Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"While impressive on the surface, Samsara’s historical revenue ramp has been the result of opportunistic targeting of a one-time government mandate, an accounting sleight of hand, the beneficial impact to revenue recognition of customer financing, and the aggressive practice of buying out existing customer contracts (an extremely expensive technique for buying business that we believe is not appropriately captured in the Company’s financial disclosures)."

"2018: “Revenue from the consumer market decreased $5.6 million, or 3.0%, from the same period in 2017. This decrease was primarily due to softness in demand for high volume consumer-related products, particularly those sold in the greater China region.” 2017: “Revenue from the consumer market increased $36.0 million, or 23.4%, from the same period in 2016. This increase was primarily driven by higher demand in gaming and home appliance products.” — MPWR"

""Khosla Ventures II and Khosla Ventures III had dismal returns, at less than 5% IRR as of March, 2016. This track record reduced their credibility and made their future fundraising efforts much more difficult." — Harvard Business School; "Once the very embodiment of Silicon Valley venture capital, the storied firm has suffered a two-decade losing streak. It missed the era's hottest companies, took a disastrous detour into renewable energy...." — Fortune"

"We currently expect to invest approximately $325.0 million to $350.0 million in capital expenditures during fiscal 2011. For fiscal 2012, we currently expect to invest approximately $650.0 million to $720.0 million in capital expenditures. In addition, as the Company secures new production facilities for future growth it may incur additional capital expenditures in the range of $50.0 million to $60.0 million in fiscal 2012. — GMCR 10-Q for Q3 2011, p.39"

""As a leading integrated downstream energy provider with differentiated but complementary assets in highly attractive markets, we deliver consistent and compelling value for shareholders throughout economic and commodity cycles." — Phillips 66 Management, Phillips66Delivers.com; "[We're] having less volatility than refining peers when refining margins flex to the downside, so we get the best of both worlds." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, March 6, 2025"

"We find it difficult to believe many long only investors would have any interest in a standalone RL and believe it would likely trade at the lowest EBITDA multiple within the restaurant universe (less than 7x). — UBS, March 3, 2014; Our assumption is that RL will assume half of the debt for DRI, which is roughly $1.25B. Applying a 6x EV/EBITDA multiple would give us an EV slightly less than $2B, which is $5 per share for RL. — Buckingham, March 21, 2014"

"We find it difficult to believe many long only investors would have any interest in a standalone RL and believe it would likely trade at the lowest EBITDA multiple within the restaurant universe (less than 7x). — UBS, March 3, 2014; Our assumption is that RL will assume half of the debt for DRI, which is roughly $1.25B. Applying a 6x EV/EBITDA multiple would give us an EV slightly less than $2B, which is $5 per share for RL. — Buckingham, March 21, 2014"

"“When a company is paying us with SaaS fees, they’re paying us around $4 per customer today... $25 is great in terms of what we generate per homebuyer on average.” — Porch CEO, Analyst Day Dec 2021. “Each inspector was paying probably anywhere from a $1 to $3 per inspection to use that software. So if you knew your average lead was worth $14 - $15 bucks you could easily give that product away, and lower your cost of acquisition” — Former Porch Employee."

""So we talk about LTV to CAC, and you'll see that, that has actually improved in '22 versus '21, partly a function of cost of acquisition going down year-over-year. And as Caryn mentioned, as we have added to our network, both on the airport side and on the platform side, the network effect really drives unit economics. And so we don't see anything specifically in the horizon that would change the dynamics of the business." — CFO, Q4 2022, March 1, 2023"

"5.15 At the current time, Lightsource bp typically overplant by between 1.25-1.8, and this range is typical of solar farms in the UK. This is equivalent to ~62MWp-90MWp on a 49.9MW(AC) connection. The potential capacity on any site will be dependent on site- specific conditions, including location, topography, aspect, irradiance, shading, environmental and other constraints. — Lightsource BP - Burnhope Planning Statement, 11 June 2024, Appendix 8, p. 26"

"Very candidly...I'm kind of surprised that the FDA gave them an approval. And I don't know if they audited Jennifer Miller's site. But with a completely soft endpoint, it's very tricky and it's very hard to blind yourself to this drug. You can say I'm on placebo or whatever, but just from the side effects, it's pretty clear whether you're on active drug or not. It's really challenging to blind. — Ex-Soleno employee #1, key role in clinical trial program"

"Direct Sales Regulations: A direct selling company may not "have the . . . commodities purchase serve[] as the condition[] for becoming a sales promoter." (Art. 14.) — Chinese Direct Sales Regulations. Pyramid Sales Regulations: An organization may constitute a pyramid scheme if it requires participants to "purchas[e] commodities for obtaining the qualification for participating in pyramid selling . . ." (Art. 7(2).) — Chinese Pyramid Sales Regulations."

"“No, there was no data that they had. They essentially just had value-add of how this is different, namely in their light source...there's no real-world case studies from independently verified semiconductor industry associations or a semiconductor consortium. And so, there's no real way to discern that this actually has a value-add that would offset the overall cost of taking possession of one of these machines.” — Senior employee at Marvell Technology"

"To expose the true nature of BlackRock's argument as entirely pretextual, on the 5th of April 2024, Bluebell Capital Partners has informed BlackRock (see Appendix 1) that it is prepared to withdraw our proposed to amend by-law, subject to the following condition: BlackRock must irrevocably commit to adopting a policy that mandates an independent board chair, effective BlackRock AGM 2025, with the announcement to be made to the market by April 15, 2024."

"IDEXX has dominant 55-60% market share in diagnostic equipment, the best selling disposable fecal test (SNAP), and operates one of the leading reference labs in the world. IDEXX also has more fecal-related patents than Heska has total patents. We imagine they understand the market's demand for such testing and the technology required to do it better than Heska. We believe their entry into the point of care market would be a material negative for Heska."

"Families are also indicating concern about hypertrichosis – excessive hair growth – a known side effect: “just hands and feet and the one girl we heard who just shaved it off”; “my daughter definitely had the excessive hair growth during the trial…her back, legs, arms, upper lip, and forehead”; “our endo did mention the possibility of shaving the forehead”; “they had patients…in the trial?…that were shaving their foreheads…was it on random body parts?”"

"The majority of plaintiffs, represented by attorney Jake Kaney of Ormond Beach, Fla., allege that 'WTF is or was a company involved in actively stealing from veterinarians to further company profit. WTF, owned and run by Stefaniak, lures veterinarians into ordering flea and tick products, and other products, from Merial, Novartis and Beyer, among others, to resell to WTF for a percentage payment above invoice, but then does not pay.' — VIN News Service"

"we at Project Zero celebrate Bluebell's victory to stop Solvay from continuing to pollute the Mediterranean. Led by the tireless and brilliant Giuseppe Bivona and Marco Taricco, who continued their righteous campaign in the face of an unmoving adversary, Bluebell accomplished what no one else could. This is a big victory for the beleaguered Mediterranean Sea. Hats off to you all — Michele Clarke, Chief Executive Officer, Project Zero, 9 September 2022."

""It comes back to general awareness. I just think awareness in this marketplace is increasing significantly... All of us are going to win together, and I think that's exactly what you just saw play out in Q2." — Quentin Blackford, CFO, Dexcom; "...We talked about this promotional program of G5 into G6. That played out in the quarter and there's still a bit of deferral that will come back in the back part of the year..." — Quentin Blackford, CFO, Dexcom"

"“Phillips 66 has been pursuing a strategy for many years that emphasizes and grows midstream assets alongside its refining business, despite evidence that this structure isn’t delivering value for shareholders relative to the company’s more streamlined peers. A stronger board would have questioned why these disparate businesses – which trade at different multiples, trapping shareholder value and diluting management focus – belong together.” — Greg Goff"

""We consider the recent drop in NQ Mobile's share price to be artificially created by false allegations and we believe our stock to be currently undervalued," commented Dr. Henry Lin, Chairman and Co-CEO of NQ Mobile. "The plan to purchase NQ Mobile shares by the NQ Mobile senior management team demonstrates our strong confidence in the company and reflects our commitment to executing our business plan and delivering shareholder value." — Dr. Henry Lin"

"dd-cfDNA was not able to discriminate TCMR from no rejection... The relatively low sensitivities observed in both studies [i.e., this and the Bloom study referenced above] indicate that the dd-cfDNA test is susceptible to false negative results, particularly among cases of CMR... levels of dd-cfDNA are not consistent across rejection types and levels observed in cases of isolated CMR can be indistinguishable from those without rejection. — Huang et al."

"Another more recent example is our game business. Our subsidiary Skymoons launched a 3D turn-based mobile game The Croods, which is based on a famous IP licensed from DreamWorks Animation's 2013 popular animated feature film The Croods. The game has performed exceptionally well since it was launched in February, exceeding our expectation. This is another good showcase of our ability to adapt IP into online games. — CEO Gong Yu, IQ Q1 2019 earnings call"

"So long as the Apollo parties own a number of shares equal to 5% of the total outstanding shares of our common stock at closing, the Apollo parties are obligated to vote all of their shares as recommended by our board of directors with respect to routine matters (including contested or uncontested elections of directors, “say on pay” votes, approval of equity compensation plans and ratification of the selection of HGV’s auditors). — HGV Proxy Statement"

"If an organization sells goods or services to the public and the participants in the organization obtain monetary benefits from (1) recruiting new members and (2) selling the organization’s goods and services to consumers, the organization is deemed a pyramid scheme if the participants obtain their monetary benefits primarily from recruitment rather than the sale of goods and services to consumers. — Dr. Peter J. Vander Nat, Senior Economist at the FTC"

"So we have decided to stop the VYKAT. Even on a lower dose and lasix she still seemed to have some fluid retention. Her last dose was Monday and today her weight was back down to 171. McKenzie has been pretty vocal about wanting to stop the Vykat because the swelling hurt her.legs. she wants to do the HERO study. So after getting some info on the study we spoke with the study site and she has made the decision to go through with the intake appointment."

"“an act by which an organizer or operator seeks for unlawful interests, disturbs the economic order and affects the social stability by recruiting persons, calculating and paying remunerations to recruiters on the basis of the number of persons a recruiter has directly or indirectly recruited or the sales performance, or asking the recruiters to pay a certain fee for obtaining the qualification for participation.” — Pyramid Sales Regulations, Article 2"

"If an organization sells goods or services to the public and the participants in the organization obtain monetary benefits from (1) recruiting new members and (2) selling the organization's goods and services to consumers, the organization is deemed a pyramid scheme if the participants obtain their monetary benefits primarily from recruitment rather than the sale of goods and services to consumers. — Dr. Peter J. Vander Nat, Senior Economist at the FTC"

"Parents appear to be sounding the alarm to warn other parents – “I just wanted to share, and I hope this is not happening to any of you...my son...started Vykat 7 weeks ago...he was going alright (no appetite change though), but a week and a half ago his legs and feet started to swollen [sic] rapidly, to the point it was hard to walk...he was given a week of diuretics and we stop Vykat...his legs and feet are fine now...has it happened to any of you?”"

"Parents appear to be sounding the alarm to warn other parents – “I just wanted to share, and I hope this is not happening to any of you...my son...started Vykat 7 weeks ago...he was going alright (no appetite change though), but a week and a half ago his legs and feet started to swollen [sic] rapidly, to the point it was hard to walk...he was given a week of diuretics and we stop Vykat...his legs and feet are fine now...has it happened to any of you?”"

"We found one anecdote striking: "Dr Miller is AMAZING! She walked in to our appointment and gave us a BIG hug. Then her attention turned all to Kimber, who was acting a little shy and nervous...after trying to coax a few words out of her she simply turned to us and announced 'We're going for a walk. You guys stay here.' They were gone for about 10 min. When they came back Kimber had bubbles and a puzzle and was just chatting away with her new bestie.""

"Prior to its resignation, DTT raised the following issues (some of which may be considered to be disagreements) encountered during the audit, including: issues related to the authenticity of bank statements; a loss of confidence in bank confirmation procedures carried out under circumstances which DTT believed to be suspicious;...concerns over possible undisclosed bank accounts and bank loans;... — Deloitte (regarding China MediaExpress Holdings Inc.)"

"“while the Company’s Total Shareholder Return performance continues to significantly trail its GICS group, CEO pay is above the ISS selected peer median.” — ISS; “Overall, the Company PAID MORE than its peers, BUT PERFORMED WORSE than its peers.” — Glass Lewis; “shareholders should be deeply concerned with the compensation committee’s sustained failure in this area.” — Glass Lewis; “…we question her continued service on ANY public Board” — Glass Lewis"

""ADP isn't focused. They are trying to do everything, to everyone, everywhere. They go out fast-and-dirty. Under the covers there's no authoritative source [code] for ADP. It's duct-tape and bubble gum. Oh, and by the way, we have multiple instances of these products. And then all the legacy products. ADP refuses to turn anything off. ADP has what's known, a massive amount – a massive amount – of technical debt." — SVP of Infrastructure and Operations"

"“However, despite academic success of battery research, the commercial battery world has suffered from a reputation of fraud. Key examples include Envia in 2013, Sakti3 n 2017, and Nikola Motors n 2020, ranging from misrepresentation to investors to various forms of sugarcoating promises of their new technologies. It seems to be becoming too commonplace to see once-celebrated startups succumbing to the fate of fraud and scandal.” — BatteryBits article"

"“The experience was definitely inferior to what happens if you try to access say, Rigetti through the Braket interface. It was inferior in terms of the low-level operations you could perform, the amount of insight you could get into what’s actually going on when you send a command, how are the qubits responding. We were surprised by that mostly because we had gotten used to the standards that were set by Rigetti.” — Leading quantum computing scientist"

""We welcome Trian’s return as a significant Legg Mason shareholder and the addition of Nelson and Ed to our Board of Directors. Their experience in the asset management industry will be valuable as we pursue our common goal to increase value for Legg Mason clients and shareholders. We look forward to working closely and constructively with Nelson and Ed to achieve this objective." — Joseph A. Sullivan, Legg Mason's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer"

""Relative to our coverage group, we think that PSX (a) has a strong portfolio of assets, (b) checks all of the boxes in terms of management quality and balanced capital allocation, and (c) has an increasingly compelling valuation versus both the majors and the refiners." — J.P. Morgan, October 30, 2018; "Furthermore, PSX's refinery assets are some of the best-in-class vs overall industry with a Nelson Complexity Index of 11.1." — UBS, January 26, 2021"

""One thing where I find that the Berkeley Lights story is a little bit of stretch is truly the time savings. We never used it as being able to do cell line development in five days, which I think they do use as one of the selling points. It's five days for that particular step of cell line development. The fastest I've ever been able to go from start to finish with the Beacon and without the Beacon is just under three months' time." — Gilead scientist"

"“It's still very early stages. Tantu has the tiniest bit of funding from a Northeastern accelerator fund, but not really enough to meet the technical goals of a therapeutics company, just enough to get a website and stuff like that and incorporate. Apart from that, Tantu has some other momentum going in terms of winning a golden ticket for lab space at Lab Central in Kendall Square. There's an incubator space.” — Individual closely involved with Tantu"

"If an organization sells goods or services to the public and the participants in the organization obtain monetary benefits from (1) recruiting new members and (2) selling the organization’s goods and services to consumers, the organization is deemed a pyramid scheme if the participants obtain their monetary benefits primarily from recruitment rather than the sale of goods and services to consumers — Dr. Peter J. Vander Nat, Senior Economist at the FTC"

"“This was an LPP source that nobody cared about. So, the question is what happened in the last couple of years that all of a sudden they have improved their source?...That source, in my opinion, has to be a lot more stable and better than Isteq’s source because Isteq’s source is a rotating tin target. That damned tin, you’re going to drip the tin off it easily – it’s not a good situation.” — Leading EUV lithography expert close to Lasertec’s customers"

""They've got 9 Lasertec tools right now at Samsung—9 ABICS and 9 ACTIS." ... "And 48 EUV tools until last year. But this year, they are adding 15 more EUV tools, so probably around three more Lasertec tools for each, ABICS and ACTIS." ... "Yes. That's why I have those numbers. I know Intel—they paid $40 million for one ACTIS tool." — Longtime Samsung executive in leadership role in EUV; worked closely with Lasertec; decision-maker for inspection tools"

"We believe the evidence is clear: tech spending by school districts will be pressured during the 2023-24 school year. The effect is magnified in districts that have seen declining student enrollment. However, we believe this is just the beginning as ESSER funds won't run out until September 2024. Spruce Point believes this pressure will only continue to intensify in 2025, which will be the first full year without emergency federal funding since 2019."

"TASK's financial performance is not as robust as it appears on the surface. The company promotes its 57% top-line growth, 82% and 95% Adjusted EBITDA and Net Income growth, respectively. However, we point out that the COVID-19 adjustments are not industry standard, and should be removed. Furthermore, by adjusting LTM cash flows for one-time equity payments, we find that cash flow growth has lagged headline figures. Free cash flow growth was negative."

""...the strategic infrastructure we have in North Dakota...the Tioga Gas Plant...that's not something that we would be interested in MLPing." — John Hess, November 2012; "But we certainly do not believe that an MLP in the Bakken is appropriate at this time." — John Hess, January 2013; "Today we are announcing the culmination of that process...Specifically, we will be...pursuing the monetization of our Bakken midstream assets." — John Hess, March 2013"

"“The substantial payments to Bob Iger in connection with his contract extension and the upcoming 21st Century Fox merger are concerning... [T]he magnitude of the special equity grant ($100 million) is excessive... Even in the face of retention concerns, awards of this size should be tied to very challenging performance conditions, or at least require relative outperformance for full vesting...” — Institutional Shareholder Services, 2018 Disney Report"

""Moving on to China, first quarter volume points increased 17% compared to the previous year. As stated previously, this was primarily driven by volume in the month of March, which was pull[ed] forward ahead of our 5% price increase effective April 1. We estimated that this impact to be approximately 40 million to 45 million volume points, which will lead to a lower than previously planned second quarter for China." — John DeSimone, CFO (May 4, 2017)"

"「顧客が光学の装置を併用しているのは、レーザーテック製の装置だけでは十分な成果が得られない、という意味でしょうか。つまり、そのために二つ目の装置を備える必要がある、ということですか」「そうです。しかし、二つ目の装置については、レーザーテックがアクティニック検査装置を実用化する以前も、極端紫外線マスクを検査するために別の方法が必要でした。二つ目にはKLA製の深紫外線光学装置、同社の『Teron』という製品を使いました。ところが、Teronは193ナノメートルの光源を使うので、検出できる欠陥に限界があります。極小の欠陥を明確に検出できません。そのような欠陥の疑いがある場合、座標を記録し、座標を電子ビーム検査装置に移し、欠陥があるとの疑いのある位置を見てみます。欠陥があるとすれば、マスクに転写された回路の画像にあるでしょうか。要はマスクを検査するために、光学の深紫外線と電子ビームを組み合わせる必要があるのです」 — 半導体製造装置企業の上席幹部として長年の経験を持ち、レーザーテックのCEOに親しい人物"

""The disconnect between the clinical data and actual results is that the data said you get 70-75% pain reduction with high frequency. Probably less than 20% of patients in my region got that. 25% of patients were non-responders. They weren't responsive to high frequency at all. 50% had pain relief but not to RCT-reported levels. For those 50% of patients, competitor devices fared better." — Former Nevro regional sales director and now at a competitor"

"I think there’s a lot of window-dressing with Grossman and that’s why you’re not seeing this big uptake in revenue. If Omnia is so good and you’ve got a hundred more reps out on the field and you’re doing all this great selling and all these customers are happy, why is it not going up? They’ve eroded their price. Nobody’s going to buy Omnia, unless you’re getting paid a couple thousand bucks to be put in a study to use it. — Senior Nevro ex-executive"

""OrganOx is rapidly growing...they're expanding quite quickly...they're increasing their US presence quite a bit...things are going well." — Senior medical employee at OrganOx. "I hadn't heard this until I read it in the paper - more people are using OrganOX for normothermic machine perfusion of livers in the United States than are using TransMedics." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world, based at a leading Midwest academic center."

"Hoskins said that 2019 office space expansion was "extraordinary" considering what AWS locked in initially, but he said it also made sense because of how much cloud computing companies have invested in the region. "You'll see that this has been a trend for a while that has accelerated over the last five years. All of the data center infrastructure opens the door for companies like AWS to operate," Hoskins said. — Hoskins (Washington Business Journal)"

"“highlighted with apology this inconsistency [that] arose due to statistician error,” — Bioprojet. “vehemently agreed with the agency about the need to prespecify primary and secondary endpoints.” — Bioprojet. “sponsor acknowledged the errors and rectified the efficacy tables...this did not change the overall conclusion but took arduous effort from the statistical reviewer to make sure the sponsor presented accurate analysis results.” — FDA Reviewer."

"As the rest of the day passed quietly, several small groups of investors and potential investors found their way up to our Information Center at Maynard Station where they were provided with information about CMI, its predecessor companies and its leadership, including Jeffrey Jolcover, an officer with Winfield in D.W.C. Resources, who was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for stock fraud and money laundering. — Comstock Residents Association"

""The issue for us has always been the relative return of a U.S. small cell opportunity versus our ability to deploy capital primarily on the macro side in international markets. And when we've looked at that historically, the international opportunities have tended to present a more attractive and more compelling return opportunity, and that's guided our capital deployment decisions." — Senior Director of Investor Relations, American Tower, May 2018"

""But as a general matter of philosophy, we do like owner's economics, especially if -- I go back to the point where if it's really a fiber network with antennas hanging off of it, we'd want to be positioned with the owner's economics." — Verizon CTO, June 2019; "Where we have our enfranchised footprint or fiber outside of our footprint, we'll look to build that (small cells) ourselves. And many times, we do." — President of AT&T Operations, May 2019"

"Our global gold reserves have remained largely unchanged at 5 million ounces, supported by the successful 2016 near mine exploration program which added over 300,000 low cost ounces to the mineral inventory, offsetting mining depletion. We are very excited by the exploration potential that the AGM complex holds and anticipate adding more ounces to our resource base during 2017 from a considerable list of near mine high priority targets. — CEO Breese"

"If you're thinking about single-cell analysis, 10X genomics, and Mission Bio, and more recently IsoPlexis—those machines are just a small fraction of the cost—a couple of hundred thousand dollars. You just bring it in, it does one thing and does one thing very well. Compare that to the complexity of the Berkeley Lights system where you really have to design those kinds of assays that you can do with some other traditional method. — Amgen employee #2"

"In December 2018, we consummated the acquisition of the Kentucky Facility, including the equipment, machinery and other personal property located at such facility for a purchase price of $23 million — Danimer 2020 10-K. Danimer Scientific Kentucky Inc. purchased the Alltech property in 2018 and began operating January 15, 2019 with land, building and equipment being a total investment of $36 million — City of Winchester Audited Financial Statements."