Callouts & quotes from 1,069+ activist slides

"“As far as serious cardiac events, we did talk about pulmonary edema at the visit, and she even said something about giving people a handout and how to recognize edema. And I was just like, "huh!" I would expect something transient, but I wouldn't expect a permanent edema, to be honest....” — Pediatric endocrinologist at a Delaware academic center with eight endocrinologists and ~50 PWS patients"

""And we believe that the listing in New York in particular in the multi-capitalisation which will approach $20 billion once the synergies are factored in, will put us sort of mid-way in the S&P500 index and create index buying that actually will create flow forward, right. You typically talk about flow back in cross border deals. We would expect flow forward." — CEO Dalia, Deal Call Aug 7, 2018"

"“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"

""We took a $30 million impairment charge on the Reveal Imaging acquisition, reducing the overall margins by 1.2%. While Reveal and the engineering products business are our most profitable, we did not ship nor expect to ship enough units near term of Reveal units to produce the financial results necessary to support the purchase valuation a couple of years ago." — SAIC Q2'2014 conference call"

"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"

"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 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"

""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"

"“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"

""In parallel, change is rocking the consumer landscape, as the growing concerns for the environment and interest in health and nutrition have started to drive real, scaled behavioral changes around consumer purchase choices. Generation Z and Millennials will become the dominant global generations in the coming years, bringing to the market a new set of values and expectations." — Oatly"

"“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.” — Endocrinologist; academic and community hospital affiliations"

"Former Intuit employees with knowledge of the TurboTax business corroborated our concerns, noting that (1) the state AG settlement damaged the brand and was a bad look for the Company, (2) growth expectations for TurboTax are too optimistic, (3) the costs to deliver human-intensive Live offerings are significant and increasing, and (4) TurboTax revenue really isn't subscription based."

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

"“as far as serious cardiac events, we did talk about pulmonary edema at the visit, and she even said something about giving people a handout and how to recognize edema...and I was just like, "huh!" I would expect something transient, but I wouldn't expect a permanent edema, to be honest” — Pediatric endocrinologist at an academic center with eight endocrinologists and ~50 PWS patients"

"“…We find many of your responses to the shareholders’ concerns to be misleading, self serving, and defensive…Given the inconsistencies in many of your recent communications, we expect that the shareholders would welcome Elliott’s nominees to the Board to ensure proper and timely execution and to avoid risk of backsliding.” — David H. Batchelder, Relational Investors LLC, March 2013"

"Researchers demonstrated the potential for malicious activity to remotely compromise the ELDs and send instructions to vehicle components to cause the vehicle to behave in unexpected and unwanted ways...Commands passed into the vehicle network through an ELD could affect functions such as vehicle controls and the accuracy of the console display. — FBI Private Industry Notification"

""Our customer doesn't come to us expecting a Nordstrom's level of in-store shopping experience. They want value, treasures, merchandise on the floor and clean restrooms, and we need to meet those expectations," [CEO Steve] Fishman said in 2005. ... "We're an enigma," he said at an investor conference this month. "It's been a real challenge for the marketplace." — CEO Steve Fishman"

""The average Joes and below - 70 / 30 is what they expect." — Former Senior Employee, Premier and Vizient; "GPOs are using rebates as the fulcrum to win new business. It will be higher than 65% once [Premier renewals] come up." — Former Senior Employee, Premier; "We need to keep Premier honest. I wouldn't be surprised if we got closer to 80%...." — Former Senior Employee, Premier"

"“Well ya know, in some countries they use home-made lubricants or cheaper solutions.” — Former WD-40 Employee. “We had -- we suffered from the Argentinian economic situation. We had some phasing issues in Mexico with orders... It's the first time we've seen Latin America fail to grow since 2012 and we certainly expect normal service to be resumed in 2020.” — WD-40 COO Steve Brass"

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

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

"“At a high level, when we look at the landscape, we appear to be in the early days of a secular growth phase in mobile and online real money gaming, including online casino.” “We are very excited about the long-term opportunity to drive shareholder value…” “The growth opportunity in terms of new markets is expected to be immense…” — Niccolo De Masi, RSI M&A Call August 13, 2020"

"Acquired intangible assets characterized as customer base assets consist of acquired customer contracts and the related customer relationships and are amortized over periods ranging from 3 years to 13 years. Acquired customer bases are amortized on an accelerated or straight-line basis depending on the expected economic benefit of the intangible asset. — CoStar Group 10-K"

"The ex-employee indicated internal disappointment among Soleno staff as trial data rolled in – “they want to believe it works...that was not my immediate reaction to what I saw...the person [who ran] clinical development also felt the same way...we were disappointed to not see what we were expecting...no matter how you slide and dice it, the data is there the way it is.”"

"Why do you only expect 2% to 3% organic sales growth in fiscal '18? And does that really signal that the ultimate payoff from all these areas is unlikely to move P&G above that 2% to 3% range longer term? I guess, to put it simply, [is P&G] now a structurally lower top line growth company, more in that 2% to 3% range? — Dara Mohsenian, Morgan Stanley Analyst, 7/27/2017"

"I would say, it's hard to say, Liam. I mean, it will come down to what opportunities there are. We want to maximize value on for those -- for that stake. The lockup is until July 2. I don't think anyone should expect us out in the market selling these shares on July 3. We will work very closely with Bunge and Greg Heckman. He's running a great business. — Glencore CEO"

""This consortium is so named because we are equal partners with Thales on this project... So we expect it to be very much a 50-50 partnership." — CEO Lance, Q2 2018 Conference Call. "Industry officials familiar with Telesat's LEO bidding process have said the company is all but certain to request an equity investment on the part of its major suppliers" — Space Intel."

"Since 2018, approximately 50% of Monster's $3.7 billion in total sales growth has come from international markets, with the largest growth contributor being EMEA. However, we do not expect international sales momentum to continue as only two countries have been added in the past two years, competition has vastly expanded, and regulation appears likely to increase."

"“I expect our team to gain traction on expense reduction and drive step-change productivity improvements across the property… …I believe this franchise has more to deliver. I’m not satisfied with our operating ratio [2006 target was ~75% OR], and I’m raising the bar on Execution Excellence as a vehicle to drive accelerated improvements.” — Fred Green, Analyst Day"

"Our results for the quarter were mixed. Our 55 net new placements were up over 90% year-over-year, but came in below our expectations .... The miss was largely EMEA. And we had turnover in Germany where we had planned on several capital deals and then a large distributor deal that, while we could have closed that sooner, we held out for better pricing. — Mehren"

"The USDA produces a regular report on the diary market conditions in Argentina. The country is facing major challenges that are affecting domestic consumer consumption and the export market. Inflation continues to be rampant, the UK/Russia war is impacting exports, and energy subsidies to producers are expected to be eliminated and increase cost of production."

"For modeling purposes, we expect capital expenditures, excluding capitalized software of approximately $5 million to $8 million and share-based compensation expense of approximately $70 million for the full year. Fully diluted shares by the end of the year are expected to be in the range of 200 million to 205 million shares.. — PowerSchool 2021-2022 Guidance"

""Our subsidiary, Spartan Surfaces, reported another strong quarter with fiscal 2023 third quarter total sales increasing by 47.5% from last year." and "We are incredibly pleased with Spartan Surfaces fiscal 2023 Fourth Quarter and full year sales and earnings results, which exceeded our expectations and were accretive to earnings" — Floor & Decor Management"

"In Q2, I briefly discuss the increase in account receivable as a result of our strong revenue growth. We saw the impact of strong revenue growth on receivables again in Q3 as AR increased by $29.7 million from Q2 of 2021. We are implementing a new order to cash process as we onboard, new clients and expect to reduce our DSO in 2022. — CFO on Q3'21 Conf Call"

""Now last thing I would say is our expectations are very high for experts because this is now -- you're truly talking about service-as-a-software where they are the interface to customers and the standard in which we expect them to deliver for customers, the value that we expect them to create is very, very high." — Intuit CEO Goodarzi at 2021 Investor Day"

"While the company remained tight lipped on the specifics of the next gen platform, it does see it as a parallel platform, not a replacement for the “classic” version. We expect the product to be focused on the high end of the market with limited distribution for the next year or two. — SunTrust Robinson Humphrey research note published September 13, 2011"

"The executive slammed its uptime as “just unacceptable” for inspection equipment: “doesn’t meet what we would normally expect”; “if it was not the only actinic inspection tool in the market, people would definitely go with another supplier”; “struggled with uptime concerns”; “not as sophisticated or as capable as the classic KLA mask inspection tools.”"

"For select Premier Agent revenue transactions included within Residential revenue, we tested the amount of revenue recorded by developing an expectation for the amount by applying the percentage change from an independent variable to historical amounts recorded and comparing our expectation to the amount recorded by management. — Deloitte & Touche LLP"

"Procept is currently targeting the highest procedure volume hospitals, which are likely both the most aggressive early adopters of new technology and those most likely to achieve an attractive ROI. We expect Procept's sales efficiency will suffer markedly as it transitions to targeting smaller, lower volume, more geographically dispersed customers."

""Where we've fallen short was on MCT, right, with the Zio AT product. In our long-range plan, when we put those expectations out, we actually expected to have the new MCT product in the market about 2 years ago. So we're almost 24 months delayed from where we thought we were going to be." — iRhythm CEO Blackford at Goldman Sachs Conference, 6/10/25"

"“Yes. And one is implementation takes longer than expected and the second one is the slow-down of the industry. So, the two factors work together to slow down the shipments. For example, TSMC Arizona is delayed by a year or two. So, equipment gets delayed.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec’s CEO"

"We believe the Street is structurally misunderstanding the magnitude of the cybersecurity-related costs that Mercury will face going forward, as well as the delays in revenue contract award opportunities it will face in its high-growth “command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence” (C4I) segment – expected to be a $100m business."

"“Kao conducts world-class enzyme research... I think enzyme-driven batteries will be useful in unexpected places” — President Yoshihiro Hasebe, December 2021; “We need a new engine for the future.” With this in mind, we aim to enter the medical (treatment/diagnosis) field... — Nikkei Business interview with President Yoshihiro Hasebe, March 2022"

"Beginning with this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, we have ceased using platform revenue retention rate to evaluate the success of our growth strategy... we have determined that platform revenue retention rate currently provides little to no value in evaluating our business and is not expected to provide value in the future. — 2U, Inc. 3Q17 10Q"

""In the near term, I would expect less profitability at the bottom line than what was previously disclosed." — Stephen Croskrey, CEO Danimer Scientific. "As I noted earlier, the Phase II expansion is now expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022 compared to our initial assumption of late 2021" — John Dowdy, CFO Danimer Scientific."

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

"Some bulls might argue that the unprecedented drop in crude oil is a massive windfall for WD-40. The Company says that 33% of its cost of to produce a can is petroleum-based specialty chemicals. Of course, the problem is that low oil prices are coinciding with severely depressed economic activity which we expect to materially depress sales."

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

"These (tax) rates (from 2020) reflect onetime operational fluctuations that arose due to the pandemic... For 2021, we do not anticipate these circumstances arising as we expect to return to normalized operations during the year. And we expect our full year effective tax rate to be in the range of 15.5% to 16.5% — CFO Boehnlein (Jan 2021)."

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

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

"Given what we believe to be management and the Board's history of questionable decision making, how can shareholders trust the Company to rush this critical decision when management repeatedly refuses to share one of the most important assumption affecting the value that shareholders should expect to receive in a Red Lobster spin-off?"

"The Board of Directors concluded that none of these candidates possess the relevant board and management experience, expertise and engagement expected of the Company's Outside Directors, and that these candidates would not contribute to the effectiveness of the Board and the enhancement of the corporate value. — Kao Board of Directors"

"“Overstock sells lots of products today where installation and assembly make complete sense from a customer perspective that they should be included,” said Matt Ehrlichman, CEO of Porch.com. Customers expect installation services for everything from furniture to light fixtures, all of which are sold on Overstock’s online marketplace."

""For the long term, we expect the company to grow sales at 7% and earnings at 12% compounded annually. These performance goals reflect the diversity of our portfolio, attractive returns on growth investments, such as research and development and capital expenditures, plus benefits from ongoing productivity." — DuPont's CEO (12/13/11)"

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

"You then said you had an investigation conducted by Ernst & Young (EY). This is the same company that prepared the annual financial statements. What did you expect? That they would come forward and say, Oops, sorry, we've made a mistake, we're returning our auditor's licence to practice? This is laughable. — Shareholder at 2016 AGM"

""We filed our water wastewater rate case in Pennsylvania, as we mentioned resolution in mid-2019, and year-over-year we're expecting customer growth to be between 2% and 3%, and as Matt said, we've already hit the 2% and we've got more in the pipeline." — Aqua Announces 2018 Guidance, 8-K, Feb 27, 2018 and Q3 2018 Conference Call"

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

"While ad spend on the Roku platform in verticals including financial services and M&E remained pressured, verticals such as travel and wellness improved....Accordingly, we expect the advertising market in Q2 to look much the same as it did in Q1, while other verticals remain pressured such as M&E and financial services. — Roku"