloodletting. All those reps are going to leave, because they want to get out of their non-competes and then in a year they go back into the Saluda’s, the Nalu’s and everything else. It’s kind of a rinse and wash type philosophy. If the price of the stock goes down, you’ll see a major amount of reps leave the company, and they’ll go elsewhere." — Former Nevro executive"

"It is about as competitive as wealth management is in the United States. There is a lot of margin to be made and because of that there is a lot of competition. The U.S. market is really crowded. Some get big and some get destroyed. Most grow small segments in market niches, and then sell the company as their primary strategy. Everywhere is less competitive than the U.S. market. Over the last 15 years there has been an evolution to integrated software, integrated payments, cards on file, mobile, online, all these things really being supported by software as a service or ISV. Pivotal was not really a player in the ISV business and was just behind significantly in the technology delivery, integration, flexibility and products and services offered to the ISV market. They were lagging in that business and using a gateway company, Worldnet, as their primary infrastructure. Most other payment products in the market owned their own infrastructure. When you own the infrastructure, you get to decide ultimately the product roadmap as opposed to when you use a third party, you have to compete for products, services and direction. I would say you would see a decline in those numbers because that market is being dominated by their competitors. — Former Nuvei Executive"

""So as we look at that $2 billion run rate, I don't see any pie in the sky, we have got to go out and double margins in any one product, or have some ridiculous, unrealistic price increase or anything. These are all projects that have been announced...And it is just a question of executing on those...So I feel, today, even more confident in that number than I was when -- in March, when we gave that number to our investors." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "We've spent a lot of time with the investment community talking about a bridge, how we get from where we are to that $2 billion. I think if you dig into those numbers, you'll see that it's certainly achievable in the next 2 to 3 years." — John Heskett, VP – Treasury & Planning; "Our LTM is about $1.4 billion. We have an objective to go to $2 billion of EBITDA. Many of our businesses are sort of at that level...But really, on track we think near term to get to that $2 billion of EBITDA." — Kimo Esplin, CFO; "I would say that we should quite soundly beat the projections that we gave for the $2 billion. Again, we still have a great deal of confidence in the $2 billion number...I think that when we look at the overall composite, we still feel very confident about that." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO"

""I heard that there was a donor at Mayo in the hospital where the transplant program is. And the surgeon decided to put that organ on TransMedics because they were doing another case. So, that kind of convenience. It's not like it was coming from a far distance or anything clinically was required for this donor. But it was a convenience thing. When I shared that with one of our surgeons, he was like oh, I could see how that would be cool." — Executive at a pre-eminent West Coast academic transplant center, one of the highest volume in the world; "Mark Ghobrial has definitely grown his program, more than doubled its size...The guy in Mayo Clinic at Scottsdale has more than doubled theirs...Part of it is that they're willing to take organs that others haven't been willing to - older donors, all that stuff....I remember Congress jumping up and down about the Cost Report because they were saying it's being abused. Well, this is potential abuse of technology, a very expensive abuse...if you took it to the extreme and talk about an $8 billion industry, you're really doing a disservice because you're increasing the cost without incremental increase in outcomes." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world, based at a leading Midwest academic center"

"It is unfair to us and unethical if you don't take the time to understand our business... we are doing it purely right... people who raise questions are people who have not gone through our business in detail... — Enron CEO Jeff Skilling; So again, it is unfortunate that Allergan has not taken the time to understand our business... There is a number of inaccuracies in the report that was put out yesterday... They are just factually incorrect... — Valeant Chairman, CEO Michael Pearson; [Enron] is a very simple model... it is a logistics company, not a trading company. — Enron CEO Jeff Skilling; [Valeant] is more like a professional services firm than a sort of traditional pharmaceutical company. — Valeant Chairman, CEO Michael Pearson; [Enron's] disclosure is more complete than anyone's. — Enron CFO Andy Fastow; I will also point out that Valeant gives massively more disclosure about its business and did so prior to this transaction than Allergan. — Bill Ackman; I have never felt better about the prospects of the Company... our growth has never been more certain. — Enron Chairman, Ken Lay; As we look across the entire business, I have never been more confident about the growth trajectory across the entire company. — Valeant Chairman, CEO Michael Pearson"

""Better positioning on the APP. Sometimes we can add value and get 100% free. So if we add 10,000 they will give us 10,000 or a rebate of 5%. We don't work with Momo as their take is too high. We also have to pay 6% tax. We care about our ability to make money on a channel. Agents and broadcasters care more about how much money they can earn than traffic." — Large Agency #11; "We are both aiming to make money. Momo will give us better positioning and place us on hottest lists. When we add value on Momo we will get a 5% rebate. In the back end system we can take this out as cash." — Super Agency #6; "Yes there are. Momo has one official agency. You will notice broadcasters that are called "official" broadcasters. Momo's own staff open agencies. They do this privately. They keep it out of the spotlight. To do the agency business relies on your relationship with the platform. If you have a good relationship with the platform than you can get anything passed. Every platform has the underground agencies." — Small Agent #2; "Yes, Momo directly contracts broadcasters. Momo gave these people money to establish their own agencies. This agency is in Qingdao. For confidentiality reason I cannot tell you the name. This is Momo's largest agency." — Small Agency #9"

""The total number of advertisements placed on Qutoutiao's platform per day exceeds 2,000,000,000. Therefore, analyzing 50,000 advertisements (i.e., only 0.0025% of total) concentrated in a very confined period (i.e., four hours on September 12, 2019) on Qutoutiao's platform would lead to skewed results, especially considering that behind the very limited sample size is a very limited number of test phones that are not capable of replicating the diverse behaviours exhibited by our 42 million daily active users. As our programmatic advertising system considers a wide range of parameters to determine which advertisement to display, including price bid, predicted click-through rate and content relevance, any results generated by a miniscule sample through a tiny group of fake users (i.e., test phones) could inevitably be skewed. That is to say, as the test phones probably have some identical or similar characteristics, when these test phones frequently send requests to our advertising system in a short period of time, it could respond to these “fake requests” by recommending similar contents, so that the advertisements received by these fake users are concentrated in a specific type, which cannot represent the actual overall situation." — Qutoutiao, Inc."

""Maisie has been on the forefront of sustainability long before ESG was a concept. It is her passion and thoughts that have helped shape Bon Appetit into the market leader in sustainable food practices and this, in turn, has led the way for Compass Group, the global leader in contract foodservice, in this area. She has been involved in scope ranging from grassroots detail to the largest scale." — Palmer Brown, Chief Financial Officer of Compass Group PLC; "Her understanding of consumer demand and the intricacies of decision-making on the buying side helped shape the program, and her insight has guided some key pivots along the way. Maisie knows how to cut to the key issues in organizational strategy, and her incisive questions and forthright advice have been extremely valuable to EFI over the past decade." — Peter O'Driscoll, Executive Director of Equitable Food Initiative; "Maisie Ganzler is a value-add colleague on the Air Protein Board. Her expertise in restaurants, food supply chains and sustainability have been invaluable in helping the management team shape Go to Market and Product Development strategies. She's been a true professional and has made a real contribution to the Company and Board." — James D. White, Executive Chair of Air Protein."

"“Yeah, at least 4-5 antibody discovery customers switched to us because that’s the part of the business that I’m in... They pretty much told me the same thing that I described. They told them they had a plethora of antibodies in their library and that they could deliver a certain number of leads based on the screening. But the result that they got didn’t present them with that many leads from the screening. And the timeline that they promised was not kept. It usually takes about 4-5 months, but I think they went well over 7-8 months for many of them. And that actually wasn’t a bad case. For a GMP manufacturing part, it’s like one year.” — Executive at Genscript, key Twist competitor; “To switch over from a tool company to a drug company and make antibodies and things like that, it’s easy to do a couple of deals. It’s hard to actually turn the whole thing around and actually make it into anything...because it’s so different. I’ve been in both worlds. It’s a completely different world. So, I think it’s a bit naïve to think that Twist can hire in Aaron Sato, who’s an antibody expert who did some great things at Sutro and think that they’re going to do that with all those gigantic legacy manufacturing and overhead.” — Longtime executive in Twist’s space"

""About a year ago, at our Investor Day, we introduced to the market our near-term EBITDA target of $2 billion. We believed that we could achieve this number in the next two to three years...we continue to target a $2 billion run rate in 2017. With present industry trends, we think we will continue to see stronger specialty and differentiated growth than we had expected and softer commodity TiO2 in our recovery." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "We continued to emphasize our goal that we gave out about -- it's been about a year and a half now of a $2 billion EBITDA. Obviously, in the last 18 months, the world's economy and so forth is between the price of crude oil. We made that forecast as, what, about $110 a barrel, and what we were seeing growth in China and so forth. And a lot of that's been turned around from what we saw 18 months ago." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "...of the $2 billion [EBITDA], there was roughly $425 billion of the pigment's EBITDA in there, so if you exclude that and you use the FX headwind, that Peter mentioned, of about $140 million. That's a number, I think, that this company can hit in the next couple of years. Is $1.5 billion a number that we're capable of? Yes, I think that that's realistic." — Kimo Esplin, CFO"

""The other thing was there were huge issues with delivery. I think there's a huge amount of hype,. and as far as I'm aware, there isn't even, maybe even one or two examples of customers that have been paid, whether it's circular or not, that are actually super happy with the strains that Ginkgo is producing. The Synlogic thing is one example of customers who aren't happy. But I continually was asking during my entire tenure there, can you give me a list of successful delivery examples? When have we executed on a promise to a customer? And nobody could give me a single example. I thought that was very concerning because in my role, I was bringing on customers left and right, and I didn't feel comfortable bringing on customers to a company that couldn't deliver because my reputation was on the line...I asked people in all the different teams I was intersecting with and nobody gave me an example, so I started going to the technical team, with the folks who are actually executing on the customer projects...For me, from an ethical perspective, I just needed to know. I didn't want, not only my reputation, but I didn't want to engage my customers' time that they could never get back in something that wasn't going to work for them." — Former Ginkgo employee"

""We're really going to try to grow our market. 75% of our market is comprehensive.... That really mostly addresses that 12 million TAM that we talked about, but 25% of our portfolio is non-comprehensive. That's growing very fast, in part because it's going after these 300 million consumers." — John Morici, CFO, Align Technology. "Yes. And over the last year or two, one thing we've worried about/thought about with your business is, SmileDirect does create demand.... They just want to do it online.... But one thing we've worried about is that 40-year-old parent goes into the office and the doctor says, 'Oh yes, I can do that, $6,000, write me a check and we're done,' versus $1,895 or whatever SmileDirect is. So are you seeing your doctors understand that they need to reprice, reset their pricing policies or how they charge patients?" — Jeffrey Johnson, Analyst, Robert W. Baird. "Yes. Many doctors are realizing that those patients or potential patients are coming in and price shopping. They have an idea that maybe it should cost them $2,000, you're right for if it's an easier movement, don't need a lot of aligners to be able to move their teeth in the right way, maybe they shouldn't be charging $5,000 or $6,000." — John Morici, CFO, Align Technology."

"“Their numbers are based upon a bare-boned F-150 on a dyno [dynamometer] in optimal, optimal circumstances, but the second you add weight or a passenger or human error to that, it all goes out the window.” — Former XL Employee A; “The things that it doesn't cover is climbing hills; the simulation is all flat... Every time you take a turn, you're expending energy to make that turn. Those are real-world situations it doesn't simulate.” — Former XL Employee F; “If you were in the exact drive cycle that was optimal for those vehicles, a city drive cycle with very much stop and go and little idling, you did get 25%. But that drive cycle was applicable to probably 15% of vehicles that they installed systems on. If you were purchasing a system and weren't in that city drive cycle, your savings were ... Probably between 5 - 10%... definitely not 25%.” — Former XL Employee I; “It's like a Formula One circuit; you're cornering these turns and trying to optimize the levels of throttle and brake. You try to make sure during your throttle up that you take as much power from the hybrid battery pack as possible. You start this drive when a full battery... A lot of the parameters don't really match what you'd see in a real road scenario.” — Former XL Employee G"

"“Sintering is the biggest reason why it’s hard to get from one size to another one. A smaller size is easier to get it uniform, flat, and precise. The chemical uniformity across the entire thing is much simpler. But as you go bigger in size, especially if you’re going from something that’s a square to a rectangle, different shapes, you can imagine that there are different types of interactions, stresses focusing on each of the corners, and things like that. It makes it more difficult to accomplish something as you’re trying to scale up.” — Former employee; “It is a ceramic electrolyte. It's easy to make well as a bulk powder. But when you put it into a film, the form factor for a battery, things become harder. You're balancing thickness versus number of defects; the defects are the ones with the dendrites....They were having problems at the coin cell level...it is a very difficult problem because they're taking ceramic and grinding it down to little particles. They're casting this formulation into a thin freestanding film, and making this freestanding film, and you have to have zero defects for that. One way to combat a defect is to make it thicker, but making it thicker has its consequences, so there's a fine balance” — Another former employee"

"The issue with Xylem’s purchases of technology companies is scaling them. You’ll hear the CEO talking about scaling things, but to scale them you had to add people. That’s not a good scaling model. The second challenge, either we didn’t do good due diligence or its was sloppy, is that the technology platforms were not compliant with Xylem or other cyber standards. We ended up with a hodge-podge of different technologies and platforms. We’re presenting them in a uniform way, but the technologies on the back-end aren’t talking to each other. Very heavy integration costs to get them on the same cloud and code environment. And the third thing is, to get the pull through fulfilled (e.g. if we had 1,500 direct sellers and another 10,000 distributors) – getting them to understand the cross-sell opportunity and then the digital opportunity and bring in the right expertise, it’s very hard to do. To navigate Xylem and find the right person and bring them into the sales discussion, it’s very hard to do. There’s a lot of friction in the process of execution, either through technology integration offering, finding the right people to deliver the specialized value proposition, or flat out missing how these digital technologies scale. — Former Xylem Executive"

""The company is at a key inflection point and we cannot afford to let the Board and management be diverted from our progress and plan by creating a dysfunctional and destabilizing environment." — Heinz, June 2006; "Trian has chosen this path [a proxy contest] with the potential to disrupt our Company at a key stage of execution against our plan" — DuPont Press Release, Jan 2015; "[P&G] is in the best position to continue building a better Company without adding Mr. Peltz to the Board...Now is the time to focus on accelerating results, and prevent anything from derailing the work that is delivering improvement." — David Taylor, August 1, 2017; "I said to another CEO...who had called me and inquired about Nelson, that if I were to form the board today, Nelson would be one of the first Directors I’d ask to serve because he is an insightful, communicative, enthusiastic, energetic and available Director." — Bill Johnson, Heinz CEO, Mar 2008; "I have the highest regard for Nelson Peltz and Ed Garden. Since becoming CEO of DuPont, I have talked many times with the Trian team and appreciate their insights on strategy and operations, as well as the collaborative and productive manner in which they have engaged with us." — Ed Breen, DuPont CEO, July 2017"

"I spoke to it early on, but it was a bit of a rat nest that spun out in terms of those back office systems. And again, each of these legal entities in different buildings with different cultures, with different payroll systems, right, all being brought together and trying to be harmonized, right? There's a tremendous amount of...you think of it almost as like a four-way merger of multi hundred million dollar companies, right? That's kind of what it was. And again, based on kind of the individual heritages of those businesses back from the Honeywell days, some of them were kind of organically grown at Honeywell, some of them were via acquisition and I don't think Honeywell really integrated them deeply. They kind of left them in standalone businesses in a lot of ways. And in some cases these businesses were almost kind of like internal rivals. And so there's a tremendous amount of process and system integration and harmonization that had to be done. I'm not surprised, I guess, I should say, that that work is ongoing. I think that work will continue to be ongoing. Bodies are probably still being uncovered from the closet of certain systems or aspects that need to be fixed. So it's an ongoing kind of operational challenge. — Former REZI Executive"

""Now, the integration value [of Speedway] is, I would say, proprietary. I can't give out a number from a competitive reason of that integration value, but I can say it is very significant..." — Gary Heminger, July 28, 2016; "So we look at the integration value [of Speedway]. We look at kind of the dis-synergy if we were to do something different with Speedway, and we still believe that it has a very strong fit in our system." — Gary Heminger, October 27, 2016; "There have been some questions about a sale of Speedway and we have such a low tax basis in Speedway. We would find that hurdle hard to overcome..." — Gary Heminger, February 14, 2017; "The bottom line is that there is no compelling valuation opportunity in separating our retail business, and that any potential separation will cause loss of integration synergies, additional cash needed to maintain appropriate balance sheet strength, increase volatility in the remaining business, and, we believe, result in long term value disruption." — Gary Heminger, September 5, 2017; "...we completed the very comprehensive review of Speedway and the conclusion, the unanimous conclusion by the board was that Speedway would remain in the vertical integration of MPC." — Gary Heminger, February 13, 2018"

"“The process used to make a thin ceramic layer is expensive. It's more expensive than what their competitors are using. So, they could have a cost structure issue. It also turns out that it's hard to achieve that thin dense layer, so there could be quality issues in addition to cost issues. That's the biggest risk they face. The thin ceramic layer is expensive because it uses high-temperature furnaces to essentially keep the crystals near their melting point so that they can flow, and it's through that flow that they stick to each other. The sulfide, another electrolyte that Solid Power and Sion are using, doesn't require the same high temperature, so it's cheaper. Finally, the ionic material is plastics, and that's the cheapest of all.” — Former employee; “Because they use an oxide-type, it's a true ceramic-type separator material, and they have to sinter that material. Sintering is a high-temperature process. It's not something that's commonly done. I have not investigated at length the CAPEX and throughput required in a way that it can be achieved with sintering. However, it is an additional step, it is an additional CAPEX item, and it is not insignificant step of sintering the separator layer in order to densify it.” — Solid state expert"

""Nevro had a rep in [area redacted] who was reprogramming their devices to use low frequency to try and save failed [high frequency] patients, and Nevro threatened him with an injunction. Like, if you tell anybody that it worked we're going to sue you and take away your 401k, Stuff like that. Nevro was afraid it would disprove their entire clinical trial. Several of their reps were doing that." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter; "In order to grow the business, some reps would do the paresthesia [low-frequency], and some reps were doing high frequency just like the textbook, and then they wouldn't get cases because the docs were asking them, "Can you program the patient, so they feel it? Give them both options." Well, the clinical team of Nevro, if they saw that you were doing that, that would be a reduction in your commission percentage." — Former district manager and part of Nevro's launch team; "Nevro didn't want the patient to feel paresthesia because what you'll find is that they crave the paresthesia. Once they feel it, they think that that's the indication of whether the device is working or not. You can't just get rid of paresthesia unilaterally and say it's a great thing because there are definitely reasons for it." — KOL"

"“We have a big question when it comes to the battery’s lifespan. How stable are those KPI's and results we’re seeing? And secondly, when it comes to how to produce such a cell in a mass market, no one has experience in this. It’s all in a micro laboratory.” — VW employee; “That’s the reason why we are so cautious, saying we need to investigate further. Nothing has really been produced or tested to scale up the production. There are still a lot of question marks, where we don’t know how the technology behaves. Many of the question marks you can find on websites and forums and whatever, I would say they're mostly true.” — VW employee; “Behavior in certain situations like extreme temperatures and so on. This is a big question mark where they’re saying that we are having a lot of issues and a lot of risk. Those are [some of the] core questions that are circling around. They don’t trust that you can charge it in 15 minutes, for example.” — VW employee; “,,,there are so many questions also when it comes to the lifetime and other aspects of solid state batteries. We have no clue how solid state technology behaves in extreme temperatures, in crash situations, over a longer period of time, and this needs to be tested and evaluated.” — VW employee"

""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; "our current board is comprised of highly accomplished directors who deserve credit for initiating the multiyear transformation that started in 2010 and continues today." — Jon Pepper, Hess spokesman, February 2013; "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; "This change essentially began in 2009 and should be largely complete in 2014." — John Hess, July 2012; "We have done a lot of years to restructure our own Company significantly..." — John Hess, July 2011; "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"

""Although we think the company's underlying asset value is worth significantly higher than our near-term price target, we now believe the shares will likely continue to struggle throughout this year and will trade substantially below our estimate of its fair asset value due to the lack of visible catalysts as well increased investor skepticism over management's execution record..." — Barclays (April 26, 2012); "The 7% pullback in the stock was severe, and in our view, is indicative of a loss of investor confidence in HES's execution capabilities, following a string of production misses and a lack of notable exploration success, in addition to a growing deficit between capex and cash flow. Entering 1Q'12, HES had missed its production guidance for four of the preceding 5 quarters, meaning execution was at a premium." — Simmons (April 26, 2012); "We think the market will largely adopt a wait and see approach and not give any free passes to management until clear path towards their cash flow targets and execution capability is evidenced...From a valuation perspective, we think the stock is relatively cheap as a result of the company's less-than-stellar historical performance record and perceived execution risk." — Barclays (July 26, 2012)"

"Basically ASML delayed the EUV tool for 10 years until two and a half years ago. When Intel came to Lasertec that was just about or just before ASML started to talk about releasing, and KLA was already solving that problem for three years - and they just took their time. Basically, between the pellicle and the delay of ASML, KLA was not carefully thinking when to start it and started too late. It’s enormous, and it takes more than a regular program. It takes five to eight years, not three to five years like a regular program. — Former KLA executive in a leadership role in their EUV mask inspection group. It wasn’t by accident that KLA missed the market. They made a conscious decision to miss the market. They were working on an actinic inspection tool, and they decided to stop working on it unless they could get the customers to pay for it and probably, more specifically, Intel. They wanted something like $500 million to continue the work. I think customers were frankly rather pissed about that and instead decided to work with Lasertec. KLA went away from the actinic market for a few years while others continued to work on it, including Lasertec. — Longtime semiconductor consultant recently working for Lasertec; close to KLA management"

"Through early August of last year, we could buy CTV cheaper on our own without Magnite, then we started using Magnite's platform for some spend. We had mostly a legacy relationship with Rubicon going back. Transparency, cost and data would all have to be there for us to increase our use of Magnite for CTV. There's no way if I moved all of my CTV spend to them, could they deliver for me at the price we need. There's simply not enough inventory at the prices we need. Magnite is aggregating long tail CTV inventory – the niche content. Will Magnite be able to get quality inventory? That needs to be debated. It may be tough for them. Let me give you an example. Let's say Lifetime has digital enabled content they are developing and allow Magnite to sell it. Magnite's fee probably can't exceed 15%. As scale increases, volumes go up, and their 15% take rate will certainly go down. To do more volume, they need more inventory. But, there may be a stage where Lifetime says, hang on a second, we are paying such a large amount of fees, that maybe we should be doing this ourselves. Why pay Magnite? I think that is the fundamental challenge of the model. They need scale, but scale could then make customers think about leaving. — Magnite Customer"

"Operating performance has been disappointing, particularly when considered alongside management's messaging...PSX has not been able to sustain improvements or contend with market volatility effectively. — ISS, May 12, 2025; In a campaign inextricably predicated on the notion that P66's asset mix is a favorable differentiator, the board's inability to draw what we consider to be a strong, straightforward throughline to shareholder value is a bust. — Glass Lewis, May 10, 2025; Phillips 66's current conglomerate structure appears to be suboptimal for sustained financial growth. We agree with [Elliott] that a strategic shift towards refocusing on its core assets, particularly within the refining segment, is necessary to drive improved performance and value creation. — Egan-Jones, May 1, 2025; PSX has established a track record of providing selective and ambiguous disclosure that obfuscates results, makes it difficult to assess decisions, and creates impediments to evaluating performance. — ISS, May 12, 2025; The board's [decision to combine the Chair and CEO roles] evidences a disconnect from shareholders, and undermines the argument about its commitment to ensuring strong corporate governance and board oversight. — ISS, May 12, 2025"

""When I was at Ginkgo, Jason's biggest fear was always Zymergen. And so, he would try to corner the market by buying all the equipment so Zymergen couldn't buy any." — Former Ginkgo executive; "Ginkgo was quickly in defensive mode [after Zymergen's stock collapsed] because they didn't want people to make that comparison, and so they announced all these deals to try to be able to show that they're different. Maybe Ginkgo will be successful at some point, but when the rubber meets the road, you look at what products are out there. Who has been successful using your technology that has led to a meaningful product? And the answer is there isn't any." — Former Ginkgo executive; "I think that in certain ways, they're very similar. They competed on a number of very large-dollar number projects...I would say where Ginkgo and Zymergen diverged was a few years ago, Zymergen started to specialize in a few application areas: materials, ag, pharma, a few other one-offs. Whereas Ginkgo said, we're not going to specialize. We want to be able to engineer everything. And so, the types of projects that the company took on varied from cannabis projects to materials to biodefense." — Former Ginkgo employee, longtime direct report to CEO Jason Kelly"

"I am a pediatric endocrinologist. I have a multidisciplinary Prader-Willi clinic, and you probably already saw that I was a lead author, chair for developing the [redacted] guidance for children and young adults for Prader-Willi Syndrome...I see about 40 patients with Prader-Willi Syndrome...I suppose 10% to 15% would probably trial it...At most...No. The day it got approved, I happened to have a clinic. A couple of patients said, oh, this is got news. It's got FDA approval. At that time, we weren't aware of the cost. I wouldn't say this is something that every child or every patient of mine with Prader-Willi syndrome should receive this treatment. This is still on a case-by-case patient basis. And again, some of the younger ones are managed very well and don't need it. However, would I be able to allow and be able to justify that cost? That's probably the biggest issue. And then, as physicians, all it's going to take is somebody to actually say, you know what? I can't afford that. Why don't I just trial regular diazoxide. The drug therapy has got the same kind of pharmacological profile as DCCR. I will probably just trial normal diazoxide and see what happens. — Trial investigator, endocrinologist, key opinion leader for PWS"

"Another area where we may have lost focus is around patient trials. As most of you know, I think patients enter our treatment pathway via a trial, the success of which leads to payor approval for the implantation of our device which is the principal driver of our revenues. Our trials begin to flatten out in the middle of 2018 and this activity is obviously an important one to two quarter predictor of future implant revenues...we have focused and reengaged our field team very intensely on patient trial growth. And I think trials got kind of lost in the noise, and we simply weren't focused on it. And I think what is encouraging is that -- is that as we have focus on it in very short order, we've seen very rapid and I think very important responsiveness to trial volume based on our results. I think that's an encouraging sign. It's also very early. And so that's something that we've been focusing on for the better part of the last two months and we've seen a very quick response but we need to we need to better understand that. But I really think it was just for lack of focus. We weren't directing and incentivizing our sales force to do what they should have been doing in my view, which was to grow trials. — Keith Grossman, CEO"

""We are repositioning our Verifi process control technology business. Market adoption has been below our expectations, and the business is not producing the returns we want. As a result, we have decided to operate Verifi as a more targeted niche offering, and have reduced our investment in growing the business." — Hudson La Force, CFO, W.R. Grace (7/23/14); "Verify is a new marketplace...We have a head start in this market. It's a relatively small business today but growing at very nice mid double-digit rates and we're investing in this business in terms of both its stickiness and its ability to drive performance with the Ready Mix customers" — Greg Poling, Fmr CEO, GCP (5/17/16); "Our capital investments could be slightly higher in 2018 than our target of 5% of sales due to investments required for our new VERIFI contracts." — Dean Freeman, Fmr CFO (2/27/18); "With an estimated addressable market of approximately $1 billion, VERIFI is a key source of growth for GCP and remains a top investment priority." — Narasimhan Srinivasan, VP Strategy & Corp Dev, GCP (8/7/18); "We've committed to having sales generated through the VERIFI program of $50 million to $75 million by the end of 2021." — Randall Dearth, CEO, GCP (2/26/20)"

""My plan is to visit each refinery and talk to key refining and commercial personnel. These are the employees who will lead the significant margin and cost optimization improvements. It will only happen because of their experience and buy-in. They will know where the opportunities are and will want to be empowered to drive to a best-in-class performance." — Nominee 1; "I don’t see the value of the integration they claim to enjoy. Where is the evidence? It’s a different structure than Marathon or Valero – and they have been the better performers. I will insist that we take a harder look at this structure. The Board needs Directors with no pre-ordained conclusions." — Nominee 2; "Midstream businesses can be growth engines, but they need the right structure to compete. Phillips’ midstream business is constrained in so many ways in the current structure. I think people will be amazed at what is possible with these assets." — Nominee 3; "The lack of interest in Phillips’ stock from active managers is the market speaking to Company leadership. It is evident that the Phillips’ Board does not have its performance-driven and execution-focused mindset. I will make sure the Board doesn’t lose focus on investors’ views." — Nominee 4"

""We believe the management team at ADP has done an admirable job in proactively transforming ADP from a legacy payroll processor to a top HCM provider without sacrificing short-term results." — J.P. Morgan Research, August 16, 2017*; "Under an optimistic assumption, Ackman’s plan would take at least three years of depressed margins, but probably several more. We doubt management or its investors, including Pershing Square (despite claiming the opposite), would have the stomach for this... if Pershing Square is only looking at ADP through a spreadsheet, this plan makes perfect sense. However, companies don't exist on spreadsheets, and even the best laid plans often can't overcome an unhappy workforce worried about losing their jobs." — Morningstar Research, August 17, 2017*; "We do believe there are structural differences between ADP and PAYX margins, stemming from ADP's large presence in the national accounts and mid-market payroll services industry." — Evercore Research, August 17, 2017*; "ADP's Corporate Governance is a model for other companies... We doubt that many long-term shareholders would be anxious for a management change following the last six years of outperformance by ADP." — Baird Research, August 18, 2017*"

""In terms of exploration and production, we are different than the other independents. We are the most global." — John Hess, Chairman & CEO Hess, June 2010. "We want to maintain our global presence and our global reach because we believe that the globe provides many opportunities now and will also in the future. So we want to maintain that global scale and capability." — Gregory Hill, EVP Worldwide E&P Hess, November 2012. "We are skeptical that Hess's current global growth strategy will yield superior returns or growth, as its organization appears to be spread thin and we think it is unlikely that Hess can have a competitive advantage in all the areas it is pursuing." — Goldman Sachs, June 11, 2012. "On the upstream side, we question whether the company has the bandwidth to operate in over 20 countries...We do not believe a company of Hess's size will get credit in the market for a shotgun approach to investing across the world...Running such a diverse, global operation is challenging and given the size of the company it is not apparent that HES gains any incremental value from its integration and diversity. We believe this level of diversity has diminishing margins of return for investors." — Citigroup, June 20, 2012."

"[Customers] are helping quantum computing, more than quantum computing is helping them. — Former D-Wave engineer. I know that with D-Wave, with the Advanced system and so on, we did a lot on the, I would say “announcement side,” but on the actual improvements it was for me a bit harder to see what we’re actually improving because even if it did improve, I think it’s still kind of a niche solution...I am kind of in the belief, in the long term a lot of movements are not based on hype and short term research, but rather on the fundamentals of the businesses, on the actual measurables that they create. And for me, I cannot see how [D-Wave] really are able to be a very sustainable business. — Research and technology manager, Airbus SE. The project that we developed using the quantum solution was something small...During the execution and development phase [beyond initial proof-of-concept] you have a lot of different issues to solve, and when we were going through that, we tried using some hybrid solution from [D-Wave]. And I can tell you the results were ‘okay,’ not something amazing...in my opinion the combination of classical and quantum – it’s not strong enough in comparison with other competitors. — Anonymous customer"

"“I haven't heard anything. Honestly, I just know that they keep saying they're making progress, but they don't say what that progress is. I monitor it as well. Nothing's been announced. Nitrogen fixation is extremely difficult. It truly is a moonshot. If they get this to work, it's huge. But what are their chances? I think it's pretty small.” — Former Ginkgo executive; “The high throughput sequencing, the DNA synthesis, all of the highly automated processing of samples that they are really good at—all of that stuff is fine. I'd probably leave it at the 15% to 20% level. The percentage of our budget that goes to them today is probably 60%, 70%, or more right now. I don't actually have visibility on the whole R&D budget, unfortunately... how we are working with them now is as a kind of a glorified CRO.” — Senior employee at Joyn; “Joyn, it's hard to tell how far they've gotten. I know that testing things in the soil with plants takes a long time, but it seems like there is not a lot of success coming out of that...They are testing a strain in the field, from what I understand. But no, they've spent a long time working on it, and they haven't announced anything that was a big wow moment.” — Former Ginkgo strain engineer"

""Oil and gas was an important segment for all of us, not just hard-core center of oil and gas but the collateral, the related businesses to it, and everybody knows that story." — G&K Baird Conf June 2016; "We continue to see significant wearer losses with oil and gas and other mining customers, and there is clearly some spillover into related markets." — G&K Q3 2016 Earnings Call April 2016; "What I was referring to was our customers in the oil, gas, mining areas that generally, when you see the prices of the gas at the pump come down in the past, when we've seen those prices really come down, it kind of hurts that business here in the U.S. And so -- we saw some benefit in that price at the pump, as we said, 25 basis points in rental. But we also saw a little bit of softening in the business side of it from a customer perspective. And so that's what we're keeping our eyes on." — Cintas Q1 2020 Earnings Call Sept 24, 2019; "One area of caution with respect to growth relates to ware accounts within our existing customers. Additions versus reductions as we commonly refer to it, which slid some in our fourth quarter, partially due to some weakening in the oil and gas sector." — Unifirst Q4 2019 Earnings Call Oct 23, 2019"

"“There were definitely practices at Nevro that pushed patients into implants. They will invariably be audited by Medicare. They’re doing other things that are not on the up and up. In the past I worked with a couple of practices where doctors would tell patients they wouldn’t get medication if they didn’t do a stimulator trial. I had patients show up for a visit and not know they were there for a stimulator trial. In every town there are one to two bad eggs. They’re in it for the wrong reasons.” — Former Nevro sales rep; “Clinics are bamboozling patients into implanting the device when, in fact, the device during trial did not provide them adequate pain relief. This caters only to the physician cohort that doesn't really care about outcomes. It's about how many you can implant. And if they have to be explanted, even better. It's another surgery you can charge for. Nevro's also paying probably great honoraria for the Kapural's of the world to publish this kind of bullshit data that hurts us all. They did it with Senza and now they're doing it again with diabetic neuropathy. They're shooting everybody in the foot with their practices. That's the kind of corrupt stuff that we're seeing.” — KOL and high volume implanter"

""It’s a bit of a quagmire because they announced a PDN study with the potential for a new indication. Well, the physician community is using it for that anyhow. Okay, maybe if the physician community is reimbursed for it, but they’re coding funky anyhow. I don’t know how much of an uptick it’s going to give them in revenue." — C-level executive in the SCS space; "I did twenty PDN cases in my territory in 2019. Stimulation is already approved for PDN. With Medicare, you need a primary and secondary pain indication. You just put in foot and the second as PDN and it will get approved. You can say today that the secondary indication is neuropathic pain. I don’t see how a PDN indication changes the market. I’ve been walling to podiatrists and endocrinologists for years on PDN. It’s the same indication as regular stimulation. Foot pain is the same codes, same delivery system, same placement of leads. It’s nothing new or different. Doctors who want to use stimulation for PDN are already using it. If you have tingling in your hands and feet, they already use it. Off label, on label, they use it. A new PDN indication just allows you to have more of a conversation." — Territory manager at one of Nevro’s 3 key SCS competitors"

"My plan is to visit each refinery and talk to key refining and commercial personnel. These are the employees who will lead the significant margin and cost optimization improvements. It will only happen because of their experience and buy-in. They will know where the opportunities are and will want to be empowered to drive to a best-in-class performance. — Nominee 1; I don't see the value of the integration they claim to enjoy. Where is the evidence? It's a different structure than Marathon or Valero - and they have been the better performers. I will insist that we take a harder look at this structure. The Board needs Directors with no pre-ordained conclusions. — Nominee 2; Midstream businesses can be growth engines, but they need the right structure to compete. Phillips' midstream business is constrained in so many ways in the current structure. I think people will be amazed at what is possible with these assets. — Nominee 3; The lack of interest in Phillips' stock from active managers is the market speaking to Company leadership. It is evident that the Phillips' Board does not have its performance-driven and execution-focused mindset. I will make sure the Board doesn't lose focus on investors' views. — Nominee 4"

"“The other aspect is how much do these PDN patients really want to have an implant? The back and leg pain patients are constantly getting bombarded with the idea of simulation. Here it's like a one-time consult, maybe a referral from a from a primary care doc and then the patient says "Well that's not really what I expected to hear" and they walk out. The back and leg patient keeps coming back to you and you can keep talking about stim as an option.” “For PDN it will have to be determined how they do in terms of negotiating with the payers. Are they going to get a label exclusivity on it? Because yes, you can code it today as neuropathic pain of the leg. The commercial payers are not interested in engaging with diabetic neuropathy right now. The trouble is that the diabetic population that has significant enough pain tends to be the Medicare, Medicaid population. You can use any device for Medicare. With the bulk of the population being Medicare, doctors can use the device for PDN today. And commercial-insured patients don't mean much, because commercial insurance usually means an employed person that generally is not the one that's usually a severe diabetic.” — KOL and one of Nevro’s highest volume implanters"

""When Nevro first started, if you look at the doctors in the forefront, true thought leaders, key opinion leaders, the white shoe reputable people - that’s not who they got. They brought in a bunch of guys - I wouldn’t say they were outcasts, but... it was like a Scientology thing. They did these retreats at some huge mansion, like crazy stuff, and I remember coming back and telling my rep, "What the heck was that?" There are a few guys like [name redacted, one of Nevro’s highest volume implanters and key study authors] who got in with them right away and they pumped him up. He went from 0 to 90 mph because of Nevro. He was on every committee and pumped it up at NANS. Nevro is not science. It’s a cult and I am blown away because every doctor I know that does a lot of implant volume doesn’t use Nevro except for a small cult." — KOL, former high volume Nevro implanter; "If you put doctors into boxes, Money Mike couldn’t care less if there’s a high explant rate. It’s just about the price you give him for the device. He could care less about whether it works or not. Yes, there are unethical, corrupt doctors. In that population, Nevro is the best thing since sliced bread." — KOL, former high volume Nevro implanter"

""The chronic pain patient population has a psychiatric toll. It affects 100% of patients. If a patient failed a psychiatric evaluation, the sales rep would send them to another psychiatrist. It’s fair to say they get shopped around. You don’t even need to get shopped around because the psychiatric evaluation is not in depth. It’s a bottleneck for time but not for volumes in the sales funnel." — Former Nevro regional sales director for one of its largest territories; "When Nevro’s call center would deal with patients, we’d realize they’d never pass the psychiatric evaluation yet here we are and they have the device." — Former Nevro executive; "We’d get calls from patients, hear their demeanor on the phone, and wonder how they ever got the device. These were not the best stimulator candidates. Our conversations in the call center were with device recipients who were suicidal, folks with really really high and unrealistic expectations. They told me I’d get 100% pain relief, it would cure me, it would go away. The call center would say it’s not true, it’s not a cure. I don’t know if they were oversold by the doctor or rep. Patients had unrealistic expectations of the device and therapy." — Former Nevro executive"

""Very candidly, I'm kind of surprised that the FDA gave them an approval...other physicians are not so bullish about it...if you talk to some of the other investigators other than Jennifer Miller, you might get a different impression...I would say that you have a substantial number of investigators who are not so bullish about the drug"; "I fail to see how any third-party payor would accept this as a treatment...it's a little bit like the Sarepta drug...you have one devastating DKA and heart failure...they had some serious adverse effects where somebody was admitted to the ICU...I find it difficult to think that they will be able to really penetrate even a limited market..."; "There was certainly some pressure on all the investigators to downplay the adverse effects"; "I was extremely uncomfortable with the direction from [redacted] to try and downplay things...it's not what I would do...it's not what most normal companies would do...they wanted a successful outcome...all the people with significant incentive were the ones driving this train..." — A former Soleno employee, one of several we interviewed involved with its clinical trials, along with a significant proportion of the company's trial investigators"

"And then, at the beginning Mr. Ding Shizhong was working as a sub-contractor [OEM] for international brands, and then after he was able to accumulate his original [capital]: he could then lend money to these distributors and partners to support these dealers/distributors to expand their business. By developing personnel and building the channels, these distributors very successfully established a foothold in local markets and expanded the business. So this history cannot be separated from these connections, so this kind of connection and control between the brand and the distributors is very strong, and later when they went public, at the time, Li Ning also was going public. The Jinjiang companies came up with a strategy to separate out these semi-subsidiaries from the ListCo, so they would be outside of the ListCo, and let the companies' profits look more attractive. For example, when they ship product they can book revenue, in this way they could more quickly generate more revenue, at the same time the distributors' costs would not have to be inside the ListCo's system. So, they reduced expense and accelerated income, so their financials were all much better looking. — Mr. D (former ANTA senior executive)"

"“I have not seen a big uptick for Omnia in our territory. I think it'll be a dud. We've been pushing hard against their being all in on high frequency, and now allowing low-dose and multiple waveforms even though everything they've done and all their studies are around 10khz. They're trying to get Omnia into some of their old accounts now. If a patient comes in requesting Nevro, that's about the only time that Nevro is getting implanted in other accounts” — Regional sales manager at one of Nevro's largest competitors; “Part of Nevro's messaging is that it's easy to implant. You throw the leads in; you scan T9/T10; there's no in or out testing. It's very simple. But if you need to switch to low-dose and you need to do mapping, you have no idea what you're getting into as a doctor. Nevro never trained a lot of their reps on it. Now they're asking their field to retrain on classic spinal cord stimulation. We leverage that. You've done an about-face and now all of a sudden you're trying to do what every other company is doing. At least in our market, high frequency hasn't been the silver bullet you promoted and now you're just like everybody else.” — Regional sales manager at one of Nevro's largest competitors"

"PBI has not provided shareholders with a convincing, substantive reason to conclude that future performance will depart from the disappointment of the past decade. [...] In summary, shareholders have endured a decade of underperformance and disappointment, there are unanswered questions and serious concerns about the path forward, and power on the board is concentrated in the hands of those directors who objectively have the most potential for a conflict of interest by virtue of their past experience and tenure. — Institutional Shareholder Services (Hestia/Pitney Bowes ISS report, Apr. 26, 2023). The company's TSR has varied when compared with peers, but over all time periods, it has substantially underperformed that of the Nasdaq Biotech Index. [...] The most immediate need for Progenics is sufficient board change to a) get a second opinion on the merger, and b) establish the possibility of a compelling alternative path, which the current board and management has failed to articulate. The most effective way to accomplish this may be by removing CEO Baker and adding dissident nominees Ende, Ber, and Mims to the board. — Institutional Shareholder Services (Velan Capital/Progenics ISS report, Nov. 8, 2019)."

"Partly, yes. I mean, that's already happened in markets like the DC area market, in Seattle. It's required for buyers to sign a buyer's agency agreement. I think some of this is about legal and regulatory compliance. Some of it is just an ethical mandate that people should not hire a buyer's agent without realizing it. They should know what that buyer's agent charges, and they should know what services are entailed. They should know when they're committed. And so this is good salesmanship, but it's also just an above board way to treat a customer. Now, the reason that I said partly is that we're also seeing some trends where more listing agents are selling homes directly to home buyers. So I think there is just going to be more consumer choice, John. In some cases, a consumer is explicitly going to decide that I want somebody on my side, that I want my own agent. And other times, the agent, the listing agent, excuse me, will be the one handling both sides of the sale. The buyer is going to directly to that listing agent. I don't think that's going to be the majority of cases, but I do think there's going to be clear consumer choices and more consumer power. That's great. — Redfin CEO, Q4'23 Earnings Call"

""It [Fiscal Year 2011] was a year in which we demonstrated our ability to achieve these results while at the same time making the investments in internal development, sales and services necessary to increase our competitive advantage" — Bob Beauchamp (2011 Annual Report); "It [Fiscal Year 2011] was a year in which we transitioned from being a strong, moderate growth company to one characterized by sustained, accelerating growth led by a solid Enterprise Service Management (ESM) engine capable of delivering ongoing double-digit growth" — Bob Beauchamp (2011 Annual Report); "These [Fiscal Year 2011] strong results underscore the success of our strategy over the last several years to make disciplined investments that enhance our market leadership and enable us to accelerate top line growth. As part of this strategy, we strengthened our sales force, increased internal R&D efforts related to cloud and other major technology trends, selectively acquired complementary technologies in rapidly growing market segments and bolstered our strategic partnerships. These initiatives are clearly paying off and we expect to reap additional benefits in 2012 and beyond" — Bob Beauchamp (Q4 2011 Earnings Conference Call)"

"As previously disclosed under "Item 9A. - Controls and Procedures" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended June 30, 2019 filed with the SEC on September 3, 2019, we identified two material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting during the conversion of our historical AAS financial statements to U.S. GAAP. The first material weakness was related to our lack of accounting staff and supervisory personnel with the appropriate level of experience in technical accounting in U.S. GAAP and disclosure and filing requirements of a U.S. domestic registrant. We also identified a second material weakness arising from deficiencies in the design and operating effectiveness of internal controls over the period end reporting process. Specifically, we did not design and maintain effective controls to verify that conflicting duties were appropriately segregated within key IT systems used in the preparation and reporting of financial information. ... As a result of the existing material weaknesses noted above, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective as of December 31, 2019. — Amcor SEC Filing"

"“So Waleed, I’d be remiss...quite a shock...trying to connect all your comments together, I confess I’m still struggling to understand...I’m curious, there seems to have been a break in your trajectory of share gain....” — OPCO Analyst; “...there is no shift in gears. It’s your perception of reality.” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “I caution the Street from trying to create something out of nothing.” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “There’s absolutely, categorically no impact of any technologies, methodologies, or competitive dynamics on the decline in Q3...the facts are the facts.” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “I want to make it crystal clear. We have not seen any fundamental or competitive dynamics... Let me repeat it again, there has not been or we have not seen any fundamental or competitive dynamics...” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “Guys, I want to be crystal clear...abdominal NRP does not impact OCS.” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “There is no clear reason for these declines other than normal variability.” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “Listen, we’re just coming out of a quarter where transplant volumes declined...” — CEO Waleed Hassanein; “I repeat again, our share in heart and liver...remain unchanged.” — CEO Waleed Hassanein"

"“Okay. And then going back to the price of oil coming down. How long will it take -- are you in FIFO, first of all? How long will it take for you to benefit from those costs? I know that the intermediary has to come down as well, but it sounds as though they may be. And so let's say that you benefit from it in a 90 to 120 days, as Jay mentioned. Will you, at that point, have to give a price?” — Analyst G. Research, Q1 2019. “Pricing wise, we have a very -- our current pricing structure is in place and we see no reason to change that current pricing structure. You're right about that, it is about 90 to 120 days. We are on FIFO with -- in that time between when it's -- when the new lower material costs come into our manufacturing facility, and by the time it gets through to us, inventory, and on the end, it's 90, 120 days, maybe a little bit more. So -- which is why we haven't really made any changes to guidance going out.” — WD-40 CFO Rembolt. “If we do see any impact of a sustained lower oil price, we wouldn't expect that to be seen until the third quarter. Right now, our cost of goods are really reflecting the oil price in what months, Jay, July August?” — WD-40 CEO. “July, August.” — WD-40 CFO."

"“Ginkgo was kind of allowed to do what they wanted to do for the first period of the company [Joyn] at least, and that was really something that Jason Kelly and the group really sort of had pushed for, especially in Motif, at Allonnia, and the subsequent ventures, Ginkgo really needs to control these entities because if they can’t then—what they want is for these subsidiaries or for these joint ventures, these supposedly independent companies to be obligated to use Ginkgo services, and Ginkgo services are very expensive. It’s almost prohibitively expensive in some respects. But the idea is if you comparison shop, you can go elsewhere. It’s actually kind of interesting like Joyn was doing a lot of work with this group with Culture BioSciences in South City, South San Francisco. And they’re basically outsourcing their fermentation to them, not to Ginkgo. I would suspect that that was because of pricing and cost savings because they actually are not entirely obligated to use Ginkgo services, but that’s the whole idea, is you’re obligated to basically no matter what it costs. If Ginkgo says, pay us this, that’s what you pay.” — Former director-level employee; “At least 50%.” — Current Motif employee"

"I mean our small business -- small, medium business, we think as a run rate continues to be strong, right? We've seen that throughout the year, which is a good sign of the underlying business. The same business that Anders has talked about is served by our partners and distributors around the globe. And we haven't seen any change there — Burns, Stevens Conf Nov 16, 2022. Particularly (organic net sales growth) strong growth from small business through the channel, partially driven by pent-up demand. — Q2 2021 Earnings Presentation. Yesterday, we announced the launch of Zebra's first cloud connected label printer designed specifically for the small business, home office customer. Featuring eco-friendly cartridges and mobile application software to easily design and print labels from anywhere. With the launch of the ZXP Series printer, we enter an approximately $400 million market with an attractive recurring supplies revenue stream. We have been innovating at a record pace despite the pandemic, and this so called label printing offering is a proof point of our focus on expanding into attractive adjacent markets where we can provide a differentiated offering. — CEO Gustafsson, Q1 2021 May 5, 2021"

""Full transparency, the ice cream mix for chocolate is the nasty stuff. The half and half that fails will be re-processed to sanitize it and add chocolate mix." — Former Saputo Executive. "I can think of few reasons why. I don't think they're doing it to be deceptive, but it certainly sounds deceptive. They're losing major customers. Not all assets have to be used at 100%. It's not practical capacity. World class is 80-85%." — Former Saputo Executive. "They implemented SAP and there was a specific module - the Dairy Management System - when I was there it was supposed to roll out on the third go live. They implemented it in waves. If 80% of your business is milk, this DMS When I was there it wasn't working. The purpose is to help you understand the costing of your milk and derive a dairy financial stamen. When I was there, they still didn't have it figured out when I left 2 years ago." — Former Saputo Executive. "I'd bet against them, that's my view. Picture the McDonald's, Burger King's of the world. If they are having bad years, then Saputo will have a bad year. If McDonald's isn't selling milkshakes, Saputo's not making them. There's a high degree of correlation." — Former Saputo Executive."

""I work with an insurance company so I see lots of requests for stuff. When I see high stimulator volumes I'm suspicious. I deny a lot from some high volume implanters They do 5X more surgeries. You can make money on the trial, but you usually don't make money on the implant. And there have been a lot of patients who are just trialed for no reason by shitty doctors just wanting to making money on the trial knowing full-well they're not going to proceed with the implant. There's a lot of crap going on in that regard. That's been ripe for abuse." — KOL; "We used to do a lot of trials and they were quite lucrative. Especially for a guy like me who did a lot and I'm kind of aggressive, like with my billing. They used to pay us per lead. So if you put in four leads, you'd make a lot of money. I would buy the equipment myself so that's where all the money was instead of the hospital buying the equipment. There were a bunch of guys that were just putting in all these trials on Medicare patients, where you don't have to get authorization. One day a week, they'd line up 10 or 12 of them. Put the trials in and I don't know if they even cared about implanting a device after the trials." — High volume KOL"