Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"The Durham County Council hereby give notice in pursuance of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that planning permission has been granted for the carrying out of the development referred to in part one hereof in accordance with the application and plans submitted subject to the following conditions and reasons. — Durham County Council"

""Our Nation is staging one if the greatest and fastest comebacks in history. In just 4 short months, we are respected again, respected like never before, and just wait, with many Trillions of Dollars of Investment in Plants and Factories, until you see the numbers on GROWTH. This is, indeed, THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA!!!" — Donald J. Trump"

"We view Dropbox as having no economic moat due to its lack of competitive advantage. While Dropbox boasts over 500 million active users and stores over 400 billion pieces of content, we do not believe that either of these create a network effect or produce significant switching costs for users. — Morningstar Analyst John Barrett, Feb 2019"

""Our operating leverage was up 245 basis points year-over-year..." — Todd Gibbons. "This is one of our real focuses, delivering positive operating leverage and improving the operating margins of our company...And so you can see over the last 12 months, the operating margin has in fact, improved by 78 bps across the firm" — Gerald Hassell."

"“Killer Strengths, Just Needs a Killer Growth Strategy” — SMBC Nikko Securities. “Profits bottomed out, but still not much confidence in full-fledged growth turnaround” — J.P. Morgan. “Kao has great technology and many interesting products, but management has yet to translate this expertise into strong revenue-generating products” — CLSA."

"The lucrative earnings emphasized in promotional messages depend on reaching a high position in the pyramid, but new participants lack requisite information on the realistic odds of obtaining such a position. — Peter J. Vander Nat & William W. Keep, Marketing Fraud: An Approach for Differentiating Multilevel Marketing from Pyramid Schemes"

"“...when the Mines minister considered the appeal, they ruled against the AJAM’s first appeal verdict but they left the original revocation of (mining) areas in place.” “....my understanding is that Alcira has been operating outside the law since these areas were revoked in 2015.” — Former Senior State Mining Authority (AJAM) Legal Source"

"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)."

"The Durham County Council hereby give notice in pursuance of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that planning permission has been granted for the carrying out of the development referred to in part one hereof in accordance with the application and plans submitted subject to the following conditions and reasons. — Durham County Council"

"We learned that BEKE is registering some Shanghai employees who have hukous in other cities in its Shenzhen entities. However, BEKE claimed 21,000 agents in Shanghai, while SAIC data for its two Shanghai brokerage subsidiaries show only 9,996 employees and 199 employees in its other subsidiaries (including its VIE). — Muddy Waters Capital"

"Jenna is run by a former organized crime conspirer: NY State records show Jenna Concrete Corporation's CEO is Carmine Valente (source) Valente Industries was a ready-mix concrete company in NYC. The company was shut down in 1993 after a mafia defector claimed that it was conspiring with two mafia families in exchange for union protection."

""this is going to sound maybe cynical, but I'm overall...I'm skeptical in terms of if it's going to be successful or not"; "problems with the study trial design itself, the power of the study, how much statistical significance is going to be there? It's all rather difficult to say. That's the reason for my hesitancy." — Endocrinologist #3"

"I would say whenever you're compensating someone—this is the only situation that I'm aware of in my tenure working in reimbursement... I mean, you don't get paid for patients that don't get the drug. You just don't. No one else is getting paid on that. The pharmacy is not getting paid. — Ex-field reimbursement manager working with Harmony"

""This flight officially kicks off our UAE Launch Edition program and is an important next step in our commercial deployment plans in the UAE" — Adam Goldstein. "We will launch – the goal is to launch this year first internationally, we will launch in Abu Dhabi, but the goal is to quickly launch here in the US after that" — Adam Goldstein."

"Mr. Nardelli is widely recognized as one of the best operating executives in the United States, having grown sales and profits of several businesses for nearly 30 years at General Electric Co., doubling the size of The Home Depot as CEO, then saving Chrysler and its iconic brands when the American auto industry began to collapse in 2008."

"Xylem claims that all YTD 2023 inorganic contributions to revenue are from the all-stock acquisition of Evoqua. However, Xylem also divested a $91 million Evoqua business. Furthermore, Evoqua made a minority stake in Idrica, and distributed its technology globally. Did Xylem book any inorganic sales from Idrica because it incurred costs?"

"Trian believes Mr. Winkleblack's substantial executive experience, including almost 12 years of service as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of H.J. Heinz Company, provides him with knowledgeable perspectives on strategic planning, international operations, acquisitions and divestitures and cost and financial controls."

"Trian believes Mr. Winkleblack’s substantial executive experience, including almost 12 years of service as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of H.J. Heinz Company, provides him with knowledgeable perspectives on strategic planning, international operations, acquisitions and divestitures and cost and financial controls."

"Trian believes Mr. Winkleblack’s substantial executive experience, including almost 12 years of service as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of H.J. Heinz Company, provides him with knowledgeable perspectives on strategic planning, international operations, acquisitions and divestitures and cost and financial controls."

"With the largest component of Hill-Rom’s PP&E facing a maximum ten-year useful life - the same period over which management appears to have delayed capital spending - we believe that the Company may be forced to ramp up capital spending substantially in the coming years simply to support maintenance capex, to say nothing of growth capex."

"With the largest component of Hill-Rom’s PP&E facing a maximum ten-year useful life – the same period over which management appears to have delayed capital spending – we believe that the Company may be forced to ramp up capital spending substantially in the coming years simply to support maintenance capex, to say nothing of growth capex."

"It is telling that the Investment Agreement also generally prohibits the KKR Investors from transferring their shares to any “Activist Shareholder” (as defined in the Investment Agreement and which includes, by that definition, Starboard), further demonstrating that the Investment Agreement is nothing more than an entrenchment mechanism."

"Carvana management likes to say that it currently has access to $1.5bn in total committed liquidity (excluding unpledged real estate assets). In reality, of this amount, only $488m as of 1Q23 is cash on hand with the balance primarily short-term revolving capacity available only for financing vehicle inventory and funding customer loans."

"BEA should have strong strategic value to a potential acquiror given its meaningful market share in Hong Kong and extensive nationwide branch network in China (and related licences), all of which exceed those of other family-run (or formerly family-run) banks and which should justify a commensurate premium in a change of control scenario"

"The SafeCharge one just felt off compared to those. — Former Nuvei Employee. I would say their targets for integration and migration were unrealistic. — Former Nuvei Employee. For me its odd to see everything in the black. There is a little bit of me that is saying, “ok, what accounting practices did you change?” — Former Nuvei Employee."

"“[ADP is] very focused on per share value – short-term oriented. [They] didn’t have a 5 year vision, no strategic focus on ‘where we want to lead in 5 years,’ ‘where we need to invest.’ More about consistent results. Top management is very incentivized by share value, stock option packages.” — Former CEO and COO of [Redacted] ADP Country"

""Well, I can give you the marketing answer or I can give you the clinical answer. The marketing answer is they are all very different and unique. Yes. The real clinical answer is there is no difference, none whatsoever, especially in terms of the diagnostic yield, so sensitivity and specificity." — Director at Philips Healthcare, 6/27/24"

"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"

"「300～400万ドルに上るに違いありません。もちろん、サービス契約については顧客から支払ってもらいますが、各々の装置については1年の無償保証を提供します。それは基本契約の一環としてあります。それは最低限の負担です。それに加えて、納入してから正式な受納までは長ければ6ヶ月があります。したがって、18ヶ月の整備費を負担しなければいけません。約400万ドルの損失になります。それを取り戻すためには、無償保証期間が切れてからサービス契約で年間600～700万ドルを取らなければいけない、ということになります。それについては、顧客は相当な不満を抱いているに違いないでしょう」 — グローバルファウンドリーズの幹部として長年の経験を持ち、レーザーテックとマスク検査全般に関わっている人物"

"“In 2015 [GZ 1-1] used cards to track students, each learning center and student had a card, which showed Xueersi’s brand, then around September 2015 they started using a cell phone app from Changing Edu in place of the card. They used it for about three months and then changed back to using a card again.” — Teacher at GZ 1-1 (2014-2016)"

"The quarterly results include an operational gain of S$10.1 million in Q1 FY2013 on account of fair valuation of biological assets. The quarterly exercise of fair valuation of biological assets was started from only Q3 FY2012 and hence there was no operational gain/ loss booked in the corresponding period of FY2012. — Olam Q1 2013 Filing"

"“Remember dLocal, even though they say they're from 2016, they have all their know-how from AstroPay. So really, they've been operating in the market since 2005. It's a lot to build upon because with dLocal, what we literally did is copied and pasted the operation of AstroPay, and do the duplicate, and separated the entities.” — Source B"

"For the year ended December 31, 2021, approximately 3% of our TPV was processed by collection agents that are owned either by our employees or certain of our directors, and in 2020, approximately 5% of our TPV was processed by collection agents that are owned either by our employees or certain of our directors. — Dlocal, 2021 20-F, p. 29"

"We often purchase products from our suppliers under agreements that are of limited duration or potentially can be terminated on short notice subsequent to unfavorable legal action... Current agreements, or agreements we may negotiate in the future, may commit us to certain minimum purchase or other spending obligations. — Heska 2020 10-K"

""The complaint is for damages as a result of an alleged fraud and stock manipulation. The Company is seeking monetary damages in excess of $200,000,000." — Dwight Cantrell, CFO of Endovasc. "Di Ricco is a disbarred attorney with criminal convictions for aiding and abetting the preparation of false tax returns and obstruction of justice.""

"We believe Nuvei's talk about having to “accelerated investments” that are being pulled forward from 2022 into 2021 is a negative development that dovetails with our research findings that many of its technology processes are dated, and that its easiest high risk, higher margin business that benefited results recently won't be repeated."

"Given the size of legal spend, it appears that Tessera pays full cash legal fees at extremely high hourly rates for all of its litigation instead of opting for performance driven structures, such as the use of partial contingency fees that reduce cash outlays, share risk and incentivize law firm performance as opposed to billable hours."

"HASI’s claims should be subordinated to the tax equity partners and project debt holders. With significant debt on a project that has generated substantial losses since inception, color us skeptical that HASI will be able to hit its hurdle rate (let alone avoid a loss) over the remaining ~12 years of the project’s 13-year contract life."

"Management's decision to ignore shareholder concerns and go forth with an undervalued sale of Red Lobster as opposed to waiting for operations to improve or entertain monetization without fully disposing the brand during a depressed earning's period will likely result in meaningful changes at the board level and among senior management."

"Twist has no value proposition beyond price and is a bottom-tier vendor with a poor reputation, viewed as inferior to even Chinese vendors, due to escalating manufacturing delays, product limitations, a lack of sample purity and quality control, and other problems that have shut it out of pharma, clinical work, and anything FDA-related."

"The contrast with Welltower is stark in our view. Moghadam built Prologis from scratch over 40+ years, voluntarily caps his pay at $25 million, and accepts that his outperformance plan sometimes pays zero. Mitra has been CEO for 5.5 years, inherited his portfolio, and structured a plan that could pay him 100 times Moghadam's annual cap."

"The reliability is so low that Lasertec’s tool is simply not “production-worthy”: “their tool doesn’t work reliably”; “doesn’t work well enough for production”; doesn’t work well enough overall,” which leads customers to beg KLA to hurry its competing actinic inspection tool – “and that’s why customers want KLA to make a reliable tool.”"

"The reliability is so low that Lasertec’s tool is simply not “production-worthy”: “their tool doesn’t work reliably”; “doesn’t work well enough for production”; doesn’t work well enough overall,” which leads customers to beg KLA to hurry its competing actinic inspection tool – “and that’s why customers want KLA to make a reliable tool.”"

"It’s a problem to be dependent on one supplier. As a customer we always want multiple choices. Hopefully another company will provide a solution. Competition is better...The timeline you heard from KLA is reasonable. I think KLA is serious. If they can develop the tool it will be good for the industry. A year or 18 months is reasonable."

"The reason being, we don't have the full-service offerings. We stress the importance of being with a doctor and a staff that they're already familiar with, and the importance of the expanded model of traditional veterinary hospitals. And the importance, if the pet falls ill, of the staff being familiar with the pet. — Dr. Douglas Spiker"

""That’s how they came out of the shoot. They came out as low pricing, and I think what they’re finding out now is the verification of the oligonucleotide sequence, and then the verification of the gene sequence is going to cost them a significant amount of money." — Longtime oligonucleotide manufacturing expert and executive; ex-Agilent"

"We identified a material weakness in connection with our internal control over financial reporting. Although we are taking steps to remediate this material weakness, there is no assurance we will be successful in doing so in a timely manner, or at all, and we may identify other material weaknesses. — Super Group (SGHC) Limited Form 20-F"

"Our Nation is staging one if the greatest and fastest comebacks in history. In just 4 short months, we are respected again, respected like never before, and just wait, with many Trillions of Dollars of Investment in Plants and Factories, until you see the numbers on GROWTH. This is, indeed, THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA!!! — Donald J. Trump"

"“Then that's the reason why we believe that we do have some technological edge to making those motors for drones, and that's the reason why we are just educating in that area.” — Masuo Yoshimatsu, Q1 2015 Call. “Then for that point [haptic], we do believe that we have technological superiority over our competitors.” — Nidec FY2014 Call."

"Management of the resource is the key and should be privatised and the farmers/harvesters allowed to sell to whom they like and DEC becomes the auditor - this would at least give local companies a chance to buy wood from numerous rather than one source giving more local, grass root working people much needed income. — David Brocklehurst"

"Annual crops consist of seeds for various commodities (cotton, onions, tomatoes and other vegetables) that are given to farmers to sow and grow. Farmers take all the harvest risks and bear all the farming costs. On harvesting of the commodities, the Group has the first right to buy the produce from these farms. — Olam 2012 Annual Report"

"Based on the financial characteristics of the selected publicly traded companies and Diamond, and based on its professional judgment and experience, BofA Securities applied calendar year 2019 and 2022 Adj. EBITDA multiples of 6.5x to 8.0x... to calculate ranges of implied enterprise values for Diamond. — BofA Securities Fairness Opinion"

"“...I feel great about where we are with the studio. Let's not lose sight of the fact that in the last year, the studio had some real success, not to suggest that we didn't have some films that were not successful that we were really disappointed in, but we also had some great success too.” — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, January 2024"

"“...for families who can do the hard work to start with of providing food security for their kids”; “it’s not going to work for the families that can’t provide the environment and structure to begin with...for families who can do it...can they just throw caution to the wind...no.” — Trial investigator, pediatrician/geneticist, professor"

"“you have a very active community; with social media you have a very active group of people that are looking for things...there's an investigator in Florida, Jennifer Miller... lot of families that have the resources go see her once a year...so, they're very closely connected...” — Pediatric endocrinologist at a Delaware academic center"

"Drug-induced phospholipidosis is characterized by intracellular accumulation of phospholipids with lamellar bodies, most likely from an impaired phospholipid metabolism of the lysosome. Organs affected by phospholipidosis exhibit inflammatory reactions and histopathological changes. — Research literature on drug-induced phospholipidosis"

"This is one of the most crooked companies I've ever done business with. I made the mistake of buying two cars from them, and they require a GPS unit to be installed in the cars, which is fine, except their hack mechanic that installed them caused a short in one of the cars, and they refused to fix it without charging me. — Yelp Reviewer"

"After the MRC Committee decides on any appropriate adjustments, actual earnings (Actual STIP Earnings) and actual comparable sales results (Actual STIP Comparable Sales) are compared to the Target STIP Earnings and Target STIP Comparable Sales, respectively, and the Corporate Pool Funding (defined below) is calculated as set out below."

"By following this plan, we believe Macy's has the opportunity to create significant value for shareholders and massively improve its share price to approximately $70 per share (before value creation from further improved operations and credit card earnings), while maintaining its cash flow and real estate flexibility and reducing risk."

"The Company subsequently determined, however, to pursue multiyear upfront contracts with enterprise customers to help meet its fiscal year 2023 free cash flow goal. Upfront billings of enterprise customers in fiscal year 2023 substantially exceeded historical levels, helping the Company to meet its lowered annual free cash flow target."