Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"“There was no one in the battery R&D community that did not think that Sakti 3 was a fraud and was not angered by it. Everyone knew. GM invested, and I think, thanks to Khosla, found a greater fool in Dyson to dump it on. They had very, very small cells. They never really showed any performance data. It seemed to be a manufacturing process that would be expensive or impossible to scale up, and it never scaled.” – Solid-state expert"

""It's a super-hard problem. Now, let's think about that in a multi-layer concept. I stack up 50 layers of anodes and cathodes and separators, and now every other layer expands. The anodes expand, the cathodes don't, and everything moves, and I've got to connect tabs to all of those layers to get current in and out, and I've got to keep it all compressed and consolidated. Imagine that every layer moves 30 microns." — Former employee"

""Let's address customer momentum. We expanded and extended our strategic partnership with Baker Hughes last quarter for the second time. . .This October, we increased the value of the contract again, this time by an additional $45 million to $495 million and extended this term from five to six years. Importantly now guaranteeing a minimum of $357 million in revenue to C3 over the next 3.5 years." — CEO Siebel, 2Q'22 Conference Call"

"“In a somewhat surprising tactic, PSX management talked down the potential SOTP upside (i.e.. [stating that the Company is] fairly valued), with ~1.0x multiple market premium vs. peers reflective of some of that value capture… [PSX considers the] potential uplift would be further reduced by meaningful compression on the “remainco”, with the stand-alone Refining business closer to a 5.0x EBITDA business…” — Piper Sandler, March 2025"

""[At ConocoPhillips] we were always telling the Street that being an integrated company had significant value. I was an advocate late in my career that we should look seriously at splitting the company. The market was telling us that the company valuation was such that these are really two different companies. You end up with a sub-allocation of capital. I think history has shown that it was the right decision." — Sigmund Cornelius"

"Revenue base is almost entirely recurring subscriptions with attractive retention rates — Deal presentation. A portion of RCA's client agreements do not have automatic renewal clauses at the end of the subscription period. Due to the historically high retention rate and expectation that a substantial portion of the client agreements will be renewed, the associated revenue is recorded as recurring subscription revenue — SEC filings."

"And as I mentioned on the press release and on the call, we've seen it as a key driver of our ability to acquire new customer by adding the CTV element and a big screen capability into our holistic multi screen type of offering. That was -- it was more important for us to use it as acquiring new deals than to have CTV dollars by itself, which is on the neighborhood of $2 million in the quarter. — Perion Network Management (Q1 2021)"

"“My Administration would have also sold the government’s common stock in these companies at a huge profit and fully privatized the companies. The idea that the government can steal money from its citizens is socialism and is a travesty brought to you by the Obama/Biden administration. My Administration was denied the time it needed to fix the problem because of the unconstitutional restriction on firing Mel Watt.” — Donald J. Trump"

"MagnaChip recognized revenue on sales of incomplete or unshipped products...and delayed booking obsolete or aged inventory to manipulate its gross margin. The SEC detailed how Magnachip “overstated revenue for nearly two years in response to immense pressure...each quarter to meet revenue and gross margin targets that had been communicated to the public...a panoply of accounting tricks to artificially meet financial targets.” — SEC"

"“They initially got traction in lung. I think their peak year - and this is again where the company's dishonest... It plummeted for two reasons. One, you now had to pay for an organ whether you used it or not. Two, enthusiasm for XVIVO's device with Lung Bioengineering. Number three, which really put the nail on the coffin, was the 10-degree Celsius storage story.” — Prominent surgeon, director of leading academic transplant center"

"“Those items are just warnings...you're not going to run into those issues hardly ever”; “I’ve never ordered an EKG...that’s what I tell doctors, these are just warnings...technically speaking, you don’t have to do anything...you can just prescribe it, which is what we do.” — Bay Area-based speaker; “I do not run any EKG’s...I don’t check lab work...remember, most narcoleptics are...pretty damned healthy...” — Alabama-based speaker"

"“Oh, 100%, absolutely. So, I actually introduced them to [top prescriber name redacted]...there's no question. Look, they're never going to put it in writing but make no mistake, it was very clear, if there are high prescribers, then let's see if we can get them on the speakers bureau. If they're good speakers, great. But more important, that you get them on there.” — Ex-Harmony territory manager for a large region in the northeast"

"RESUELVE, ÚNICO.- Revocar en todas sus partes la Resolución de Administrativa AJAM/DJU/AL/RES/ADM/1/2015, de 2 de octubre de 2015, emitida por el Director Ejecutivo de la Autoridad Jurisdiccional Administrativa Minera – AJAM, dentro del Recurso Jerárquico presentado por la Empresa Minera Alcira S.A. representado legalmente por CAI XIMING. Registrese, comuniquese y archivese. — Cesar Navarro Miranda, MINISTRO DE MINERIA Y METALURGIA"

"First, Ms. Liu held a majority shareholder position, along with key executive management positions including legal representative, executive director and general manager, in Khorgos Huanxu Technology Co., Ltd. (“KHT”). On September 30, 2018, KHT was listed as the sole shareholder of Beijing Bairui Media Co., Ltd. (“Bairui”), a company previously controlled by YT with a subscribed capital of CNY1.5 billion (or about US$220 million)."

"We consider the poor functioning of the Board, and the lack of proper oversight to the point of not even acknowledging “Greenwashing” as a specific risk category, particularly alarming: this is especially true when considering that the “Greenwashing” risk has been arguably increased by the numerous statements around ESG personally made over the years by CEO and Chair Mr. Fink, which are inconsistent with BlackRock actual practices"

"We consider the poor functioning of the Board, and the lack of proper oversight to the point of not even acknowledging “Greenwashing” as a specific risk category, particularly alarming: this is especially true when considering that the “Greenwashing” risk has been arguably increased by the numerous statements around ESG personally made over the years by CEO and Chair Mr. Fink, which are inconsistent with BlackRock actual practices"

"Zillow's former CFO, who served for ~6 years, resigned in May 2023 with no clear explanation for the transition. He was replaced by Jeremy Hofmann (37), who previously served as Zillow's SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy. Moreover, Mr. Hofmann has never held a public company CFO position, has no functional accounting or financial reporting experience, and is relatively young for the position based on a Korn Ferry analysis."

"It has to do with, I think, what's fairly typical in a major merger, which is purchase price adjustments and valuations as to fair value and life, in our case, of satellites on orbit. So that work continued on into the quarter past the point where we provided our previous guidance. And the expected life of assets on orbit was increased modestly, which reduced the annual depreciation associated with those assets. — CEO Howard Lance"

"I would absolutely agree with it. I think the awareness around cardiac issues is growing, I think, for a couple of different reasons, I think where Apple is a big part of that, I think the Apple Watch has been an incredible lead generator for folks like ourselves that bring patients into see their cardiologists saying, look, I've got an alert alarm that's going off here. — iRhythm CEO Blackford at Goldman Sachs Conference, 6/10/25"

"“Yes. So on Matrox, again you mentioned it, about $100 million portfolio today. The gross margin and operating profits are accretive overall to Zebra but not quite to where some of the other public companies in the space are at. So again, we think that's, again, a great opportunity for us to grow and expand margins with -- across our machine vision portfolio over time as the business scales.” — CFO Winters, JPMorgan Conf. May 2022"

""We said we’d do $100 million in variable costs, and we are clearly going to do that. We also said we were going to attack the structural costs. We didn’t know exactly how big it was, but that we thought it was probably at least as big as the variable cost component, but it would take a couple of years to deliver that…directionally, everything is consistent with our expectations in that regard." — Fred Green, Q3 2009 Earnings Call"

""I've been around a long time, so I've seen a lot of these technologies come and go. I have been in the lab. There's a difference between the theory and the marketing, and what's actually true. What I've noticed with technologies like Berkeley Lights...is that even though the promise is there, operationally, it's really hard to integrate these emerging technologies into a conventional workflow." — Bristol Meyers Squibb employee #1"

""When you start thinking about some of the more complex antibodies that we were looking at like bispecifics and others, those became a little bit difficult to screen in terms of the sensitivity and the specificity of the system. So, that's where most of the field is moving. Single monoclonal antibodies are fine, but as soon as you start going toward the more complex structures, that becomes an issue." — Harbour Biomed ex-executive"

"in accordance with the application — Decision Notice (Section 29). "The proposed layout and design is based on informed assumptions regarding the likely specification of equipment available on the market at the time of construction." — Section 4.3 of Design and Access Statement. "Many different makes and models of solar panel arrays are available, each with differing size, mounting, and generating capacity." — Draft EN-3, 2.49.14."

""Do you expect any competition concerns out of any regions? And I think probably allude to Latin America more than the other regions. But do you expect to have to divest any assets in the case of any regulator issues?" — Owen Birrell, Analyst, Goldman Sachs. "No. Short answer is no. We've got a lot of experience navigating through all of that. We got good advice, good advisors and we don't expect any issues there." — CEO Response."

"Its Reputation in Tatters, Southwest Aims to Resume Normal Schedule on Friday — The New York Times; U.S. Senators blast Southwest holiday meltdown, labelled 'unmitigated disaster' — THOMSON REUTERS; Southwest Doubles CEO Pay, Neglects Boardroom Risks Despite Crisis — Forbes; Southwest Airlines meltdown highlights insular management team — FORTUNE; Southwest hit by record $140 million fine for holiday service meltdown in 2022 — CNN"

"“Nevro has always said you have no choice with lead placement, that everyone has to place the leads at T9/T10... So, each person has a different spinal cord. That's why you've got to do your job, you've got to do paresthesia fishing.” — KOL and high volume implanter; “I don't know how they're going to do both high frequency and paresthesia [low frequency] with Omnia. In fact, I think they're lying.” — KOL and high volume implanter"

""So we would like this material, this packaging to be inert and protect against the environmental factors like moisture and water and oxygen, and you name it, even what is called infestation and so on. But at the same time, we need to design at the moment it serve its purpose to immediately breakdown so it doesn't generate any visible waste. So it's a little bit of a paradox." — Packaging Expert at Global Consumer Products Company"

"In light of our issues with various acquisitions (including: purchases from owners embroiled in litigation, limited deal costs and, unexplainable and quick post-acquisition financial improvement at Smart2Pay and SafeCharge), we find it curious that Nuvei recently added a new Risk Factor warning about information received from targets, and that it has not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of information received."

"BlackRock is a textbook example of bad corporate governance due to an oversized Board (16 directors vs. the S&P500 average of 10.8), low women representation (31% vs. the S&P500 average of 33%), long tenure of directors as a symptom of lack of independence (10 yrs vs. the S&P500 average of 7.8 yrs), low presence of independent directors (81% vs. the S&P500 average of 85%), and above all, a Chairman who is also the CEO (Mr. Fink)."

"When you combine the ~€150M that WFG generates as a distribution business with the 70% of the Operating Earnings from Aegon Americas Individual Solutions segment that WFG may be responsible for, then WFG could have been responsible for €400M+ of operating earnings in 2023, ~35% and ~25% of operating earnings in the Americas and for the consolidated Company, respectively, making WFG one of Aegon’s single most impactful businesses."

"I would call him Waleed’s enforcer...he’s someone you wouldn’t be surprised to find out is knee-capping people...Tamer’s just going to tell you...‘this is how it’s going to be’...and you’re going to like it, and if you cause any trouble, I’m going to keep you in line...those movies where the guys go around and collect the protection money...that’s what he reminds me of - the guy who’s going around to collect the protection money."

"LinkedIn profiles of current and former field service engineers hint at the challenges: “tackled challenging problems regarding losing EUV light transmission through EUV optics”; “we needed to work with…troubles with our existing equipment”; “troubleshooting…equipment problem”; “cooperated with design engineers in Japan…to resolve complex maintenance issues”: “providing service support to customers encompassing…system breakdown.”"

""It is but the problem we have is that without segmenting those two numbers you don't get a good feel for the actual revenue being generated. The reporting of the number is meant to give a sense of how much money goes through their systems, but you can not drive value directly from that without understanding what the split is between the technology provisioning and the actual first full service acquiring." — Former Nuvei Employee"

""The idea emerged that we should operate a base of ten or so stores as a company. This would give us a firm base of income in the event the McDonald brothers claimed default on our contract..." — Ray Kroc / Founder; "Some of our operators had tremendous wealth but no money. And we were using McDonald's stock that was trading at 25 times earnings to buy restaurants for seven times earnings" — Fred Turner / Former President and CEO"

"“Nelson Peltz and I worked closely together on the Legg Mason board. As a board member, Nelson was focused on improving operating results and strategy. There is no doubt that Nelson was an important contributor to Legg Mason’s turnaround.” — John T. Cahill, Chairman and CEO, Kraft Foods Group, Lead Independent Director of American Airlines Group, Inc., Director of Colgate-Palmolive Company, and former Director of Legg Mason, Inc."

"[At ConocoPhillips] we were always telling the Street that being an integrated company had significant value. I was an advocate late in my career that we should look seriously at splitting the company. The market was telling us that the company valuation was such that these are really two different companies. You end up with a sub-allocation of capital. I think history has shown that it was the right decision. — Sigmund Cornelius"

"So pricing has essentially been flat for us. It's still a tough pricing environment. Although with leading -- many leading brands with a 50% share, we tend to be well positioned to put them in place if needed. So pricing, again, has tended to be pretty flat. In terms of market share versus private label, we continue to gain share and win, in general, as we have for a very long period of time. — Ron Lombardi, Q2 2020 Earnings Call"

"“We went to Nevro’s headquarters to discuss the high explant rates and for four months they had their top couple of programmers come down to my office to see a bunch of my patients and ‘optimize their therapy.’ It got to the point where I was like, we can’t do this anymore. After 18 months I stopped implanting Nevro. I realized this shit doesn’t work.” — Ex-Nevro consultant/speaker and one of the most prominent KOL’s in the space"

"We have not contacted any of the prospective target businesses that [BCAC] or [Orlando's third SPAC] had considered and rejected. We do not currently intend to contact any of such targets; however, we may do so in the future if we become aware that the valuations, operations, profits or prospects of such target business, or the benefits of any potential transaction with such target business, would be attractive. — DWAC S-1 Filing"

"My Administration would have also sold the government’s common stock in these companies at a huge profit and fully privatized the companies. The idea that the government can steal money from its citizens is socialism and is a travesty brought to you by the Obama/Biden administration. My Administration was denied the time it needed to fix the problem because of the unconstitutional restriction on firing Mel Watt. — Donald J. Trump"

""none of mine continued on it either because they didn't want to or not having much effect - overall this isn't a miracle drug, that's for sure"; "they stopped it because they just didn't see any benefit...it wasn't doing much and they were still very obese...they didn't feel it worthwhile with the ongoing assessments and all the rest of it...the benefits were not seen to be good enough to continue on it." — Trial investigator #4"

""We cannot prove it. But we cannot rule it out." — CEO Dennelind (to OCCRP). "We have been as open as we believe is possible. There are many factors we need to take into account in order to act wisely and constructively," — Ms. Ehrling. "In a crisis situation such as BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill (or TeliaSonera’s corruption coming to light), company attorneys tend to counsel publicly disclosing as little as possible." — Lord Browne."

"Verint's restructuring charge add-back appears particularly suspicious to us. We note that management has never announced a formal restructuring program; rather, it defines “restructuring costs” as “employee termination costs, facility exit costs, certain professional fees, asset impairment charges, and other costs directly associated with resource realignments incurred in reaction to changing strategies or business conditions.”"

"Heska has stated on numerous occasions that it sees an opportunity to convert existing scil customers in Europe to subscription programs, replicating its efforts with US customers that began in 2013. However, our research makes us skeptical, since (1) scil already offered subscriptions, so Heska’s year end 2020 figure is not indicative of recent conversions, and (2) IDEXX and Zoetis are laser focused on the European opportunity."

""So when our marketing team is thinking, hey, do we increase or decrease some of our, call it, paid search or digital channel investments, they're not looking at the average customer acquisition cost. They're looking at the marginal, meaning that next dollar spent, either higher or lower, and seeing what the return on is -- on that marketing dollar is. And so I think that's a big part of our secret sauce." — CEO GS Conf Sept '24"

""So if you look at our used business, the FICO on our used business which represents about 52%, 53% of all the business that we originate today is coming on at an average FICO of 680. Our new business is coming on an average FICO of 700. So it's very steady across the board. You don't see big barbells in our portfolio, which again gives us confidence when the environment does turn." — Jeffrey Jonathan Brown - CEO, Ally Financial"

"“We ... do not believe the shares will be appropriately valued under the current corporate structure. A difficult decision to spin off its downstream businesses could ultimately be the key.” — Dahlman Rose, September 2012; “Our vertical integration -- producing aluminum, rolling aluminum, and engineering unique and specialized products for our customers -- is a huge advantage.” — Dr. Kleinfeld, China Hands Magazine, July 1, 2013"

"The auditor should view related party transactions within the framework of existing pronouncements, placing primary emphasis on the adequacy of disclosure. In addition, the auditor should be aware that the substance of a particular transaction could be significantly different from its form and that financial statements should recognize the substance of particular transactions rather than merely their legal form. — AU Section 334"

""We actually did have a surprising quality issue with Twist in January, and we still don’t totally understand it... it seemed like it was going to ruin our experiment... they were very accommodating as far as redoing things without charging us and talking to us to investigate all of the possible causes, but it didn’t actually get anywhere." — Current Twist customer, professor with a protein therapeutics lab at a major university"

"“...we benefited this past quarter from a continued spike in our component MDI. We said in our third quarter call that we believe we benefited by approximately $40 million of extra margin due to this temporary spike...We believe that the fourth quarter benefited by approximately $85 million due to these constraints. We believe that these one-off conditions will abate...” — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, February 2018"

"“...we benefited this past quarter from a continued spike in our component MDI. We said in our third quarter call that we believe we benefited by approximately $40 million of extra margin due to this temporary spike...We believe that the fourth quarter benefited by approximately $85 million due to these constraints. We believe that these one-off conditions will abate...” — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, February 2018"

""There is massive opportunity within the national home service marketplace for Cinch and our partners at Porch," said Steve Upshaw, Cinch CEO. "Both of our companies share a deep passion for making life easier and providing added transparency for our clients, partners and service providers. Together, we can better anticipate, meet and exceed the expectations of today's ever-more sophisticated consumer." — Steve Upshaw, Cinch CEO"

"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"

"“I hate flying their team all over the fucking country. I hate it. I hate paying for private jets...I don’t know why we have to pay for all these ridiculous transportation invoices...they just started flying their teams and then sending us these invoices...there’s very little transparency...we just get a piece of paper...it’s just a number...they could have made it up.” — Administrator at a pre-eminent academic transplant center"

"The patient's long QT just didn't refer immediately, so the patient was admitted into observation, hooked up to a monitor, so for telemetry monitoring for heart rate and rhythm strip for 24 hours. The cardiologist wanted to get an echocardiogram to make sure the ejection fraction was standard. Basically, what they were trying to rule out was an underlying cardiac issue. - Neurologist at a large hospital system in a Midwest state"

"The patient's long QT just didn't refer immediately, so the patient was admitted into observation, hooked up to a monitor, so for telemetry monitoring for heart rate and rhythm strip for 24 hours. The cardiologist wanted to get an echocardiogram to make sure the ejection fraction was standard. Basically, what they were trying to rule out was an underlying cardiac issue. — Neurologist at a large hospital system in a Midwest state"

"“we sat around the table reading the article...the specific things that we talked about were diabetes and cardiac risk...at this point, nobody is really saying this is something we absolutely should be doing...the company thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread...you know what?...we are going to do our standard of care...we're not going to start it day one.” — Pediatric endocrinologist, division chief at an academic center"

"The purpose of this letter is to specifically outline the following two important opportunities that we believe the Board and management team should pursue in order to unlock value: (1) An exploration of all strategic alternatives for the underperforming Family Dollar business, including an outright sale; (2) An evaluation and initiation of a wide-scale market test of a multi-price point strategy at Dollar Tree bannered stores."

"Warning: Oatly regularly touts its good corporate citizenship to the environment. In its 2019 Sustainability Report, it hinted that its growth was placing strains on its short-term ability to improve its environmental footprint, but pledged to “make things right again” with various improvements. However, Spruce Point believes that it has back-tracked on this pledge. We find that it has unremedied EPA violations for over a year."