Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"Spruce Point observes that multiple DV executives have 10b5-1 trading programs to dump stock. Most recently, the Chief Legal Officer enacted a program in mid March 2023. We also observe that an unusual reference was added to CEO Zagorski's Form 4 referencing vested shares being delivered "as soon as administratively feasible following his separation from service with the Issuer." Is this an indication that he is on his way out?"

""Disney has an incredible legacy as one of the leading and most successful consumer entertainment companies in the world... But in recent years, the Company has lost its way resulting in a rapid deterioration in its financial performance from a consistent dividend-paying, high free cash flow generative business into a highly leveraged enterprise with reduced earnings power and weak free cash flow conversion," said Nelson Peltz."

""Can the Omnipod be configured with Libre 2.0 if they receive a high designation?" — Suraj Kalia, Analyst, Northland Securities; "Yes, that's a beautiful thing about this pathway that the FDA has created. If they were able to reach special controls then certainly it could be a very easy clinical path to integration of their sensor in, for example, Horizon down the road." — Shacey Petrovic, President and CEO, Insulet Corporation"

"In the fourth quarter of 2017, the Company amended a defined benefit post-retirement plan at one of its operating divisions by eliminating employer paid subsidies toward retiree medical benefits as of December 31, 2017. The Company recognized a gain on settlement of $24.6 million immediately in earnings in the fourth quarter of 2017, with an offsetting reduction to net defined employee benefit liabilities — Annual Report p. 113"

"I expect to get into clinical studies early part of next year on our path to commercialization of the 2025 time frame. So I remain excited about that. I think we’ve learned a lot about our capabilities in terms of algorithms and how to leverage our clinical back end and the options kind of available to us from a strategy standpoint. So excited about where that’s headed. — iRhythm CFO Wilson at Morgan Stanley Conference, 9/13/23"

""How do you measure success? The answer is right here. We launched in the US and within 9 months there was a national oat milk shortage. It's cool but not cool because you want to supply that. We believe the truth about the underlying cause of the shortage is much more grim and a function of management's ineptitude and the harmful side effects of producing oat milk." — John Schoolcraft, Oatly's Creative Director of Mind Control"

""Oatly's growth has been impressive. It has contributed to U.S. sales of oat milk going from $6 million in 2018 to about $40 million in 2019." — THE RISE OF OATLY, UMGAS Magazine; "From 2018 to 2019, sales of oat milk skyrocketed from $6 million to nearly $40 million, Genevieve Aronson, VP of communications at Nielsen, told CNBC Make It." — How Oatly went from a decades-old obscure brand to a $10 billion IPO, CNBC, May 20, 2021"

""I used a bunch of products like Hada Labo premium, Eucerin and La Roche Posay. Nothing helped until I decided to try out this one." — Amazon (US customer review). "This lotion is a saviour to all dry skin beauties... None of the Indian creams have worked for me, Nivea, Dove etc." — Amazon (India customer review). "This product is really hydrating... Also really good as a night time mask" — Lazada (Philippines customer review)."

"“Obviously, if you’ve walked in their store lately, one of the things that concerns me is they’re starting to bring in more SKUs outside of flooring. They’re carrying vanities and faucets. Sometimes when your companies take their focus off of the core, it hurts them. I think that tells me a couple of things. It tells me that they’re starting to struggle for comps as they run out of new store growth.” — Former Industry Executive"

""So I should see in your modeling - we expect to generate FCF of roughly $400M in FY 2018, taking into account incremental capital expenditure up to $100M associated with the multiyear development of our new campuses in Israel. Normalizing for this capital expenditure, we expect FCF of roughly $500M in FY 2018.... This investment, if consummated, will be financed from internal cash resources" — Tamar Rapaport-Dagim, CFO, Amdocs"

"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."

"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."

"Simultaneously with the arrangements between Ginkgo and each of Ayana Bio, LLC and Verb Biotics, LLC, Cascade Investment L.L.C. and entities affiliated with Viking Global Opportunities Illiquid Investments Sub-Master LP, each of which hold more than 5% of Ginkgo’s outstanding capital stock, invested approximately $7.5 million and $22.5 million, respectively, in each company. — Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp prospectus 8/13/2021"

"Latin America operating profit trended down during the fourth quarter and full-year as compared to last year... We have reduced both variable and fixed costs in our Latin America business, which has driven profit improvement since the low point during the second quarter of 2017. Conditions are stabilizing in Brazil, and we expect improving profitability in '18 and beyond from the actions we have taken. — Bemis Q4 2017 Ended Dec"

""Yes, and Scott, so let's go back to 2015, you saw that we had about a 60% conversion rate of EBITDA to free cash flow* and through what you have seen this year particularly for this quarter we are in line with that performance. So I will say the expectation moving forward around free cash flow generation to EBITDA will we continue to be at that 60% level, I think we will be close." — Jody Tusa (former CFO), Q3'16 Earnings Call"

"“Oh really? I didn’t know that.” — Transplant surgeon and surgical director at a high-volume academic center in the western US; “Their surgical procurement is the black box that I’ve never known anything about. Here I am thinking a national organ program could be surgeons from accredited centers who are hired guns for the company. But that’s such a simplistic assumption.” — Transplant hepatologist Massachusetts General Hospital"

"CEO Fayer’s businesses have each come under scrutiny. His current biography says he founded Pivotal Payments (now Nuvei) in 2003. However, it doesn’t talk about the fact that his Company PaySystems was still operating in 2004. PaySystems ended poorly with consumers putting up websites such as PaySystemsFraud.com. Even today, industry reviews claim that Nuvei is nothing more than a continuation of Pivotal’s old shady practices."

"During the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements for exports to China and Country Groups D:1, D:4, and D:5 (including but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S RTX 4090, GB200 NVL72, and B200."

"Given that Ginkgo is simply engineering yeast and doing so with the same third-party equipment others use, we were not surprised that former employees indicated the "Foundry" is nothing special: "not unique"; just standard small molecule screens people have done for decades; robotics are nothing innovative, just a "schtick" around automated liquid handlings; no unique equipment or IP; nothing "that other companies don't have.""

"During the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements for exports to China and Country Groups D:1, D:4, and D:5 (including but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S RTX 4090, GB200 NVL72, and B200."

"I think the government is working their way down. Because what CMS does is like, what’s a reasonable cost? Well, this stuff is all new, so they’ve never established what reasonable costs are. I think what they’re going to do is I think they’re going to come in and they’re going to establish ‘reasonable cost.’ And now, all of a sudden, the Hawker 800 that costs $12 million does not make sense because that’s not reasonable cost."

"Meanwhile, Jeffrey Jolcover of Las Vegas, who worked for the state from 1977 to 1979, faces a prison term of up to 25 years. Standing next to his attorney in federal court Thursday morning, Joseph Cronin of Reno, Jolcover pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering in connection with the sales of securities to the public in wireless television systems. — Las Vegas Sun"

"“The silicon-carbon cell performance in slide 19, I think again you see the discharge energy is in percentage, which really, really worries me because lithium-ion cells do not look like that at all. If you look at some of the Sila Nanotechnology data, 1000 cycles is very flat. They always pick a bad cell to compare their cell to. The gray reference is not state of the art carbon anode.” — Leading solid-state battery researcher"

""The limitation is that you want to get the fidelity of that two-qubit interaction as close to zero as possible, and it's not even very close to zero right now. And it hasn't been for many years." — Ex-IonQ employee, member of technical staff; "100-ish qubits, that's right." — Leading quantum computing scientist; "they're not going to solve any real-world problem." — IBM quantum computing researcher with expertise in ion-traps"

"“I don’t have an exact count. Less than a handful, maybe three or four, not more than that. Over a year, year-and-a-half.” — Executive of a key IonQ partner, QCWare; “Right now, there’s no money involved in the current partnership we have. We just tell them we want access to the latest and greatest machine... there’s no money changing hands between QC Ware or IonQ in this partnership.” — Executive of a key IonQ partner, QCWare"

"Spike TV has turned the venerable commercial break into a commercial marathon. During certain broadcasts of "Entourage," the Viacom cable channel has quietly run ad breaks ranging anywhere from six minutes in length to something approaching an eyebrow-raising 10 minutes in total. In some cases, the ad breaks are longer than segments of the show, episodes of which have in recent weeks taken as long as 48 minutes to run. — AdAge"

""But the one that's really become very important to us is asset utilization. And if I think of how I define that, I don't care if you're looking at a casting furnace, a forging press, machine tools, it's finding the ability to create more headroom, more opportunity, more casting time, more cut time, chip time, whatever it is, that creates the opportunity to put more volume over the same asset." — Mark Donegan, December 3, 2014"

""My question is just on your M&A pipeline. You had a very busy first half in '23, but it seems like the pace of M&A has slowed and maybe just talk through that. I know it's lumpy, but is there a lack of appropriate targets out there, factor valuation? Just maybe some thoughts there." — CIBC Analyst; "No, no, absolutely not. I think it's not about the weak pipeline or the weak backlog of potential acquisitions." — CEO L'Heureux"

"Exploration licenses are amortised over the shorter of the term of the license and their expected useful economic lives. All licenses recorded as at 31 December 2019 have a license term of 9 years. A full impairment charge was made in 2013 as no revenue arising from the licences have yet been agreed or forecast with sufficient levels of certainty. — UK Seabed Resources Limited 2019 Annual Report filed at the UK Companies House"

"In June 2019, the Company entered into multiple agreements with Baker Hughes Company ("Baker Hughes") under which Baker Hughes received a three-year subscription to use the Company's software. These agreements were revised in June 2020 to extend the term to five years and modify the subscription fees due. Under the revised agreements, Baker Hughes has made minimum, non-cancelable revenue commitments... — SEC Filings Disclosure"

"When it comes to strengthening our core business, we remain focused on the potential of our market-leading Cathedral City brand. In the first quarter, we entered into a long-term exclusive partnership with Hochland to expand distribution of our market-leading Cathedral City brand into Germany, starting in the fourth quarter of fiscal '22, and we continue to ramp up our distribution to North America. — Saputo Q2 2022 / Nov 2021"

"“the package insert specifically talks about all of these things...the idea is that physicians need to take care of that.” — Soleno CEO; “so far, the company has received reports of 7 patients experiencing SAE"s that led to hospitalizations, out of hundreds of start forms (646 by June 30); all of these patients have since recovered.” — Guggenheim Securities (Aug 18, 2025: “Flash Note”/“SLNO: Notes from Mgmt/Investor Meetings”)"

"It's still fairly early, and I can't say a ton...We're pushing in directions that have been not something that other folks have looked at because they don't look at microbes. To the extent that it can compete against other screening technologies, the jury is still out. It's sort of a bet that we've taken with Berkeley Lights to find out if that's the case. That's why I was a little bit qualified. — Gingko Bioworks Executive #1"

""As we look to fiscal '19, we believe there is a unique opportunity to deliver value to our stakeholders beyond M&A by returning capital to shareholders through the announced $50 million share repurchase. We see this as an incremental way to add shareholder value without inhibiting our long-term ability to invest in brand building, delever and pursue future M&A opportunities." — Christine Sacco, CFO, Q4 2018 Call, May 10, 2018"

"“There’s probably 120 global physicians that represent the majority of Nevro’s total revenue. If each of those guys is doing, like a mega Nevro guy doing 70 to 100 devices a year, that’s like $300 million. The number of physicians doing more than 40 implants a year would surprise you. It’s a very small number.” — Former Nevro executive; “90% of implants are still done by the top 10% of doctors.” — KOL and high volume implanter"

""In most cases, on the food and retail side, customers outright buy the equipment. On the heavy manufacturing side, you may have 40% to 60% of those customers lease the equipment. Because we don't know what our deals are yet for those years, I can't tell you what we expect in terms of what the mix is between capital purchases and lease financing deals.... 50% of our shipments will be in food." — Gerry Anderson, CFO, Plug Power"

""Again, there's a lot that's not really in there...77 people, that's such a small thing...I'm just so surprised the FDA didn't question that, that almost half of the people dropped out before the randomized withdrawal study...when I finally read the final-final, I was just kind of, huh...that is just so few people...the data...just really isn't compelling enough." — KOL in the PWS field; involved with Soleno's clinical program"

"And one of the reasons why I also left MSCI is because I anticipated that there's a very strong saturation of the market with ESG or ratings, which is the product which MSCI can charge the most for. And any other products which are in the family of ESG family of products, ESG family of products, they are nowhere close in terms of how much value they bring to the client base. Plus, they're not sticky and they're not as pricey."

"“The last set of initiatives that we took you through several years ago, the $1 billion to $1.5 billion in EBIT this year, are paying off.” — CEO Bob Jordan, October 2023; “... About $1.5 billion in incremental year-over-year pre-tax profit from our network optimization efforts and the contributions from our portfolio of strategic initiatives, is driving us to expect additional revenue records.” — CEO Bob Jordan, January 2024"

""The last set of initiatives that we took you through several years ago, the $1 billion to $1.5 billion in EBIT this year, are paying off." — CEO Bob Jordan, October 2023; "... About $1.5 billion in incremental year-over-year pre-tax profit from our network optimization efforts and the contributions from our portfolio of strategic initiatives, is driving us to expect additional revenue records." — CEO Bob Jordan, January 2024"

""We have identified and are currently reviewing certain customer transactions for which revenue was recognized and reported in the consolidated financial statements of Stratus Technologies International, S.à r.l. for fiscal 2004 and the first quarter of fiscal 2005... the consolidated financial statements... should not be relied upon as an accurate reflection of our financial results for these periods." — Stratus Technologies"

""You need to support the volume to attract the capital," said David Field, chief executive of OneRoof Energy Inc., a solar firm that is in the process of liquidating after it ran out of money late year. "You find yourself in a vicious cycle." — David Field, OneRoof Energy Inc. CEO; "There has been a shift in customer preference for loans" rather than leases, Mosaic Chief Executive Billy Parish said. — Billy Parish, Mosaic CEO"

"“they don’t offer anything innovative” — Major pharma customer; “go bankrupt or collapse” — Major pharma customer; “fairly known problem” — Industry executive; “no advantage” — Ex-Twist director-level employee; “they ask for a really long time” — Novartis; “always been slower than competitors” — Novartis; “rarely using Twist now” — Ex-Twist employee; “Definitely we were frustrated, so we just walked away.” — Ex-Twist employee"

"“Therefore, in order to restore the balance between safety and soundness and mission, FHFA has placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. That is a statutory process designed to stabilize a troubled institution with the objective of returning the entities to normal business operations. FHFA will act as the conservator to operate the Enterprises until they are stabilized.” — James Lockhart, FHFA Director, 9/7/2008"

"“The last set of initiatives that we took you through several years ago, the $1 billion to $1.5 billion in EBIT this year, are paying off.” — CEO Bob Jordan, October 2023; “... About $1.5 billion in incremental year-over-year pre-tax profit from our network optimization efforts and the contributions from our portfolio of strategic initiatives, is driving us to expect additional revenue records.” — CEO Bob Jordan, January 2024"

"“Therefore, in order to restore the balance between safety and soundness and mission, FHFA has placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. That is a statutory process designed to stabilize a troubled institution with the objective of returning the entities to normal business operations. FHFA will act as the conservator to operate the Enterprises until they are stabilized.” — James Lockhart, FHFA Director, 9/7/2008"

"“The last set of initiatives that we took you through several years ago, the $1 billion to $1.5 billion in EBIT this year, are paying off.” — CEO Bob Jordan, October 2023; “... About $1.5 billion in incremental year-over-year pre-tax profit from our network optimization efforts and the contributions from our portfolio of strategic initiatives, is driving us to expect additional revenue records.” — CEO Bob Jordan, January 2024"

"As a remuneration, Ströer Sales & Services GmbH receives a percentage of the turnover generated with the distribution of the relevant advertising units, regularly 10%. Ströer Sales & Services GmbH is obliged to reimburse SAW for certain costs incurred when affixing posters on the advertising units, if and to the extent that Ströer Sales & Services GmbH is paid for these costs by the relevant customer. — Ströer 2010 prospectus"

"“Therefore, in order to restore the balance between safety and soundness and mission, FHFA has placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. That is a statutory process designed to stabilize a troubled institution with the objective of returning the entities to normal business operations. FHFA will act as the conservator to operate the Enterprises until they are stabilized.” — James Lockhart, FHFA Director, 9/7/2008"

"“when you ask questions...you get a bunch of roundabout answers...oh sorry, we mixed up that time zone because it was central times versus eastern time.” ... “if you mix up the time zones, I don’t know...it’s their team that racks up the price...all these added fees like a used car salesman...it’s not what we signed up for, nor is it what we need.” — Veteran transplant administrator/executive at Massachusetts General Hospital"

"“You’ll note that some of these questions point to potential material misstatements in SOFI’s financial reports. It’s fair to assume that if we’re misunderstanding any important facts, you’ll correct the record. Given the lack of responses the past three weeks, it should be fair to assume that if you do not respond this time, it’s because there are not “company favorable” replies you can offer.” — Muddy Waters to CFO Lapointe"

"“The last set of initiatives that we took you through several years ago, the $1 billion to $1.5 billion in EBIT this year, are paying off.” — CEO Bob Jordan, October 2023; “... About $1.5 billion in incremental year-over-year pre-tax profit from our network optimization efforts and the contributions from our portfolio of strategic initiatives, is driving us to expect additional revenue records.” — CEO Bob Jordan, January 2024"

""Then we realized that the numbers were overstated in several markets by 15% to 20%." It turned out that some florists who were transferring orders to other shops had reported total sales, and not just their commissions, as revenue. -- Greg Royer, Director. "There was a huge Bermuda Triangle between corporate management and the mom-and-pop retailers who didn't know what P&L; and EBITDA are." -- Karen Akin, Apples to Zinnias."

""we're already integrated the home health agencies of Almost Family into Homecare Homebase, which is the same platform that's being used at LHC." — C. Steven Guenthner, President, Financial Officer, Treasurer & Secretary, AFAM. "we have begun to convert Almost Family agencies to the LHCG Group instance of Homecare Homebase. This conversion will last through the second quarter of 2019." — Donald Stelly, President & COO, LHCG."

"During 2018, we continued to expand our strong legacy propulsion franchises on the Standard Missile, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 ("PAC-3"), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense ("THAAD") and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System ("GMLRS") missile propulsion systems. These franchise programs all experienced backlog growth during 2018, and continue to be globally deployed in support of U.S. and allied armed forces. — AJRD 10-K"

"Durham County Council reconsider planning application DM/23/01868/FPA as the Planning Committee's decision to approve was based on material errors of fact. These errors are threefold: error as to the Direct Current ("DC") capacity, error in the approach to overplanting, and error as to community benefits. — Goodenough Solicitors letter to Durham County Council on Hett Moor Farm - Cover Letter, 9 July 2024, Appendix 11, p. 1."

""You bring up a very good points...you are hearing information that a lot of people haven't heard." — Endocrinologist #5; "this is not good...this is not good at all" — Endocrinologist #5; "well, they referred to [chuckles] an FDA website...it is extra work, which is always a pain...which sounds weird as doctors, but to go through all this data....no, you're absolutely right...I can't argue with you...." — Endocrinologist #5"

"“I think we found out that, in my opinion, some of the people coming in knew what they should be looking for as far as the scores on the questionnaire form. So, they come in 13, 13, 13, after you get three or four 13s, I said, well, why are we all getting 13? ... You're desperate. You want to do anything for your child... It's human nature, right?” — Trial investigator and physician; one of the leading KOL's in the PWS field"

"“We will not stand back idly and watch as PaySystems strips us of our money and our dreams” — PaySystemsFraud.com. "This blog is dedicated to all those unfortunate customers of Pivotal Payments who would like to vent their frustration or expose the company for the incompetent liars they really are" — PivotalPaymentsSucks Blog. "Nuvei seems content to continue following the same, old shady practices...." — Merchant Maverick."

"So there are a lot of benefits of separation. It really does allow a level of focus and a level of scrutiny in specific areas that you might not have as part of a broader conglomerate. And furthermore, we really get to optimize things for us specifically versus a broader organization. And so part of the reason we're going to be able to expand margin are some of the benefits of becoming a stand-alone company. — GE HealthCare"