Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"10kHz is not a magic number. The PROCO study by Simon Thompson shows that. It was a crossover study design that evaluated 1,4,7, and 10kHz stimulator frequencies. Each patient received each frequency for 2 to 4 weeks at a time and then rated their pain. Patients had no preference, suggesting there was no difference in pain relief by frequency."

"We are troubled that Soleno assessed electrocardiogram (ECG) results during the P3 study but the paper buries the results with no mention of ECG - which would capture abnormalities consistent with Vykat-induced heart strain and pulmonary hypertension, hypoxia-related changes, fluid overload, electrolyte-related changes, and hERG/QT elongation."

"“No offense, but we don’t really care what you think,” he says. “The people we care about are our customers. They’ve seen the data, they’ve run the tests in their own lab, they’ve seen it works, and as a result they’re putting in massive bets on this company. VW has gone all in.” — Jagdeep Singh, CEO of QuantumScape (via MIT Technology Review)"

"In contrast, it’s absolutely unimaginable how to keep errors under control for the 10^300 continuous parameters that must be processed by a useful quantum computer. ... it’s sobering that no one has yet figured out how to combine many physical qubits into a smaller number of logical qubits that can compute something useful. — Leading physicist"

""With Arconic, we also have an opportunity to create a very unique culture. And this chart really shows you what our view of that culture is, particularly important for you. We apply to pretty much everything we do [to an owner's] mindset. We look at this company as though we are the owners..." — Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, Arconic Investor Day, 2016"

"“Cuiazha looks really big-time,” he said. “How much does she earn every month? Take a guess.” Without even waiting for our investigator to respond, he breathlessly continued, “The contract with her is that she can only have a monthly salary of just 150,000 - 200,000 RMB for the next two years. All the rest is the company’s.” — Anonymous source"

"Sichuan Anda wasn’t established by Li Yuxiong as stated in the prospectus: it was established by Hong Yanqing and Lin Sankuang. Lin Sankuang is apparently one of the senior management members of the group, since he took part in “senior management special training”. Hong Yanqing is another key lieutenant and proxy for the family. — Muddy Waters"

"“We believe that an effective and well-functioning board that has appropriate governance structures to facilitate oversight of a company's management and strategic initiatives is critical to the long-term financial success of a company and the protection of shareholders' economic interests” — BlackRock Proxy Voting Guidelines for US securities"

"Two years ago, yes, there would've been a risk because there was not so many on the planet providing services like this; today, I don't think this is a risk. It's unviable, unless it goes down to a $200 million market cap and someone will start moving on it and say, yes I like it, but for more than that, I would not touch it. — Former employee"

"“So India is not -- it's teetering on the top ten market for us. We went into India ten years ago. And we went in and it was a big -- it's called pop and drop. You go in. A lot of distributors come in. They recruit and you get a lot of volume. Those distributors leave the country and you get a big drop.” — John DeSimone, Herbalife CFO, 3/10/10"

"We have elected to not be subject to the Tennessee Business Combination Act. We can give no assurance that we will or will not elect, through a charter or bylaw amendment, to be governed by the Tennessee Business Combination Act in the future. — Forward Air Form 10-K Exhibit 4.2 for the year ended December 31, 2019. Filed on February 24, 2020."

"In our opinion, Ströer's auditor has committed a clear error. IFRS is clear that Ströer's borrowing activity should be shown gross. Even though we have had front row seats to some of the most spectacular auditor failures of this decade, we are still stunned that Ernst & Young has overlooked this basic and obvious problem in Ströer's cash flow."

""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."

""Mr. Donahoe says that his business should be allowed to innovate without shareholder distractions" and "every new Silicon Valley company has a dual class of stock to prevent this issue, because innovation has a long-term time horizon." — Financial Times article on March 6, 2014; "You rarely find just one roach in the kitchen." — Warren Buffet"

""No, I don't think you're missing anything...just out of the goodness of my heart, maybe I'll end up prescribing plain old diazoxide to those whose insurance companies are unwilling to fund...I guess we'll see in a little while, because there'll be plenty of people who will be doing it." — Trial investigator, pediatrician/geneticist, professor"

"Following a recent meeting at NVIDIA’s Santa Clara headquarters, ZJK Industrial received a request to produce samples for one of NVIDIA’s upcoming liquid cooling manifold projects. The expansion of the cooperation reinforces ZJK Industrial’s position as one of the select, approved vendors for NVIDIA’s liquid cooling systems — ZJK Industrial PR"

"Another question from Mr. Klein: Were any taxes connected with the acquisition and sale of shares - possibly all - by the Sambara Foundation incurred? If so, where were they paid for? After all, our company can't afford getting involved in a tax scandal. - We can't respond to this matter either as the company was not involved in this process."

"As Dexcom's remaining market opportunity is rapidly exhausted at its current price point, long-term Dexcom bulls are effectively betting that the Company will be able to overcome its extensive failures in bringing a down-market CGM to market - in addition to its monumental scale disadvantage - to produce a low-cost CGM at a reasonable margin."

"The smoking guns are a) six months of your emails are unrecoverable, which is scandalous, b) Deloitte confirms that you deceived investors about a ‘success fee’ in response to our questions about purchase consideration, and c) Deloitte confirms that you deceived investors about a potential money laundering transaction that we had highlighted."

"Spruce Point believes AMR is an ESG nightmare. Environmentalists and the public should be outraged to think AMR believes shareholders deserve rewards at this point. Spruce Point finds hidden liabilities, debts due to mine reclamation costs, pensions costs and compensating workers for black lung disease amounting to approximately $740 million."

"Most light- and heavy-duty truck OEMs are increasingly integrating telematics, modems, and safety cameras and accompanying data services into their commercial vehicles. Rather than solely representing a new channel, we believe that OEMs in the best case will compress pricing and in the worst case will increasingly represent direct competition"

"HIMS has made celebrity endorsement campaigns a cornerstone of its marketing effort. While these efforts have increased awareness, and we welcome the Company’s attempts to destigmatize certain conditions, we believe such efforts do little to build medical credibility or appeal to a broader audience beyond the Company’s core young demographic."

"HIMS has made celebrity endorsement campaigns a cornerstone of its marketing effort. While these efforts have increased awareness, and we welcome the Company’s attempts to destigmatize certain conditions, we believe such efforts do little to build medical credibility or appeal to a broader audience beyond the Company’s core young demographic."

"With Axon planning to triple the size of its new HQ, and Axon removing reference to "overhead allocation" to its Software and Sensors business, it would be able to allocate substantially more "overhead" to the slower growing Taser segment, while artificially inflating the segment performance of its faster growing Software and Sensors segment."

"We compare Bunge with a global set of agriculture trading and merchandising peers. Analysts often fail to include Bunge's global peers in emerging markets to formulate their valuation. However, it is not fair to ignore these companies since most of Bunge's assets and revenues are based in risky parts of the world such as Brazil and Argentina."

""Now the in terms of the non-GAAP metrics like Subscriber Value that are used to basically explain to the Street and to investors, what are the underlying economics at a customer level... those numbers are completely, I wouldn't say they're made-up numbers, but there's no validation... You should be highly skeptical." — Former RUN Executive A"

"All data should be entered using accounting standards. For example, March sales data should be based on energy consumed between 01 March and 31 March with the revenue amount based on that energy, regardless of when a customer's billing cycle ends or whether you collected the money... — U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) instructions"

""Canada is a relatively large business... and it's quite profitable." — Carlos Rodriguez, Q2'2015 Conference Call. "[T]he old GSI in Europe was what I would call more margin focused." — Gary Butler, 2008 Analyst Meeting. "Our margins in France, where when we acquired GSI back in '95, are excellent." — Arthur Weinbach, Q4'2006 Conference Call."

""Investors suffer in the Vincent Bolloré game of thrones. . . . it begs the question of whether others should go along on his opaque quest." — John Gapper, Financial Times, April 13, 2016; "Shareholders who want transparency, certainty, and good corporate governance should probably look elsewhere." — Leila Abboud, Bloomberg, December 16, 2015"

"The primary purpose of this analysis is to protect Greenlight's reputation for thorough analysis and refute the spurious claims by Allied's management that Greenlight Capital did not talk to management in the course of its analysis and is out to “develop the short thesis to scare people and make a quick buck and move on.” — Greenlight Capital"

""We're [Anadarko] very committed to capital discipline and...as we constrain capital, we see better returns on our projects, we quit dipping down to the lower tier, we keep that continual high grading effort going on and on... We're going to be very disciplined as we go forward." — Karl Kurz, Shareholder Nominee, Former COO Anadarko, May 2008"

""[T]here remains a sense that the company retains a 'small-company' mentality that is lacking the structured corporate processes often found in larger companies...better tools and formalized structure more akin to a ~$3B market cap company could help" — Summary from Wedbush Interview with Former Buffalo Wild Wings Marketing Executive, 2/14/17"

"“The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power... If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business.” — Warren Buffett, May 26, 2010"

"Certain of our key operational metrics, including estimated gross contracted customer value, are based on various assumptions and estimates we make over an extended period of time. Actual experience may vary materially from these estimates and assumptions and therefore undue reliance should not be placed on these metrics. — Sunnova S-1 Filing"

"“I don’t think it is. I think they need to specialize more in library prep to compete with players who dominate that market like Roche, NEB, and even now IDT, and to making primers...where I think they are lacking in the ability to grow is they can’t make primers. That’s a huge portion of the market.” — Former employee now at a key competitor"

"The IRS Free File Program is currently the sole means by which the IRS offers tax software directly to taxpayers and its continuation depends on a number of factors, including continued broad public awareness of and access to the free program and continued private industry donations, as well as continued government support. — Intuit 2023 10-K"

""much less real estate" — James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley; "I don't think any company's going to go back to 100% of the workforce in the office." — Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock; "It allows us to look for new talent in locations where maybe we haven't before and tap into talent pools across the country." — BMO Chief Human Resources Officer"

"Which actually is reflected in CLEAR’s decreasing quarter by quarter retention rates, customer retention rates, which, by the way, are overly inflated because it’s got the American Express population in it, which is automatic renewal anyway, and B, it includes buybacks of 2 or 3 months free to get customers to try you again. — Former Employee"

"“Pyramid schemes are said to be inherently fraudulent because they must eventually collapse. Like chain letters, pyramid schemes may make money for those at the top of the chain or pyramid, but ‘must end up disappointing those at the bottom who can find no recruits.’” — Webster v. Omnitrition, 79 F.3d 776, 782 (9th Cir. 1996), quoting Koscot."

"“...The entire episode has also revealed the limitations of ‘Disney nice.’ Avoiding face-to-face conflict, at least at the CEO and board level, fostered an environment where Iger and Chapek couldn’t hash out their differences. Executives who openly challenged others — Mayer, Rice, McCarthy — were ultimately dinged for their frankness.” — CNBC"

"“in addition to the significantly increased costs borne by transplant centers to utilize the device itself, TransMedics is pressuring hospitals to use their more expensive aircraft, not only for transportation of organs, but also for the convenient of their staff and equipment.” — Congressman Paul Gosar letter to TransMedics CEO, Feb 21, 2024"

"“We were the folks that actually cloned the human H3 receptor, and that's public domain, and we began with a high throughput screen. We ended up with a bunch of really good compounds, and once we published that stuff, every other company jumped on.” — Longtime senior scientist at Johnson & Johnson, with global leadership roles in neuroscience"

"“The biggest one was the cataplexy. If you coded the patient narcolepsy with cataplexy, that was your best go-to. The problem was the patient doesn't have cataplexy. So now the discontinuation or is diagnosing cataplexy because that's how you got it covered.” — Ex-Harmony territory manager for a large region in the southeast across two states"

"“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"

"“Pyramid schemes are said to be inherently fraudulent because they must eventually collapse. Like chain letters, pyramid schemes may make money for those at the top of the chain or pyramid, but ‘must end up disappointing those at the bottom who can find no recruits.’” — Webster v. Omnitrition, 79 F.3d 776, 782 (9th Cir. 1996), quoting Koscot."

"In the course of our recent re-assessment of the fair value of our portfolio as of 30 June 2022, we have applied our internal valuation model, while only limited properties were subject to external valuations. This re-assessment resulted in no material fair value adjustment of our properties. — Vivion's €1b EMNT Program, Nov. 11, 2022, p. 116"

""they made a multitude of offers to try to get us to basically purchase more equipment." ... "other concessions were made like extended warranty service...at no additional cost...even guaranteeing service time like 60-70%...if not then we could take some kind of reimbursement...for the lost time of use" — Senior employee at Marvell Technology"

""they made a multitude of offers to try to get us to basically purchase more equipment." ... "other concessions were made like extended warranty service...at no additional cost...even guaranteeing service time like 60-70%...if not then we could take some kind of reimbursement...for the lost time of use" — Senior employee at Marvell Technology"

"Ms. Ehrling has talked about Telia’s ability to operate in accordance with “Nordic heritage and culture”, the company has, as far as we can tell, completely failed to try to make any past employees, advisors, or counterparties accountable for actions — actions that we believe have done far more damage to TeliaSonera than investors appreciate."

"As of the publication date of a Muddy Waters report, Muddy Waters Related Persons (defined below) are SHORT the securities of or derivatives linked to Eurofins Scientific SE (the “Covered Issuer”), and therefore will likely realize significant gains in the event that the prices of either equity or debt securities of a Covered Issuer decline."

"For QuantumScape to say we've solved this is disingenuous. Saying, like sulfides, they have dendrites, yeah sure, you can push dendrites, but I guarantee you, like send your separator to some lab and they push even current density through, you're going to have a dendrite form. I don't understand how you can say that and have a straight face."

"Xylem portrayed its ability to retire Evoqua’s debt and pay transaction costs with available cash from Evoqua and existing cash on its balance sheet. Total debt was illustrated to be $2.0 billion. However, in reality Xylem’s current debt rose over $500 million and it quickly filed a shelf registration the day after its Q2 2023 earnings call."

"Stryker claims that Vocera’s revenues weren’t a pull-forward of business from COVID-19, but reflected underlying growth of existing trends. Tegus interviewed a former Vocera technology professional who shared insights that the Company was a COVID-19 beneficiary from existing clients purchasing more devices and not net new customer purchases."

"This implies the real estate agent population could see a dramatic decline in the U.S. with minimal impacts to the consumer experience. We believe this would compound the issue of lower commissions for Zillow; not only would agents make less money, but there would be fewer of them to purchase Zillow’s services and/or to partner with on Flex."

"“I’ve known Monroe and Kim for probably about 20 years... Quantum computing currently is absolutely going through a major hype phase. There’s no question about that. There are a lot of promises regarding what it can deliver, and there’s a big gap with respect to the reality of what’s actually out there.” — Leading quantum computing scientist"

"“If the market values of our homesites, our remaining inventory of completed homes and other developed real estate assets were to drop below the book value of those properties, we would be required to write-down the book value of those properties, which would have an adverse affect on our balance sheet and our earnings.” — 2009 10-K, page 12"

"We have true opportunity for margin expansion through operating leverage, driving commercial and operational excellence and continuing to shift our portfolio towards digital solutions. — CFO Roland, Investor/Analyst Day Sept 30, 2021; The reality is Xylem’s digital sales are actually dilutive, not accretive. — Former Xylem Executive Response"

"marked ability to commit a crime — Tribunal of Milan; full and conscious adherence to the delinquent plan — Tribunal of Milan; socially dangerous — Tribunal of Milan; the evidence seems decisive — Tribunal of Milan; the inclination to lie of the new management, willing to affirm falsehood in order to preserve the existing — Tribunal of Milan"

""So we have a huge selling and service motion going on with Microsoft and -- our friends at Microsoft with their Azure Stack. And I think we've closed about -- in excess of a couple of hundred million dollars worth of business with them, and we have a very, very large pipeline that we're working.." — CEO Siebel, Wells Fargo Conf, Dec 2, 2021"

"I guess the question to really ask is what's the continuing value proposition in the world that has significantly changed? ... I think revenue is going to be pretty easy for them to drive, but I think margin is the one that I really question, if they don't have a significant differentiator. — Former TASK Executive Interviewed By Spruce Point"