Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"The business in Europe, which is, let's say, the purest general Flexibles business that we have at scale, which is a $3 billion-plus business had good sales growth last year and picked up momentum in the second half. So if anything, that business you would say is winning in the market and that's the expectation and it's been the experience as well. — CEO Delia, FY 2018 Earnings Call Aug 2018"

"In an interview this week with The Air Current, Archer chief technology officer Tom Muniz confirmed that the company now plans to certify Midnight with four-bladed lifting propellers, rather than the original two-bladed propellers that are currently installed — The Air Current; Each of those aircraft will feature our production 4-blade rear propeller — Archer Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript"

""These impressive one-year efficacy results underscore the advanced catheter design of the Globe PF System," said Dr. Vivek Reddy, Co-Principal Investigator from The Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital, New York. "Given the excellent durability achieved by the Globe PF System, the efficacy result is likely approaching the limit of what we can achieve with PV isolation alone." — Dr. Vivek Reddy"

"Management presents Gross and Net Contracted Customer Value (CCV) as a key metric to evaluate Sunnova. As seen in the Company's investor presentation, a slight change in the discount rate from 6% to 4% results in a $340 million difference to Gross and Net CCV (a ~15% and ~40% difference). With such slight changes to numerous assumptions, how can this metric be predicted with any confidence?"

"Zebra changed its reporting of Contractual Obligations after 2020 and stopped disclosing that it did not have “take-or-pay arrangements.” However, recall on the previous slide that Zebra paid a $10 million to reduce its obligation to purchase inventory from a 2021 agreement. Therefore, it appears that Zebra did have an arrangement like a take-or-pay arrangement but chose not to disclose it."

"In addition to capital, what entrepreneurs really need is access to the broad expertise required to build a successful retail business. We see a tremendous opportunity to leverage Campfire's collective experience and relationships to further brand and scale FIGS to transform this $9 billion unbranded industry. — Christine Day, Partner at Campfire, current CEO of Luvo and ex-CEO of lululemon"

"Over the last several years, your Board and management team have taken strategic actions to transform SandRidge into the leading operator in the Mississippian Lime play of northern Oklahoma and western Kansas. These actions have established SandRidge as an industry leader in what is widely considered to be one of the most valuable oil-rich basins in the United States. — SandRidge Management"

"We purchase inventory in advance based on expected demand for our products, and if demand is not as expected, we may have insufficient or excess inventory, which could adversely impact our financial position. Our manufacturing lead times are generally 8 to 16 weeks and we often build inventory in advance of customer orders based on our forecast of future customer orders — MPWR Annual Report"

""[The] biggest opportunity is to find a way to go to market and deliver your product in a 2017 manner vs. a 1987 manner... I don't think you need as many people as you do." — Former VP Business Transformation; "[An] excessive percent of headcount is necessary to help them differentiate on service; competitive products [are] designed for self-sufficiency." — Former VP Business Transformation"

""If this is a real dendrite-resistance achievement, it needs to be done at 30-degrees Celsius. Why did the temperature go up? What happened at 30C? That's something we really want to know. That kind of trick for collaging data together from different cell setups is really a big no-no. That's a red flag. Show me the 30-degree Celsius data." — Leading solid-state battery expert and researcher"

"“Someone who still works on that project says that it's still a very arts and crafts-like process, which means it's very sensitive to who's doing it, so that's why it's probably not robust.” — Former employee; “The chances of this getting broken are probably astronomically high. For sure it was high in what I saw. The separator itself would break for manual labor reasons.” — Former employee"

"For the twelve-month period ended on December 31, 2018, the Specialty Cheese Business generated revenues of approximately A$192 million (CDN$182 million) and later revised at closing to For the twelve-month period ended on December 31, 2018, the Specialty Cheese Business generated revenues of approximately A$192 million (approximately CDN$171.1 million). — Saputo 2018 and 2019 Annual Report"

"The promise of higher oil was definitely used as a reason for why we could see an acceleration in sales. The biggest input in that [calculator] equation is oil prices... I don't think most of our customers expect to be using this for the next 10 years. — XL Former Employee D; Someone would probably not save money at $13k [per kit] on a pure fuel basis. — Fleet Manager and Former XL Customer"

"“The status quo is no longer acceptable! The Board must steer and oversee a review of the operating performance and hold management accountable for improvement. I welcome the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and work side-by-side with Phillips 66 employees to drive improvement - we need their collective knowledge and buy in to quickly turn the operating performance around.” — Brian Coffman"

"Based on the 2023 AGM proxy filing list of companies used as a reference for compensation benchmarking purposes. These are companies “that are in our industry or have similar lines of business, are competitors for our executive talent, are large, complex organizations with global reach and / or similarly sized from a revenue and market capitalization perspective” — Bluebell Capital Partners"

"“Nevro cherry-picked the lowest hanging fruit at launch. They went to the 25 best places like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta. They went to teaching institutions who are receptive to new stuff. It’s a lot easier to get from 0% to 15% share than from 15% to 30%. Zero to 3% is hard, 3% to 10% is easy, and after 15% it’s trying to grow in Buffalo versus New York City.” — Medtronic SCS executive"

"This strategy is completely incoherent — Foreign Buyside Analyst; The management team seems to think highly of K27, but the reality is that it is not working well. — Domestic Buyside Analyst; There are a lot of things in the plan that are unclear. — Domestic Buyside Analyst; We often hear about abstract concepts, but we are not clear on their specific initiatives. — Domestic Buyside Analyst"

"Our child has a new endo and while speaking with them I got into the topic of vykat and if they've prescribed it. They stated they had patients (I'm assuming in the trial?) that were shaving their foreheads from the excessive hair growth. Was this reported at all? I understand hirsutism is a side effect but was it on random body parts? — Anonymous member, Prader-Willi Support Facebook group"

"“The cost is absolutely outrageous...my concern is certainly, is this cost-effective? And if they are charging half a million to $1 million per person, that is very expensive for a drug that isn’t that novel ...it’s hard to justify the cost of the diazoxide, the normal formulation, which the Proglycem is about $800 a bottle.” — Trial investigator, endocrinologist, key opinion leader for PWS"

"the HQ-CT score, it’s not a great marker...it’s a subjective core...will vary depending on...whether it’s the mom, dad, or grandparents; the median score of 20, that’s a very high score...most of my patients are nowhere near that...is it just placebo effect goes down for the score from 23 down to 15...is that really the drug? — Trial investigator, endocrinologist, key opinion leader for PWS"

""The 071 hit the ground running and we're getting great feedback. And we estimate that we're somewhere around 15% of this market already, well ahead of our plans. We see ourselves getting to 25% by the end of the fiscal year and we think we'll eventually get to 50% of this aspiration market." — Geoffrey Martha, Executive Vice President and President of Restorative Therapies Group, Medtronic"

"Spousal Liability. Your spouse must sign a document that makes your spouse liable for all financial obligations under the franchise agreement even though your spouse has no ownership interest ... This guarantee will place both your and your spouse's marital and personal assets, perhaps including your house, at risk if your franchise fails. — Goosehead Insurance Franchise Disclosure Document"

"No. TSMC is not happy with Lasertec so far...It's the throughput. It's very expensive, but the throughput is slow. TSMC just wants to do quite frequent monitoring. Every day, they check the mask. A quick check. If you go through a quick check, the best resolution is not necessary. It's not necessary. — Longtime ex-TSMC procurement executive who introduced Lasertec inspection tools into TSMC"

"Management goes to great lengths to convince investors that they’re transparent and respond to investor feedback on more disclosure. However, their statements about being “open to the conversation” seem hallow and their attempts to justify failing to do so (“candidly, I’m not quite sure how much more detail we could provide“) suggests they’re unlikely to increase transparency meaningfully."

"LODE's recent proxy statement says it has at least 12 employees, yet at least 3 employees (including the CEO) are involved with investor relations and communications. Why does such a lean and thinly capitalized company have more people in communications than finance and accounting roles? Furthermore, why has LODE not filled these two vacancies: Chief Accounting and Chief Financial Officer?"

"Based on our review of LinkedIn and other sources, we believe a large volume of CCTs in the US are located in remote locations. Not only does this suggest the opportunity for questionable reimbursement practices on the part of iRhythm, but we believe it also calls into question iRhythm management’s numerous claims related to the build-out of its CCT “Center of Excellence” in San Francisco."

"Mr. Prittie’s alleged shortcomings were tied to his perceived failure to come to grips with Tyler and OneMove’s concerns over the Company’s financial status, share price performance, leadership, strategic vision and strategy, corporate governance, CEO compensation, excessive M&A activity, debt leverage to cash flow ratios and the lack of guardrails around senior management decision making."

"Another ex-manufacturing employee stated that Twist’s workflow is just “standard molecular biology” steps, and that the chip in fact creates time-consuming bottlenecks such as the need for amplification, as the chip can only product negligible amounts of DNA material, which has to then be scaled 1000x with lab personnel performing a dizzying array of repetitive manuals tasks over 16 hours."

"The Street believes that VRNT shares trade at a ~35% discount to SaaS peers. However, we estimate that VRNT trades just above the industry median, despite its chronically low organic growth, destructive acquisitions, and inability to generate cash flow growth despite frequent M&A – a stark contrast to the many fast-growing and highly-profitable true cloud businesses which occupy the space."

"if you’re hyperglycemic, I don’t know how it’s going to get better by going up more slowly on the dose or then you hold it a lower dose...is that okay?...somebody did bring that up, and they were like, oh, we just go up more slowly...I’m not sure...by that point, it may be too late...because if you already have type 2 diabetes and you’re making it worse, are you really helping the problem?"

""The estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus may prove to be inaccurate. Market opportunity estimates and growth forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate, including as a result of any of the risks described in this prospectus." — FIGS IPO Prospectus, p. 52"

""During the fourth quarter, we achieved our strategic priority targets for shareholder distributions and asset dispositions." — Mark Lashier, January 31, 2025; "Yesterday afternoon PSX announced it will acquire Pinnacle Midstream for $550mm... While the deal looks fine on its own, we suspect investors will react negatively to PSX's decision on capital allocation." — TPH & Co., May 21, 2024"

""The Meridian-Wylie Route represents a significant component of NS's commercial and operational offerings to intermodal customers [...] Preserving NS's ability to meet its intermodal customers' needs with competitive rates and services over that line is a primary focus for NS." — Trains.com, "Norfolk Southern says CPKC merger threatens Meridian Speedway intermodal business," March 2, 2022."

""Baker Hughes is a marriage that is not working. The people are not happy. They can't sell the C3 product. It's a nightmare for them to sell it. The culture of C3 is so different that they can't work together." — Former C3 employee; "Baker Hughes just invested and entered a JV with a company called Augury and they can do everything that C3 is currently doing for them." — Former C3 employee"

"“Plans that invoke the cram down power often provide for installment payments over a period of years rather than a single payment. In such circumstances, the amount of each installment must be calibrated to ensure that, over time, the creditor receives disbursements whose total present value equals or exceeds that of the allowed claim.” — Opinion of Justice Stevens, Till v. SCS Credit Corp"

"Notwithstanding the three prior clauses [in Article 7.1], statements (including without limitation those Mr. Jiang Nanchun from Focus Media Holdings Ltd. made to the principal of Party A on November 27, 2009) as to why Party B is assigning the equity to Party A, whether oral or written, shall be guaranteed by Party B and Party B's representative. — Equity assignment contract Article 7.1(4)"

"“I've said this many times before, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the TiO2 industry as much as this is a business that when you start looking at the core performance, if you look at Huntsman without TiO2, we would be going into 2016 here...with some of the highest margins we've ever had in our history and with better than GDP growth.” — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, April 2016"

"In 2019, CPIPG issued bonds in Hong Kong Dollars and US Dollars totaling €362 million equivalent via our EMTN programme, and completed schuldschein loans for €170 million. Proceeds were used to refinance debt including a bridge loan related to our UK acquisition and drawings under our revolving credit facility; some of the proceeds will also be held in cash. — CPI PG 2018 Management Report"

"There’s not really people who are coming out marketing or branding getting into the top ranks — Kao Japan Former Brand Manager, Oasis Interview, 2023. Kao’s CMO is effectively Nishiguchi... [he] is more of a sales guy and does not have the experience or ability to manage brands... Kao really should bring in a CMO from outside — Kao Former, Corporate Strategy Division, Oasis Interview 2023."

"“I was actually one of the top three surgeons...I probably did 100 to 150 livers.” — Former procurement surgeon. “I see some transplant centers are using them on so many organs that don't need to go on the pump.” — Former procurement surgeon. “Yeah, some centers are using them as a recovery service as long as somebody else is going to pay this chunk of money.” — Former procurement surgeon."

""it's pretty quiet overall... what I'm not hearing people say, when can I get my hands on Vykat? Because we all know diazoxide, and we all know the problems with it. It's not like we're clueless. I'll put it this way...this somewhat surprising and out of the blue approval that I don't think any of us were quite expecting." — PWS endocrinologist #1; "that's rubbish" — PWS endocrinologist #1"

"I know it doesn't fully work. It's just part of the cocktail, and it's harmless — Prescriber #5. I think that this drug is a little 'meh' — Prescriber #6. I haven't had a single patient who said, oh my god, this is so much better — Prescriber #6. it's been harder...I've been writing more letters and appeals...pain in the ass to prescribe — Prescriber #7. I do not run EKG's — Prescriber #8."

"“there’s always pressure...they put reps in a very awkward position...you want to make money, and not that I would do it, but like the whole cataplexy thing, for instance....” “I’m glad to be out of pharma now, that’s all I could say...the way that they compensate, you have to be a very ethical person....” — Ex-Harmony territory manager for a large region in the southeast across two states"

"“Marvell has also received that award...[it] is really sitting inside a cubicle that nobody uses...it’s not something that we write home about...yeah we’ll do a press release...but nobody talks about it”; “Intel is not a cutting-edge company in this day and age by any means...so if Intel is giving out awards...it’s not even worth its weight in salt.” — Senior employee at Marvell Technology"

"In the wake of the Company's FTC settlement for allegedly deceiving customers by saying they were "pre-approved" for financial products, Credit Karma offered users its "Karma Guarantee", whereby it would pay consumers $50 if they were rejected for products where approval was guaranteed. We note that a number of consumer complaints allege the Company did not follow through on that promise."

"Playtika indirectly puts a lot of pressure on and gives incentives to the studio to monetize their game very aggressively this is immediately noticeable in the player reviews, all saying that the game is very addictive but at a certain point, it is not possible to keep unlocking new designs and progressing without spending a lot of money, making the game "boring" for most users very fast."

"“The nuance here is that Allied is required to mark to long term value, not mark to market.” — Sell side analyst from one of Allied’s underwriters. “We’re committed to transparency and full disclosure.” — Mr. Walton, May 16th conference call. “In today’s senior loan environment we are seeing sales as well as discounts that are clearly in the money.” — Mr. Walton, May 29th conference call."

"The status quo is no longer acceptable! The Board must steer and oversee a review of the operating performance and hold management accountable for improvement. I welcome the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and work side-by-side with Phillips 66 employees to drive improvement - we need their collective knowledge and buy in to quickly turn the operating performance around. — Brian Coffman"

""It's not surprising to me [that big pharma/biotech customers don't utilize their machines much] because they have two applications they talk about. There's so much more you have to do once you discover the antibody, and the Beacon accelerated a part of that total workflow, but it didn't accelerate everything else, so you push the bottleneck somewhere else." — Gingko Bioworks executive #1"

"Compensation to China sales employees and service fees to China licensed business providers totaling $87.3 million $79.1 million and $70.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2010, 2009 and 2008, respectively, are included in selling, general and administrative expenses while distributor compensation for all other countries is included in royalty overrides. — Herbalife 2010 Form 10-K"

""ITG [USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group] previously notified you of these calls and provided you access to supporting data identifying each call—including a recording of the illegal robocall" and that "the numerous traceback notices directed to Inteliquent, Inc. indicate that you are apparently routing and transmitting illegal robocall traffic knowingly." — May 2022, FTC Warning Letter"

"Limbach trades at over 18x our estimate for its FY26E Adj. EBITDA, a large premium when compared to peers. We believe this premium is unwarranted considering the Company's decelerating organic revenue growth, non-existent free cash flow growth, and its aggressive accounting methods which we believe may overstate earnings quality and obscure the true underlying volatility of the business."

"it just blows my mind that they’re hiring people who are not qualified...I see them struggle...I talk to the people that run their devices...I’m standing next to them when they’re stressing and sweating and freaking out and not knowing what to do and calling support lines and trying to pull things up on iPads...I’ve stepped in several times to help them...when they can’t pull it together"

"“GT's management has argued that both of these issues, pricing and market share, can be improved through more direct control of distribution. And GT has recently taken a dramatic step in this direction through the formation of Tirehub, a new Wholesale Distribution JV with Bridgestone; but, this has introduced a number of very significant risks.” — Rod Lache, Deutsche Bank, April 25, 2018"

""We put a lot of their pumps in our systems. So it makes a lot of sense. They are a very complementary company with what we do with water. They've always been viewed as a peer of ours because we both operate in the water treatment segment or the water segment as a whole. But never as a competitor of ours, more of a partner." — Evoqua CEO Keating, Pittsburgh Business Journal, Jan 23, 2023"

"“You have that good slide that you used where you talk about the core and the adjacencies and expansion markets and growing expected longer-term mid-single, high single and low double digit, respectively. I'm just wondering, in your outlook for the next year, can you frame it in terms of those 3 categories, what you're expecting for growth in those 3 categories.” — Blair Analyst, Q1 2024"

"More than 70 of our top 100 accounts now use Context Control. — CFO Pergola; 80 of our top 100 accounts now use Context Control for avoidance, up from 76 of our top 100 accounts last quarter. — CEO Utzschneider; We launched context control, Actually, in the height of Covid, in March of 2020... In the US alone, 86 of our top 100 advertisers have adopted context control. — CEO Utzschneider"

"We have a clear point of view that the future of search is an integrated experience across search, answers, chat and creating... The value proposition that we see for publishers specifically as we go forward is driving more traffic and clicks - not less - and ensuring that publishers and partners earn more money. — Ms. Kya Sainsbury-Carter, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Advertising"

"“Rather than say that it's the volume, it's always better to move forward with a better product mix in terms of the profitability.” — Nagamori (Q1 2012 call). “I believe that the capacity question was in regard to spindle motors and in terms of excess capacity there, whereas there are three factories in Thailand currently, the idea is to reduce by one factory.” — Nagamori (Q2 2012 call)."

"“Fuji has acquired Hitachi Medical Systems and Sonosite in the U.S., each for a billion dollars or more. They are very serious about the U.S. market. They have the diagnostic expertise, and they find the veterinary market very interesting. It wouldn't surprise me if they decided to go direct in the U.S. That kind of thing happens in this industry.” — FUJIFILM Medical Products Distributor"