Callouts & quotes from 1,434+ activist slides

"In terms of value creation for shareholders, it's really a multi-pronged approach. So, topline growth around the product launches, biosimilars and the global expansion, as well as delivering operating leverage for the company, we expect here over the next several years to deliver a 15 point operating margin improvement for the business. — David Meline, Amgen EVP and CFO, November 2014"

"As a producer of commodity products and ingredients, MGPI has to constantly innovate to maintain a competitive advantage against its larger peers that have substantially more resources and can easily out-spend it. MGPI holds very few patents, but as we highlighted earlier, its key patent rights to Fibersym® is set to expire in 2017 and could have a material adverse effect on margins."

"CFO Reagan: “You're thinking about the Health margins, we are now -- and we continue to believe that the Health margins, which were very strong in the quarter, continue to be sustainable.”; CEO Krone: “We were able to sell part of the business that really wasn't in our portfolio. Clearly, that would have been lower-margin for us.” — JPMorgan, Leidos Earnings First Look, Oct 29, 2019"

"“the cost of goods are pretty horrendous” – the gross margins “were pretty shitty…yeah, they were negative for sure.” ... “...the waste at the manufacturing plant exceeded 60%. They only had like a 30% yield. My guys were there almost every week trying to figure out how to improve the manufacturing process.” — Longtime oligonucleotide manufacturing expert and executive; ex-Agilent"

"Capitalize on Corporate Infrastructure Investments. In recent periods, we have made significant investments in our senior management and corporate infrastructure in anticipation of future revenue growth... We therefore anticipate that, to the extent our revenue grows, we will be able to leverage this infrastructure base and increase our operating margins. — Kratos 2013 10-K, p. 9"

"For this year 2023, Burgiss is projecting slightly above $90 million of forecasted revenue with a mid-teens standalone EBITDA margin. Together with the benefits we bring to the business, we're projecting 20% top-line growth in the near term and gradually expanding margins. I would point out that we do expect this to be dilutive for the next 12 months. — Burgiss Deal Call Aug 2023"

"The first $500 million of synergies is expected to create a company with EBITDA margins of over 20% and annual EBITDA of over $3 billion, giving us the firepower to reduce the leverage ratio to 3 times to 3.5 times within two years to three years and then, subsequently, to deploy capital to create further value beyond our organic agenda. — CEO Michael Polk – Q4 2015 Earnings Call"

"CFO Rowland: "We're also excited as we continue to lean in and drive a conversion of our revenue portfolio towards digital, that roughly 50% of this backlog is higher-margin digital business." — Investor Day Sept 2021; CFO Rowland: "And then, of course, our backlog has a higher digital mix. And so that will naturally bring with it some higher margins." — Q3'22 Earnings Nov 2022"

"Freedom Holdings generates 85% of its revenues and 95% of their margin lending from FFIN. FFIN generates the majority of its revenue from Russia. FFIN is a controlled entity by Freedom's CEO, who owns 75% of Freedom's stock and therefore has an overwhelming incentive to use FFIN as an illegal piggy bank to funnel funds from Russia into FRHC to manipulate its earnings or stock."

"Yes in 2018 and 2019, I was there. I saw it. The freight was extremely high and not considered part of the cost of goods sold. Then the company moved with the supply chain optimizing the cost analysis and started making a decent gross profit in 2020. And clearly because the Company was paying extremely high freight, it was affecting the gross margin. — Former Oatly Accountant"

"Renee Pearson joined us 6 to 9 months ago as a Head of Technology. She joins us and brings a wealth of knowledge on that front. And we continue to make more changes across the back office. We think those people will drive further change, further productivity improvements and improvement in overall margin profile as we think about the future. — JP Morgan Conf Sept 19, 2023"

"It appears that no matter the auditor in 2017 or 2022, there's a consistent warning that a critical audit matter relates to the carrying value of the assets. The current auditor is evaluating the historical EBITDA projections vs. actual. Based on our review, management was overly optimistic about access to milk for production, and EBITDA margins have materially declined."

"Talk about a fall from grace. Of all the US airlines, Southwest has evolved the least since 9/11, relative to an industry that has undergone a massive profit transformation ... We believe substantive changes to its business model are required if margins are ever going to reclaim the high ground, but management (thus far) appears uninterested. — J.P. Morgan, December 2023"

"Talk about a fall from grace. Of all the US airlines, Southwest has evolved the least since 9/11, relative to an industry that has undergone a massive profit transformation ... We believe substantive changes to its business model are required if margins are ever going to reclaim the high ground, but management (thus far) appears uninterested. — J.P. Morgan, December 2023"

"Talk about a fall from grace. Of all the US airlines, Southwest has evolved the least since 9/11, relative to an industry that has undergone a massive profit transformation ... We believe substantive changes to its business model are required if margins are ever going to reclaim the high ground, but management (thus far) appears uninterested. — J.P. Morgan, December 2023"

"Talk about a fall from grace. Of all the US airlines, Southwest has evolved the least since 9/11, relative to an industry that has undergone a massive profit transformation ... We believe substantive changes to its business model are required if margins are ever going to reclaim the high ground, but management (thus far) appears uninterested. — J.P. Morgan, December 2023"

"The Zio AT has long been promoted by iRhythm management as a strategic product because (1) it addressed the risk (marginally) of being a single product company, (2) it increased (marginally) the Company’s addressable market, (3) it represented a growth opportunity given iRhythm’s low MCT market share, and (4) it received about 4x the reimbursement of the Zio XT/Monitor."

"The sale of these surgical products will strengthen our ability to focus our resources across our portfolio... This transaction underscores our strategic focus on high-growth, high-margin categories where Hillrom can demonstrate leadership and supports our commitment to deliver on our promise of Advancing Connected Care. — John P. Groetelaars, Hillrom President and CEO"

"Part II: Twist’s “DNA chip” narrative - 10,000X higher throughput and lower cost - is fraudulent, covering up a manual, labor-intensive, and fatally-flawed manufacturing process crippled by errors, bottlenecks, and pitiful yields – thereby driving gross margins we estimate to be negative, not unlike Theranos which claimed to run blood tests on its “chip” but wasn’t."

""[We] designed our mid-cycle methodology around the 2012-to-2019-time frame. You had cycles of strong margins and weak margins during that period of time." — Phillips 66 Investor Relations, March 14, 2024; "The biggest delta is in refining and well below mid-cycle refining environments baked into the '25, '26 outlook." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, January 7, 2025"

""[We] designed our mid-cycle methodology around the 2012-to-2019 time frame. You had cycles of strong margins and weak margins during that period of time." — Phillips 66 Investor Relations, March 14, 2024; "The biggest delta is in refining and well below mid-cycle refining environments baked into the '25, '26 outlook." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, January 7, 2025"

"When AMR eliminated its Trading & Logistics segment in Q2 2019, it was merged with the CAPP Met segment. We investigated to see how AMR would restate its historical financials by combining these two segments. In the 2019 Annual Report, we see that AMR restated the segment which resulted in the segment's coal margins magically increasing by 4.7% without explanation."

""By positioning ourselves as a "one-stop" environmental services provider, we plan to leverage our diverse service offerings to unlock potential cross-selling opportunities across our business lines. As we execute on our growth strategies, we will continue to leverage our scalable capabilities to manage costs and drive higher operating margins." — GFL Environmental"

""And similarly -- slightly different with Fetch. So Fetch, just given its maturity and where it's at in its life cycle, was dilutive to EBITDA at the time of acquisition, but one that, over time, with the subscription model it has, we think both accretive to gross margin as well as profitability as we scale that business." — CFO Winters JPMorgan Conf, May 23, 2022"

"[M]ultiple hundreds of millions of dollars — Gary Butler, Q4'2010 Earnings Call. [S]trong double-digit kind of bottom line margin — Gary Butler, Q1'2012 Earnings Call. [O]ur HR BPO products excluding the pass-throughs have margin characteristics that are roughly in line for most of the cases, with our overall margin profile. — Management, Q2'2016 conference call."

""Retail GM declined 120 bp, with CTR down 100bp, reflecting a lower true-up benefit related to margin sharing and negative shipment mix." — Patricia Baker, Scotiabank, August 8, 2018; "GM% was down 120 bps, primarily at CTR. -50 bps was driven by a negative swing in dealer profit sharing and another ~50 bps from poor sales mix" — Mark Petrie, CIBC, August 8, 2018"

""We also won by a wide margin at the US Army's most prestigious live-fire exercise in April of this year. Subsequently, we received a contract from the US Army, which will likely make us their preferred C-UAS standard solution. The US combat vehicle fleet will be equipped with an EOS R400 Slinger in a semi-autonomous special configuration." — CEO (December 2025)"

""We will operate a low-cost operating model in all that we do. In essence, we will continue to apply a low-margin operating mindset to a high-margin business. We will take pride in our frugality, our ability to make quick decisions based on internal resources, our willingness to all wear different hats at different times." — Mike Pearson, 2010 Chairman’s Letter"

"Gross margin decreased to 45.6% in the current year compared to 46.4% for the prior year primarily due to product volume deleveraging, the negative impact of foreign currency changes and inventory-related charges, partially offset by pricing, higher service and software margins, and lower premium freight and component part costs. — Zebra Technologies 2023 10-K"

"“The question that we're getting a lot from investors is how to think about EPS growth and should EPS growth just follow and marry revenue growth, or is there opportunity and would management and the Board come off their 19% and 20% margin range or even perhaps get more aggressive on share repurchases or get more aggressive on M&A.” — Oppenheimer, Aug. 2016"

"A 5.8 point reduction is well within what common sense indicates is the margin of error in a crude survey like ESS – the reduction is equal to a patient self-reporting that they went from a “high chance” of “dozing” to a “slight chance” in 3 of 8 settings, with still a high chance in each of the other 5 settings like “sitting and reading” or “watching TV.”"

""This 250-basis-point decline in gross margin as compared to the prior year was mainly the result of an unfavorable mix -- sales mix. The shift in mix was driven by the significant growth in shipments of portable generators and mobile products during the quarter, which carry lower gross margins relative to the consolidated corporate average." — CFO Q3 2017"

"As shown in our presentation, the upside from a more focused, streamlined PepsiCo is substantial – greater strategic focus, faster organic growth and meaningful profit-margin expansion would warrant a valuation in line with peers, the market and PepsiCo’s own history, representing a path to more than 50% stock-price increase from today’s depressed levels."

"When we remove AMR's three least common cost of coal adjustments, and include the cost of operating Dominion Terminal Associates ("DTA") - its coal export facility necessary and critical for delivering the coal to its export customers which we evaluate in the coming slides - we find that its cost of coal margin per ton is materially lower than portrayed."

"We believe that if Quectel were added to the Covered List that it would not only be a headwind to government (and perhaps all sector) sales, but it would also necessitate a widespread replacement of existing hardware, which would be accompanied by a requisite write-off of capitalized connected device costs, thus further compressing Samsara gross margins."

"“...we are pleased to share that $150 million announced cumulative savings will drive a $100 million improvement in operating profit for the fiscal year 2020 [relative to 2017]. With these savings, along with modest low single-digit revenue growth, we believe we can achieve an operating margin of 13% in fiscal year 2020.” — 5/25/17 FQ4 2017 earnings call"

"“These are all high-margin specialty applications...You can see the margins for construction are best in class here running from 23%, to just under 26%. We maintain these margins because of the specialty nature of the product, the distribution network, and the fact that their specified for high-end applications.” — Greg Poling, President & CEO, May 2016"

"Given the issues we have highlighted regarding Procept's revenue recognition, gross margin accounting, and DSOs, we are concerned that Procept has never had a lead audit partner who has audited a publicly-listed company with more than $150 million of revenue, and its current audit partner has never had a publicly-listed client with any revenue at all."

"Lower net per litre fuel margin at Petroleum reflecting a more competitive marketplace and the impact of the newly implemented carbon tax in some regions, lower growth in profit from the Company's margin-sharing arrangement with its Dealers, the impact of IFRS 16, and higher interest expense. — 2019 Second Third Quarter Earnings Presentation (slide 7)"

"So I guess when you think about ecobee and you look at -- as we ramp that up and they grow, their margin profile in the out years looks very similar to our clean energy business. We've talked about how that will probably be in the mid- to high teens EBITDA margins from a gross margin standpoint, closer to that mid-30% range. — Q3 2021 Conference Call"

"Gross margin for the quarter was 44.8%... Our gross margin for the quarter was approximately $25.2 million or 44.8% of revenue as compared to 40% in Q3 FY '21 and up from 38.3% in Q2. The increased gross margin reflects the impact of higher revenues in particular higher NGS revenues and thus leveraging our fixed costs. — James M. Thorburn, Twist CFO"

""And finally, Broadridge's objectives to expand margins through scale and efficiency to strengthen by adding Itiviti. Itiviti's 30% plus operating margin business will increase our adjusted operating income margin by 50 basis points by fiscal '23 and positions us for higher adjusted earnings growth." — CEO Gokey, Itiviti M&A Call, March 29, 2021"

"Management touted Antuit as a "high-margin SaaS business" with revenue growth that doubled over a 3-year period. However, after obtaining Antuit's financial statements, we observe that revenue growth flat-lined in the year leading up to the acquisition, and its gross margin at 46.7% is wildly below the 70%-80% margins of typical SaaS companies."

"When I joined the business I think we had a 15% gross margin, but this just wasn't sustainable at that level of profit. And so the last round of label negotiations was about elevating the margins to a point where, I think, the business would self-sustain...So what was good for Spotify was good for the labels and that's why the margin increased."

""The notion of a dilutive acquisition casts doubt on the assumption of margin expansion" — Dougherty (July 27th, 2016); "The acquisition is not an inexpensive one ... we are wary of the possibility that these moves bring TYPE into more direct competition with digital marketing companies, including Adobe, over time" — JP Morgan (July 21st, 2016)"

"As Dexcom's remaining market opportunity is rapidly exhausted at its current price point, long-term Dexcom bulls are effectively betting that the Company will be able to overcome its extensive failures in bringing a down-market CGM to market - in addition to its monumental scale disadvantage - to produce a low-cost CGM at a reasonable margin."

""Canada is a relatively large business... and it's quite profitable." — Carlos Rodriguez, Q2'2015 Conference Call. "[T]he old GSI in Europe was what I would call more margin focused." — Gary Butler, 2008 Analyst Meeting. "Our margins in France, where when we acquired GSI back in '95, are excellent." — Arthur Weinbach, Q4'2006 Conference Call."

"“the failure of the clinical trial and then the extension that had the signal, of course, I'm familiar with that...I agree that it's marginal...there is definitely some pressure and expectation from families” — Pediatric endocrinologist, leads one of the largest PWS clinics in US with 30-40 patients; 11 endocrinologists, major academic center"

"We have true opportunity for margin expansion through operating leverage, driving commercial and operational excellence and continuing to shift our portfolio towards digital solutions. — CFO Roland, Investor/Analyst Day Sept 30, 2021; The reality is Xylem’s digital sales are actually dilutive, not accretive. — Former Xylem Executive Response"

"I guess the question to really ask is what's the continuing value proposition in the world that has significantly changed? ... I think revenue is going to be pretty easy for them to drive, but I think margin is the one that I really question, if they don't have a significant differentiator. — Former TASK Executive Interviewed By Spruce Point"

"BR claims that management is compensated on segment profit, allowing it to elect to record certain segment operating and non-operating expense items in “Other”. However, this does not appear to be true as recent Proxy Statements do not reward management at all based on “segment profit”. As a result, segment margins are potentially inflated."

"We’re going to have higher margins with the delivery of these cost synergies, and we haven’t quantified the benefits of any revenue synergies but we would clearly expect to be able to grow at higher rates over the longer term than we would independently.... And we see some very specific opportunities — CEO on Revenue Synergies, Aug 7, 2018"

""Our operating leverage was up 245 basis points year-over-year..." — Todd Gibbons. "This is one of our real focuses, delivering positive operating leverage and improving the operating margins of our company...And so you can see over the last 12 months, the operating margin has in fact, improved by 78 bps across the firm" — Gerald Hassell."

"So, we’ve said most of the $10 million is around COGS synergies. So, we would expect gross margin to expand 200 basis points to 300 basis points over the next few years.... we’ve always – we’ve never been disappointed, and we’ve always overachieved our synergy number. And I’ll probably leave it at that — CEO Waterpik Deal Call, July 2017"

"We believe Nuvei's talk about having to “accelerated investments” that are being pulled forward from 2022 into 2021 is a negative development that dovetails with our research findings that many of its technology processes are dated, and that its easiest high risk, higher margin business that benefited results recently won't be repeated."

"“...we've maintained margins in the 75% to 80% range over time and we expect the long-term margins to stay in that 75% to 80% range.” — CFO Dylan Smith, August 2015; “...75% to 80% long-term range, which is still our current view in terms of the steady state and long-term gross margins of the business.” — CFO Dylan Smith, December 2015"

"“We finally received a little peek into the future of Disney’s streaming plan as the company shared a target of double-digit profit margins in streaming. As new CFO Hugh Johnston rightly admitted, that target should have been obvious, however, the timing and path forward still remain pretty ambiguous.” — MoffettNathanson, February 2024"

"“We finally received a little peek into the future of Disney’s streaming plan as the company shared a target of double-digit profit margins in streaming. As new CFO Hugh Johnston rightly admitted, that target should have been obvious, however, the timing and path forward still remain pretty ambiguous.” — MoffettNathanson, February 2024"

"We've talked about sort of balancing the continued data center investments with a lot of the operational efficiency improvements and scale that we're seeing in the model...we'd expect our gross margin to begin trending back upwards sometime in the fiscal '18 year and then to remain in the 75% to 80% range. — Q1 FY2017 Box Commentary"

"With the FOIA data collected from the Florida DOT indicating a -22% decline in contact awards, and ROAD's commentary that new backlog over the period that Florida revenues ramped supported higher margins, we estimate the impact to the Company's EBITDA in FY25 to be approximately $10 - $15 million or approximately 3% - 5% of EBITDA."