Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

"“And I do think that the data is — I'd rather have something than nothing, but it's not particularly powerful. And if I am going to do the medicine, I do want to have some familiarity. I guess I kind of already do. Diazoxide is not, in and of itself, a brand-new medication. It's a drug that we've used in other disease states for years. At least I have some familiarity on the safety, and that family didn't specifically about ask about this. They were just like, let me think about it. We'll talk about it at our next appointment. Fine. Very fair. If they had been asking a little bit more questions, then I might have been like, okay, well, here's the information about how the drug works. It's a new medicine in that it was approved for this condition very recently. But the actual drug has been approved for many years to be used in other diseases. Many people have been put on it previously...we actually know this stuff pretty well because it's a drug that's been out for a while...” — Endocrinologist in TX, private practice with 5 PWS patients"

"27x EBITDA, 22x on an adjusted basis, and 17x with $140m of synergies, that is crazy expensive and that actually surprised me. We prided ourselves on being disciplined. If you looked across water deals, that's a stand-out. In a league of its own. It's all stock, dilutive, and won't be accretive for at least a year and half. There's a scarcity and ESG argument for it. — Fmr. Xylem Executive (1); I have mixed feelings. They certainly overpaid, but that's what it took to get it done. Patrick needed something transformational. He's not operational. He wants to take big swings and this was the only sizeable asset. My challenge with the deal that this is not a revenue synergy deal. This is a roll-up your sleeves and rip out costs, mess with channels. They have to get $200m of costs out in my opinion, or I would be disappointed as a shareholder. Its hard work to pull out $200m. I really think they need to do $200m not $140m. The revenue synergies aren't going to happen. Mark them at zero, there's a little, not much. — Fmr. Xylem Executive (2)"

"We’ve spent about eight years and a quarter (billion) dollars to develop the platform as a service to develop, operate and build AI and IoT applications at scale. We truly mean at enterprise scale. — C3 IoT: Accelerate Value from Big Data, AI, and IoT Initiatives with One Tenth the Effort in your Data Center, Intel AI video, Sept 17, 2018; We were novel in using a model-driven architecture to enable organizations to rapidly design, develop, provision and operate enterprise AI applications at scale, said Siebel. We spent about a billion dollars inventing this in the last decade and it is our secret sauce. — C3 AI's Tom Siebel: How To Scale AI, Forbes, June 11, 2021; We spent hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps approaching $1 billion on development of this technology stack where we've provided an integrated set of software services in 1 cohesive platform that provides all the services necessary and sufficient for companies to decide to develop, provision, operate enterprise AI applications. — Piper Sandler Conference, Sept 13, 2021"

"“So we’re definitely not subsidizing anybody else's drug discovery [...] In terms of our ability or our willingness to be flexible on economic terms, we are very flexible. But there's definitely a red line where any deal has to pay for our cost, right? So the bare minimum. We're not going to do a deal that's not a gross margin positive. We're not in the business of subsidizing our customers' research.” — Twist CEO, Q2 2022 earnings call on May 5, 2022. “They have a very, very large and complicated manufacturing scheme where they overbuild in order to deliver the product [...] The thing I kept on saying is they were shipping with every gene and every oligo pool a $20 bill to people. That's basically that they were fundamentally flawed, that they were trying to keep up with the price, and they were taking it as a loss every time. But what they have never done is fix the fundamental manufacturing flaw that they have. They need to overbuild or do extensive rework in order to deliver these products.” — Longtime executive in Twist's space."

""Our LTM is about $1.4 billion. We have an objective to go to $2 billion of EBITDA. Many of our businesses are sort of at that level...But really, on track we think near term to get to that $2 billion of EBITDA." — Kimo Esplin, CFO; "I would say that we should quite soundly beat the projections that we gave for the $2 billion. Again, we still have a great deal of confidence in the $2 billion number...I think that when we look at the overall composite, we still feel very confident about that." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "About a year ago, at our Investor Day, we introduced to the market our near-term EBITDA target of $2 billion. We believed that we could achieve this number in the next two to three years...we continue to target a $2 billion run rate in 2017." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "If we look at our business without our existing Ti02 division, we would be looking at 2016 as a record year for...EBITDA margins, a materially different and stronger company than we what we have today." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO"

"“Another allegation in relation to the inconsistency in taxes they are referred to some tax treatment under this New High Technology tax preference. One company in China, we got approval from the government for the approval for the high-tech preference for three year from 2012 to 2014. But we cannot claim 15% tax rate unless it is approved or filed by this tax authorities and this approval by the tax approval there’s some delay. For example, for calendar year 2012, we only got the final approval from the tax authorities in calendar year of 2013 or the fiscal year 2014. So to be prudent, we did provide 25% tax rate before we got the final approval which is reflected in fiscal year 2013. In fiscal year 2014 we finally got approval for this tax treatment so we reversed the 10% over provision for the income tax. This is how it works. It looks a little complicated but it is just normal tax treatment because of some delay in approval cause a little bit confusion but nothing related to some type of tax liability.” — CFO of Man Wah Holdings"

""Now the last sort of 3 weeks post, I would say the July long. We can, we've seen the business significantly uptick and is trending much closer to budget, then we've been for the whole year. So all signs are pointing in the right direction." — GFL CEO Dovigi; "Through July we were seeing landfill volumes up slightly sequentially. However, we were not experiencing the typical seasonal ramp we usually see during the summer months." — Casella Waste Q2 Earnings Call; "Sure. Yes. I mean, we are, to your point, seeing July continue to accelerate, albeit at a slightly slower pace. I mean, look, this kind of went from zero to not 70 miles an hour, but probably zero to 60 miles an hour pretty fast, and now we're moving back towards 70 miles an hour." — Waste Management Q2 Earnings Call; "Despite my comments about the strength of collections, given the uncertainty in the current environment, we think it's prudent to adjust these expectations to remaining flat for working capital for the year as a whole." — GFL CFO Luke Pelosi Q2 Earnings Call"

""Super political. Constant lies from management. Lots of random layoffs. Stagnant product line. Unappreciated employees. Glass ceiling once you've been there a few years." — March 15, 2014; "Too many processes force low value work. Lots of management changes & re-organizations. Unrealistically aggressive program timelines without sufficient resources causes unnecessary stress and sets teams up for failure. Too many programs planned for available resources." — Feb 4, 2014; "Constant exodus of highly skilled engineering talent due to poor management. Major issues with management include: lack of honesty, poor decision making, constant reorganizations and layoffs, and absence of career growth for skilled engineers with proven track records. I also find iRobot to be a high anxiety workplace.." — Sept 28, 2013; "Constant misinformation and lies coming from the Engineering management team (C3 and Hiten S.). Numerous, highly talented, engineers quitting. Constant layoffs, moves and reorganizations. Product line is stagnant." — Nov 16, 2013"

"“I also have a clinical practice...within my work in the foundation, I talked to lots of families. A lot of families call more informally when they have questions. I know a lot of families from being part of the world. And when I go to conferences, families always talk to me. I would say I’ve talked to about 100 families on a regular basis. Not frequently, but have a touchpoint email or conversation at a conference.” — Longtime researcher involved in PWS clinical trials at one of the two key PWS associations; “I think our community is pretty savvy for a general population...I was surprised in one of our recent town halls that we had with just parents who might be interested, at the really thoughtful questions about some of the potential side effects and how that might impact a variety of other medical issues that people with Prader-Willi have because they can be complicated medically. But I thought parents were asking really good questions.” — Longtime researcher involved in PWS clinical trials at one of the two key PWS associations"

"The point is with .97 to .98 fidelity of the gate that is available right now in the cloud, they are at the same level in terms of the gate fidelity as they were almost five years ago. — Leading quantum computing researcher who has published papers with IonQ's founders; I fully expected that by now, they would have three or more nines of gate fidelity. In my discussions with Chris Monroe three years ago, it followed that that would be the case. And, in fact, they started preparing for it...I am quite surprised, to be honest, that this didn't happen. I am surprised that the gate fidelity stayed so low — Leading quantum computing researcher who has published papers with IonQ's founders; I'm surprised by the lack of progress because of my conversations with Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim...they were seriously planning on running more complex quantum computations back in the day...They believed it themselves. It's just that...they were not able to accomplish that. — Another leading researcher who has published papers with IonQ founders"

""If you're trying to grow the Premier Agent business, there are only really three levers to pull. There's one at the very top of the funnel trying to drive more traffic, more people looking at these listings that is very, very hard to move. It's a mature category, Zillow has category leadership, that's going to grow pretty slowly if at all." — Former Senior Executive. "About half the business goes to MBP where the agents are bidding against each other for the leads on the zip code basis. And about half the business goes towards Flex. Half the leads go to Flex. By the way, I think it's about half. Nobody really knows the sell side research kind of estimates. And the auction is already super efficient. So it's hard to increase take rate on the auction because it is been whatever, five or more years and the kind of auction dynamics has sort of settled where they are. And then trying to increase the take rate by increasing the referral fee on Flex is the only way to drive growth at the bottom of the funnel." — Former Senior Executive."

""We are not surprised to see the involvement of an activist...An activist investor presents Box with an opportunity to improve sales execution...We note that Box has one of the lowest sales efficiencies across our entire coverage universe." — D.A. Davidson, September 2019; "...we’re not at all surprised that value-oriented investors have taken a significant stake...with Box spending ~41% of revenue on sales and marketing (higher than most SaaS peers in the ~30% range), we think a shift towards margin expansion could provide an avenue for unlocking shareholder value." — Raymond James, September 2019; "Although we have maintained a positive view on Box’s positioning and product portfolio, the company’s go-to-market execution has been consistently disappointing...if the solution selling strategy under COO Stephanie Carullo fails to materialize in a meaningful reacceleration in growth, we would expect Starboard to increasingly pressure Box’s management team to reevaluate its growth vs. margin framework." — Wells Fargo, September 2019"

""So the benefits to this are immense. We can generate the same throughput at one-third of the operating expense with much more flexibility and we expect through time that we will be able to reduce the cost per gram of our proteins by some 60% or more and that enables us to achieve hundreds of millions of dollars of savings versus conventional technology." — Bob Bradway, Chairman & CEO, October 2014; "In the G&A area, we're setting up a series of shared service activities for non-core areas and we've created what we call a Global Business Services group, which is serving then as a centralized point to serve the Company." — David Meline, Amgen EVP and CFO, November 2014; "Things like rationalizing our process development organizations between manufacturing and research and development. That is a significant decision that we've made, a decisive decision that we've made that we think favors cycle time improvement and also favors reducing the capital that we have to invest in new molecules." — Bob Bradway, Chairman & CEO, October 2014"

"“I cannot stand working with them. It feels like I’m talking to a used car salesman...We had a recent situation, where we had some A/R...they declined a heart transplant for one of our patients in the ICU because of this credit hold. They refused to go out and get the heart for us. I could not believe it...I had to spend probably eight hours of my week on the phone with their rep, trying to beg and plead with them to release the hold because we didn’t want to miss an opportunity to get an organ for one of our patients...I felt like I was groveling...these heart patients, this isn’t like a kidney transplant. This person is in the ICU. They’re going to die. They’re status one. They’re getting this organ offer because they’re the sickest patient in need of one, and TransMedics made that call. It was their COO [sic], Tamer Khayal, who is not a clinician...[Magdy Attia] was part of the people threatening us.” — Administrator at a pre-eminent academic transplant center, which expects to eliminate TransMedics usage staring in early 2025"

"Yes. We didn't - so I think as we mentioned, there was going to be a period of technical integration with these newly acquired businesses that was going to take us some quarters. So we haven't completed that. That work still remains ahead as my earlier comments, hopefully, reflect it. And our intention is to, obviously, not just with Payments, but with everything we do is to get all of these customers on the Lightspeed core offerings. But recognizing that that was going to take some time, what we did is approach payments partners and say, you know, look, we've got this infrastructure. We're happy to take on more of the obligation historically it had been. And that - and then also leveraged kind of the scale of the business to encourage folks to give us better economics on the overall transactions as well. So it just allows us better customer control. It got us better economics, which is really important. And we were able to do it all on a much quicker pace than we otherwise would have. So that makes sense. — CFO Nussey, May 2021"

""We're very excited, and I feel more confident today than I ever have about the future. I know that's something that everybody always says. But why do I feel that, I feel that because we have more control of these issues...there are going to be headwinds here and there. But what we can control, what we're focused on as a company, and what we're able to do, I think, puts us in a unique opportunity to further transform this business." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, November 2021; "So as we look at that $2 billion run rate, I don't see any pie in the sky...So I feel, today, even more confident in that number than I was when -- in March, when we gave that number to our investors." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, July 2014; "We've spent a lot of time with the investment community talking about a bridge, how we get from where we are to that $2 billion. I think if you dig into those numbers, you'll see that it's certainly achievable in the next 2 to 3 years." — John Heskett, VP – Treasury & Planning, September 2014"

"I think that because what has happened is that in the past like five or seven years ago, when these companies were expecting - now Google has been in Latin America for 15 years - but other companies like Airbnb or AliExpress when these companies were coming to Latin America, having the cross-border model was very interesting, because they didn't know what the market was like and having the cross-border model was an easy way to come, right? You didn't have to set up an office or set up a company locally. You would just connect to the PSP that could act as a merchant of record and you start your business very quickly. But as time goes on and they were realizing that the market was good, it was interesting to stay. They realize that paying for that FX didn't make much sense. So, they decided to - these companies were all shifting from collecting locally and settling abroad to collect locally and settling locally. So, Dlocal became more and more of a PSP in the sense of having both options. And the — Source A (former executive)."

"“everybody’s getting some side effect,” — KOL who has published 800 papers in the field, at a prominent center in Texas. “I don’t hear about it much from my colleagues” — KOL who has published 800 papers in the field, at a prominent center in Texas. “At least half a dozen, 6 to 8, not a huge number, going through the other stuff first. If I include the people who sort of only took it for a week or whatever, then it's twice as many, so it's like 12 or 13, that I put on Wakix.” — KOL who has published 800 papers in the field, at a prominent center in Texas. “The usual sequence for me in terms of prescribing things would be modafinil first, and if that doesn't work, I may then try either methylphenidate or one of the old tricyclic antidepressants like Anafranil. ..I would go to Xyrem or Xywav because those are more specific and often will work--sometimes Xyrem doesn't work, in which case, then I would go to Wakix, which is not a first-line drug...” — KOL who has published 800 papers in the field, at a prominent center in Texas."

"One of the systems they have actually, I would say it's an initiative that really expanded and became very big. Is called procure plus solely focused around cost savings... In my personal opinion, I thought this became, very challenging because you cannot continue to save, you know, 10% or whatever percent was it just say on average 10 to 15% year over year when you already picked up all the low hanging fruit.....especially when you merge with a company and your supplier base, is very fragmented... But we forced suppliers, with a very serious extended payment terms, 90 days and some small suppliers just have a very, very difficult time with that. — Former Employee. What I also know on the new product development... the process internal process was so broken that it takes forever. And, a lot of customers don't want to wait for that... So I think that's a drawback for Amcor to get actually the new type of revolutionary bottle that the customer wants, and they want them quick. Amcor just struggled with that. — Former Employee."

""Nevro didn’t want the patient to feel paresthesia, but what you’ll find is that they crave the paresthesia. Once they feel it, they think that that’s the indication of whether the device is working or not. You can’t just get rid of paresthesia unilaterally and say it's a great thing because there are definitely reasons for it." — High volume implanter/KOL; "The HF10 results don’t pan out over time, correct. Again, that’s my personal opinion. It's the reason Omnia is out. A lot of people wanted the paresthesia. Even right from the start, probably 50% of the doctors that I came across wanted paresthesia as an option for patients. They were saying, what if a patient wants it? We’d say, no, no, we have to follow the evidence and we can only do it this way." — Former Nevro territory manager; "If the leads move even a little bit the Nevro reps get lost and they don’t know where to program because there’s no buzzing or tingling, no paresthesia. So they don’t know what to do. They’re programming blind." — High volume implanter/KOL"

"“I was involved in the entire manufacturing process. All the way from extracting the oligos from their DNA synthesis chip to assembling those oligos into full-length genes through to the QC process and shipping out to the customers. I'll start off by just saying that the gene synthesis process is the same at Twist as it is everywhere else... The first step is to take the individual nucleotides, ATG, and C, and string those together into oligonucleotides, which are single-stranded DNA sequences around 50-200 base pairs, depending on what the error rate is. And then, they take those oligos and assemble them into approximately 2000 base pair fragments. Those fragments are then cloned into a replicating plasmid and put into E. coli. At that point, the E. coli can self-replicate those plasmids. That's a very common form to provide synthetic DNA to customers is in a replicating plasmid in an E. coli host. That's the deliverable.” — Former Twist manager in a manufacturing role, previously and currently employed by key competitors"

""The purchase of Parex allows Sika to (a) increase its share in a highly fragmented market, (b) broaden its footprint in Asia (we estimate that Asia revenues will increase from 17% to 20% once fully integrated), and (c) further increase operating leverage." — Morgan Stanley (February 2019); "The acquisition allows Sika to gain access to Parex's distribution channels and production capacity in mortars. It will also allow Parex to gain access to 70 new markets in which Parex does not currently operate. For Sika, the cross-selling opportunity is particularly strong in China where Parex has established a strong commercial presence and brand recognition." — Bernstein Research (May 2019); "We also see the higher interest in DIY as beneficial for building material companies with exposure to such smaller-scale projects. The clearest beneficiary is likely to be Sika's newly-acquired Parex business (catering to smaller-scale projects and customers, with products largely sold through distribution channels)." — Jefferies (April 2020)"

"The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau ("TTB") performed a federal excise tax audit of the Company's subsidiaries, MGPI of Indiana, LLC and MGPI Processing, Inc., for the periods January 1, 2012 through July 31, 2015 and January 1, 2013 through July 31, 2015, respectively. The Company is in the process of addressing the preliminary findings of the TTB audit regarding clerical errors and support for storage losses. The Company is unable to determine the probability that additional excise tax and penalties will be owed and cannot reasonably estimate the amount thereof. However, the Company believes it is probable that a penalty may be imposed by the TTB as a result of certain TTB audit findings but it is unable to reasonably estimate the amount thereof. Management expects that the aggregate liabilities, if any, arising from such legal and regulatory proceedings, including the TTB audit, would have a material adverse effect on the consolidated financial position or results of operations of the Company. — 10-K, Mar 10, 2016"

""In the fourth quarter, we concluded -- we closed the acquisition of Actix. And today, we have signed an agreement to acquire Celcite Management Solutions. Combined, we expect Actix and Celcite to contribute between 2% to 3% of our full year revenue outlook in fiscal 2014 and drive modest earning accretions." — Eli Gelman, President and CEO, Amdocs; "For our full fiscal year, we expect total revenue growth to be within the range of roughly 4% to 8% on a constant currency basis and reported basis. This outlook incorporates the consolidation of Actix and Celcite, which in aggregate, we expect to contribute approximately 2 to 3 percentage points of the growth outlook." — Tamar Rapaport-Dagim, CFO, Amdocs; "Actix, a leader in mobile network analytics and optimization solutions, today announced record-breaking revenue levels for its fiscal year ending January 31, 2012. During the year, Actix revenues grew 29% resulting in total revenues of over $52M as the number of active customers surpassed 400." — Businesswire (Source)"

""It looks like Now will overtake Momo, no other platforms look likely to overtake Momo. Now has the huge Tencent platform for promotion." — Large Agency #1; "Now is becoming much better. The audience is fresher and the broadcasters are more authentic. Now only approves 30% of broadcasters compared with Momos 45%. The big spenders spend more on Now." — Small Agency #6; "We are trying out other channels, Now is really good at the moment, Douyin has just started doing live broadcasting, so we are just monitoring it. Douyin is the hottest channel recently." — Small Agency #4; "Now platform traffic development is really good. Their traffic is constantly increasing. Momo's traffic is not as good. For us older agencies we can make money, new agencies cannot make money." — Super Agency #7; "Momo growth is stabilizing after rapid expansion, current growth is very weak and it is a very risky period. Momo was the No 1 it is not. Now entertainment media is the leading content online. Fans like Douyin the most." — Super Agency #8"

""As we discussed previously, over the next five years we expect to increase our dividend per share by at least 15% annually. We currently have a net operating loss balance, or NOL, of approximately $2 billion, which we would expect to utilize prior to 2020. We expect that once the NOLs are exhausted, our dividend payout as a percentage of AFFO will increase from the approximately 30% today to something in the area of 70% to 80%, which implies a compound annual growth rate of our dividend in excess of 20% over this period of time. Currently, we are utilizing the flexibility afforded by the NOLs to make accretive, long-term discretionary investments. These discretionary investments may include acquisitions, the construction of new sites including small cell networks, land purchases and the purchase of our own securities. When considering these investments, we evaluate each opportunity based on our goal of maximizing our long-term dividend and AFFO per share ..." — Chief Financial Officer Jay Brown, 2Q14 Earnings Call"

"“Thank you. Good afternoon and congratulations on the public listing and many product announcements and milestones in the quarter. I have a couple of questions. The first is about the bookings and mix of bookings year-to-date, what can you tell us about the number of customers or deals within that 50 [sic] million of bookings, and about the mix of customers and use cases that you've seen this year?” — Katy Huberty; “Hi, Katy, thanks for calling in, and excellent questions. What we have seen to date is that we've seen thousands of customers running projects on our machines with billions of shots in terms of running their quantum computations. We continue to see a mix of customers coming in through our public cloud where we actually don't know who all the customers are, because that fits with the public cloud provider, and we have customers on a private cloud as well. We are to date not going to break out the individual customer names because many of these actually covered by confidentiality process.” — Peter Chapman"

""I guess, my first question is just to clarify what was your organic constant currency growth in the quarter?" — Ashwin Shirvaikar, Citigroup; "...We have seen better momentum as we described, so we have seen better results coming from Comverse's customer base.... That's why we are not getting into the speculation. Even internally, it's getting more difficult. What's the next deal that is coming in such account? Is it a pre-Comverse contribution or a post-Comverse? You understand what I mean?" — Tamar Rapaport-Dagim, CFO, Amdocs; "When it comes to mobile financial services, it's also in the tens of millions of dollars already was – some of it came from M&A, some of it came from new projects. To predict this growth is actually a little bit harder, because the receptiveness and adoption rate in the emerging market of such ideas is really quite wild. And some time governments would push it and maybe it will fly. So I think that their entire world is still waiting for use cases." — Eli Gelman, President and CEO, Amdocs"

"“Stimulators have a reputation as a lease that you trade in. It’s probably the same guys who were selling opioids. They’re not the academics, not the ones coming to conferences and meetings.” — KOL; “One of their top reps is in [city redacted], Whether a patient needed it or not, he had his doctors flip those implants. He did $6-7 million in revenue in one year just because of those flips.” — SCS executive; “Medicare pays them to do the explant. If Medicare doesn’t pay, I guarantee they won’t explant. They get paid on both sides. It’s like going long and short. Premier Pain will put them in, take them out, put them in, take them out.” — Territory manager at a large Nevro competitor; “There’s a whole group of doctors down the street. They suck patients in. They implant the device at their surgery centers because they can make a fat amount of cash. They put it in and if they explant it, who cares? An explant is just another surgery they can bill for, so let’s take it out.” — High volume KOL and former Nevro implanter"

""The problem, compared to what you can do with NRP or other technologies, is that the heart on the TransMedics device is beating, but it's empty. It's not doing any work. It's not supporting circulation. It's not generating a pressure. So, you're guessing at that part, which is beating on the device based on the lactic acid level dropping, that it will function well enough that your recipient patient doesn't end up on ECMO or an Impella or on something else." — Prominent surgeon, director of leading academic transplant center; "30-40% of heart programs in the U.S. are doing now is we're using NRP, normothermic regional perfusion... you can assess the heart function completely because you're putting the donor who's arrested, you're opening their chest and cannulating them and going on bypass rapidly, but you're doing it in three to four minutes... and you can assess all the normal physiologic parameters: is the heart beating again in the patient." — Prominent surgeon, director of leading academic transplant center"

""So we will have some deployments in 2015, but I don't view them as scale deployments, they will position us for 2016 though in that market segment very strongly." — CEO MacEwen (Q1 2015 Earnings Call); "We have added now, I think 10 to 12 new channel partners that are better positioned for higher volume sales as we move forward." — CEO MacEwen (Q2 2015 Earnings Call); "We are working very hard as you know to achieve the program of record status. So we expect to see a very strong growth year for Protonex in 2016 in the $20 million revenue range and expect to see on the strength, particularly of the program of record achievement that we expect. We expect to see a very strong growth year in 2017 as well." — CEO MacEwen (Q4 2015 Earnings Call); "In Q1, we experienced significant year-over-year growth in fuel cell stack shipments to Plug power for the material handling market. We continue to strengthen our collaboration with Plug as they secure repeat and new customer business." — CEO MacEwen (Q1 2015 Earnings Call)"

"“paresthesia-free” has backfired and resulted in a patient/doctor support infrastructure that renders the business model broken and permanently unprofitable. — Ex-executives. “paresthesia-free” is a fatally flawed concept and that he observed over half of patients failing to improve and virtually all experiencing lack of efficacy at various times. — Former regional sales director. Nevro found itself “in a bind” with the CEO and management refusing to accept that high frequency is a dud, leading to conflict with the field and sales reps leaving “in droves” despite the best compensation in the industry. — Former regional sales director. “despite repeated reprogramming sessions in the effort to achieve therapeutic optimization” — A January 2020 paper at the annual neuromodulation meeting (NANS). “differ greatly from the results we have found in real world practice.” — A January 2020 paper at the annual neuromodulation meeting (NANS). “disinformation” regarding explants, labeling Nevro’s conduct as “slimy.” — A KOL."

""Another thing to keep in mind with this sort of data is you've got a very small area that you're doing this over. This is the size of a coin cell probably and so, you've got to ask if making a square centimeter that has high rate lithium plating capabilities is fantastic, if you need square miles." — Solid-state expert; "30x30cm cells vs. 70x85mm have more rigidity and the ability to not produce dendrites just because they're small. The bigger one—my assumption is, there are clearly certain tests that they found more favorable on this smaller one and they decided to choose the better-looking data for the presentation. 30x30 has less surface area, less interaction, less chance of lithium plating—there are a lot of different things in the science. It's better performing for certain ceramic reasons. I would actually agree 100% [that they're cherry-picking different prototypes for different tests], and the reason why is scalability. There are some inherent benefits to having a smaller wafer." — Former R&D employee"

""When I started, they were using LG batteries in all their stuff. Chrysler took all the allocation for all their batteries. They were testing and retesting and trying to validate... by the time I left, they still didn't have a decent supply chain of the battery to get it going where it was. The whole time I was there, they didn't have a battery." — Employee B; "All of 2019 there were essentially zero batteries delivered. In the first six months of 2020, they got line of sight on maybe 90... to the point where as soon as they got them, they would go to the most pissed off customer: 'Okay, you can have five batteries.'" — Former Employee A; "Deliveries weren't happening... It's like, 'Can you tell me the truth, so I can get my fleets in order?'... 'It caused angst with me, because I think that there were some things in the supply chain that they [management] just really knew... 'Oh, just let them know it'll be 30 days.' Then 30 days passes. 'Well, let them know it'll be another 30 days.'" — Former XL Employee C"

""And if we were a business today that we're separated from our TiO2, we would be going into 2016 saying...2016 will be a record EBITDA margin year in the history of this company." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "...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; "So I'll end my remarks on where I started with wanting this slide to be emblazoned in your mind. Again, as I look at the 4 steps that I think get this company another $20 to $30 a share, I think that these are all eminently doable." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO; "We remain very confident in delivering on the 2020 plans that we shared with you then. We are committed to the significant value creation upside of more than $27 per share by the end of 2020." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO"

""It takes five years to six years for a first program in a vertical to steady state, to get to that sort of natural peak of annual enrollment. It takes four-ish years for those programs to breakeven. But as they steady state, it is our expectation that an average 2U program will generate $16 million in top line revenue and generate mid-30s adjusted EBITDA margins." — 2017 Investor Day - 10/05/17; "So for our first program, our cumulative net negative cash investment is typically in the range of $10 million before we get to adjusted EBITDA and cash flow breakeven. . .launching a second, third or fourth program in the vertical however, our cumulative net negative cash investment usually falls by about half, more in the range of $5 million. . . the roughly $5 million to $10 million in cumulative net negative cash flow we refer to, is not an upfront investment with additional negative cash flows expected. It is the total cash investment we expect to make to a program breakeven." — Oppenheimer Conference 8/10/15"

"A lot of doctors in Germany are saying that Nevro's device only works for 2 to 2 ½ years and then the patient comes back with more pain. They say it fails and then they have to put in an Abbott or Boston Scientific device. It's a big issue here in Germany. These are credible people. People who do a lot of surgeries and are involved with the society. Every time there's a spinal cord stim meeting, this is an issue that colleagues talk about. People have become nervous and become afraid to use Nevro. — High volume European implanter; The Nevro marketing materials that state a 2% explant rate are just a flat out lie. — High volume KOL; Everyone thinks Nevro has a high explant rate. — High volume implanter; The Nevro explant rate was known all over. At every meeting, colleagues talked about the explant rate being high. [KOL name redacted] explants a bunch of Nevro a week. He was a big Nevro advocate and has a lot of explants. Everyone was drinking the Nevro kool-aid at the beginning. — KOL, high volume implanter"

"In the third quarter of 2018, the Company changed its policy related to the cash flow presentation of foreign currency option contracts as the Company believes cash receipts and payments related to economic hedges should be classified based on the nature and purpose for which those derivatives were acquired and, given that the company did not elect to apply hedge accounting to these derivatives, we believe it is preferable to reflect these cash flows as Investing activities. Previously, these cash flows were reflected within Operating activities. Net cash used by investing activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2018 includes a reclassification of $13 million of cash usage that had been reflected within Operating activities for the six months ended June 30, 2018. Prior years' impact were not material. With this change in presentation, all cash flows related to the foreign currency contracts are included in Investing activities on the Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows. — XPO Q3 10-Q"

""We have recently started to see relief with declines in the cost of oil-related products, but those decreases are just now starting to make their way into our finished goods?" — WD-40 CFO, Q1 Jan 2009. "If oil stays down and we get the conversion, given that and the savings that we anticipate from the improved manufacturing process from the capital equipment we have invested on our package lines to improve line speed from smart straw, all of those things aligned, we should see some sort of at least stabilization and improvement in our gross margin, particularly in the second quarter." — WD-40 CEO, Q1 Jan 2009. "We also began to see some relief from lower oil costs versus the first quarter although our oil costs in the second quarter were higher than they were in the same period last fiscal year." — WD-40 CEO, Q2 April 2009. "The cost of oil based materials in our Q3 cost of goods reflected the lower pricing of Q2 and positively impacted our gross margin by two percentage points" — WD-40 CFO, Q3 July 2009."

""The Cintas legacy gross margins continue to expand and the G&K gross margins will too as we realize the acquisition synergies." — Cintas CFO, Q1 2018 Earnings Call, Sept 26, 2017; "While the assimilation of the G&K business continues at a great pace -- Mike mentioned 95% of duplicate operations have been closed, more work remains. The G&K gross margins will improve to Cintas legacy levels as we further integrate this business and we increasingly realize more of the synergies. We are on track." — Cintas Treasurer, Q3 2018 Earnings Call, March 22, 2018; "Really, nice job. At this point, given the gross margins, is it fair to say -- and I know we're not just [interviewing] G&K, but is G&K up to the corporate average at this point? Or would you expect that to get continue to kind of narrow relative to where Cintas is relative to GK?" — Analyst Kevin Damien McVeigh, Q1 2020 Earnings Call, Sept 24, 2019; "Well, as you referred to (gross margins), it's really hard to say." — CFO Response, Q1 2020 Earnings Call."

"Coffman and Heim offer focused experience in refining and midstream operations, which makes them logical additions. Cornelius has a well-rounded perspective of the industry...[Stacy] Nieuwoudt offers an important perspective through her experience as an industry investor and analyst. — ISS, May 12, 2025; Critically, we expect the identified Elliott nominees would challenge prevailing internal narratives which seem to belie, among other things, a disconcerting satisfaction with a less than laudatory operational arc, a staunch but otherwise questionable defense of an ineffective strategic tack and an increasingly dubious commitment to sound corporate governance. — Glass Lewis, May 10, 2025; Elliott's nominees possess a strong mix of best-in-class industry expertise and experience and have the potential to unlock value for shareholders... — Egan-Jones, May 1, 2025; The data does not support the board's argument that the integrated strategy results in superior returns over the long-term... — ISS, May 12, 2025"

""Today's lithium-ion batteries are made with all kinds of layers and laminates, and electrodes. One lithium-ion manufacturer was making electrodes at 100-meters per minute. It all has to be defect-free. The lithium-ion battery manufacturers today - Samsung, LG, and Panasonic - they're all doing that today. But one tiny defect doesn't kill a liquid battery. If you've got liquid filling any of those holes and that electrolyte, the battery will still work, so it's more tolerant to any kind of defects. What they're finding with solid-state batteries is that it's much less tolerant." — Former employee; "Can you actually scale this up to square miles of very thin, very uniform, very perfect kind of ceramic? This is not like doing tape casting of alumina or something like that. It's going to be harder than that. Even after you do that, you have to worry about how it is going to work in a stacked arrangement, and there's risk there." — Solid-state expert with extensive experience in LLZO and ceramic separators"

"“It was all very - everything at this company feels like a big secret, and it’s really weird and sketchy. There would be times when we would have multiple people on call in Seattle. They would have a specialist available. And then you would probably have a surgeon available, too. And then all of a sudden - and it would be at some different part of Washington, like Spokane, which is like a four-hour drive So, instead of sending me from Seattle and a Seattle surgeon, they would fly someone in from Southern California and have them do the case in a hospital in Seattle or somewhere else, And no one could ever make sense of why they were doing the things they were doing. All of a sudden, these other cases are happening, and nobody knows how they’re figuring out who’s doing these cases or where they’re coming from, and you have people sitting in Seattle doing nothing and saying, why am I not doing this case? And they’d be like, oh, that’s logistics; don’t worry about it.” — Former TransMedics OCS specialist"

""The great thing about our end users is the variety of our end users......Our lifestyle products like 3-IN-ONE, our new range of 3-IN-ONE RV products that are helping RV and camper -- people, campers, keep their equipment in good condition." — CEO Ridge, Shareholder Meeting Dec 2019; "As the coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve, Thor remains focused on the safety of its employees... Thor is today announcing the temporary suspension of all of its production in North America." — Bob Martin, President and CEO of Thor Industries; "In an effort to protect the health and safety of its team members... LCI Industries will temporarily suspend production at select manufacturing facilities across the U.S. and Europe." — Jason Lippert, LCI Industries' President and Chief Executive Officer; "Winnebago Industries, Inc. (Nasdaq:WGO) today announced it will be temporarily suspending most production activities at the Company's Winnebago, Grand Design RV, Newmar, and Chris-Craft facilities." — Winnebago Industries"

"“...we're looking to – and working to consolidate, meaning make less, focus more on quality. We're all rolling up our sleeves, including myself to do just that.” — Robert A. Iger, FQ4’23 Earnings Call; “Permit me to throw a couple of cliches your way...ESPN has always aimed to serve the sportsman effectively...And so all of the steps that we've been taking and that we announced today and that we will continue to take are aimed at doing just that.” — Robert A. Iger, FQ1’24 Earnings Call; “In terms of how we get there, it's really in many ways the way that we've gotten from where we were to the point we're at right now...Not going to put a specific time frame on that right now.” — Hugh F. Johnston, FQ1’24 Earnings Call; “We're already hard at work at basically determining where we're going to place our new investments and what they will be. You can pretty much conclude that they'll be all over...I'm not going to really give you much more of a sense of timing....” — Robert A. Iger, FQ1’24 Earnings Call"

"“...we're looking to – and working to consolidate, meaning make less, focus more on quality. We're all rolling up our sleeves, including myself to do just that.” — Robert A. Iger, FQ4'23 Earnings Call; “Permit me to throw a couple of cliches your way...ESPN has always aimed to serve the sportsman effectively...And so all of the steps that we've been taking and that we announced today and that we will continue to take are aimed at doing just that.” — Robert A. Iger, FQ1'24 Earnings Call; “In terms of how we get there, it's really in many ways the way that we've gotten from where we were to the point we're at right now...Not going to put a specific time frame on that right now.” — Hugh F. Johnston, FQ1'24 Earnings Call; “We're already hard at work at basically determining where we're going to place our new investments and what they will be. You can pretty much conclude that they'll be all over...I'm not going to really give you much more of a sense of timing....” — Robert A. Iger, FQ1'24 Earnings Call"

"The biggest issue for Phillips, in my opinion, is that they are not at all focused on creating shareholder value. They are focused on status quo. — Phillips 66 Shareholder D; Look at the performance. They have issue after issue after issue. It's not a question of the management is the problem...Look, they have a management problem. I don't know any other investor who doesn't think that is true. — Phillips 66 Shareholder E; There is definitely a lot of upside. Their market position is pretty good. Despite financial challenges that they have been facing, they remain a very key player...So as long as they handle their strategic directions and improve their cost performance, they should do well. — Phillips 66 Shareholder F; Investors have been overwhelmingly supportive of this campaign...I've never had a management team suggest to me that their stock was fully valued. That just inherently highlights the disconnect between the investor mindset and the management. — Stacy Nieuwoudt, Streamline 66 Podcast"

"“she wasn't sanguine”; “she's aggressive and a little out there in regards to therapies”; “what she did tell me...is that she had a patient who was developing diabetes...she was going to stop the medication...that's the weird thing...because she thought that with other interventions that she had an armamentarium...that they can get rid of the diabetes...my concern having treated plenty of kids with diazoxide for hyperinsulinism is what's the glycemic issues...again...this n of one was very interesting, that Jennifer Miller said, hey, treat the diabetes...”; “I don't think you're wrong...I think there are probably more questions than answers”; “a perfect example is the Alzheimer's drug... the risk of CNS bleeding... there are other drugs that are being looked at [for PWS]...if we're looking for a magic bullet, this isn't magic, and it's not a targeted bullet”; “of course, we would want to use an oral suspension...we're pediatricians - liquids rock....” — Pediatric endocrinologist and Division Chief"

""90% of leads are closed by 10% of agents in a market. You're looking at this massive hole of leads that need to get worked. And the problem in this model is those agents that are good, that 10% they are referring to in every market, they can't handle more leads because they don't have enough good agents underneath them on their teams to support the leads that are coming in to be able to help convert. So it's actually a double-edged sword. You give this a year or two, you identify the good agents, you're like, okay, here's the people that we're going to send the leads to, they're converting, we want to send more leads to them. Now they're telling us we don't have agents on our team to support it. Pause, we can't handle the leads. And what does Zillow do now? They have leads coming in that are unsupported and they're either going to go to a crap agent who doesn't know how to convert them or respond to them, or the good partners are saying, help us find good agents." — Former Senior Zillow Employee"

"“It's 3 years behind Facebook and Google” — Industry feedback; “Why are they investing in Search and making search part of it?” “They don't understand search” — Industry feedback; “Until they reverse their user and engagement trends, their ad products don't matter” — Industry feedback; “They need to consolidate one ad tech platform like Google has AdWords. Cross-integrate it.” — Industry feedback; “They have all the data they need but they don't employ people to understand how to analyze it” — Industry feedback; “The revenue they claim to have here replaced Display ads which were higher margin.” — Industry feedback; “Flurry people are great at analytics but don't understand how to monetize” — Industry feedback; “We don't understand why they recently renegotiated the Microsoft search deal the way they did” — Industry feedback; “Why aren't they building a Syndication Team to sell display ads for others?” — Industry feedback; “For employing so many people, they don't know a lot” — Industry feedback"

"During 2017, sales and operating profit performance for Garden Fresh Gourmet... were well below expectations, and we lowered our outlook for the second half of 2017 due to customer losses and failure to meet product distribution goals. Based upon the business performance in 2017, our reduced near-term outlook, and reduced expectations for sales, operating margins and discounted cash flows, we performed an interim impairment assessment in the second quarter, which resulted in a $64 million impairment charge. — Campbell Soup (FY18 10-K); In 2018, sales and operating performance were well below expectations due in part to competitive pressure and reduced margins. In the fourth quarter of 2018, as part of a strategic review initiated by a new leadership team and based on recent performance, we lowered our long-term outlook for future sales. In the fourth quarter of 2018, as part of our annual review of intangible assets, we recognized an impairment charge of $54 million. — Campbell Soup (FY18 10-K)"

""On a more positive note, CTV has continued to grow albeit at a lower rate with a year over-year increase in April of approximately 10% and has also stabilized in the last several weeks." — Q1 2020 Conf Call; "Since the start of this quarter, we have observed even greater recovery, with Q3 revenue quarter-to-date nearly breakeven year-over-year on a pro forma basis. And since the start of Q3, we have observed even more rapid acceleration in CTV revenue growth, currently running at roughly 50% up year-over-year." — Q2 2020 results; "We are seeing continued strong post-election year-over-year growth in CTV, even without the benefits of political spending." and "We expect revenue for the fourth quarter to be in the range of $72 million to $75 million and we expect CTV to continue with strong year-over year growth rates." and "And so, yeah, after coming out of two quarters of extreme volatility in Q2 and Q3, I think the message for Q4 is, we are seeing a little bit of normalcy." — Q3 2020 Conf Call"

""[T]he last minute exercise of the first right of refusal to buy a big block of franchise stores in 2015 ...is a perfect example of how misguided your incentive compensation structure is and how poor strategic planning can lead to poor capital allocation decisions" — Howard Penney, Hedgeye, 10/17/16; "[T]he most recent acquisition (38 units in the 3Q15) has weighed on earnings and came with a rich multiple, adjusting for the foregone royalties" — John Glass, Morgan Stanley, 7/25/16; "[R]eturn metrics suffered from the company's FY15 decision to acquire a large number of franchisees...[which] resulted in lower operating margins and financial returns as incremental capital was deployed to eliminate a high margin royalty revenue stream" — John Zolidis, Buckingham, 7/26/16; "Acquiring franchise stores increases business risk...Why in a slowing sales[,] lower return environment would the parent company want even greater exposure to the volatility in the business?" — Howard Penney, Hedgeye, 6/13/16"

""Do not be fooled by these 5-star ratings, they recently asked all employees to write positive reviews on their Glassdoor to hopefully increase the overall rating, even though most will leave this organization within a few months." — Oct 15, 2023; "They recently received a terrible employee satisfaction survey, but rather than listen to staff and make meaningful changes, they've continued to ignore the concerns. If you're thinking of working here, don't. This company doesn't value or respect its employees, and things aren't getting better anytime soon." — Sep 23, 2024; "You are led by someone whose middle name should be 'toxic'. Trust me, you don't want to be part of this shambles of an organisation. Before you consider joining ask yourself why so many top brass have left in the past year." — Sep 24, 2024; "The workplace culture leaves much to be desired, with frequent reports of the company trying to maintain positive financial appearances by making large-scale redundancies." — July 12, 2024"

""After more than 3 years of aggressively repositioning its asset base and slashing costs, we expect Amerada Hess will finally deliver..." — Lehman, May 1999; "Over the last five years our company has done a lot of work to reshape our portfolio... We're starting to deliver a consistent track record of performance." — John Hess, September 2006; "So about two years ago, we really started to push a more balanced approach between accessing unconventional... to balance the high impact exploration program." — John Hess, November 2010; "We have done a lot of work over the last 10 years to restructure our Company significantly..." — John Hess, July 2011; "...important change for Hess... This change essentially began in 2009 and should be largely complete in 2014." — John Hess, July 2012; "We would note that our current board is comprised of highly accomplished directors who deserve credit for initiating the multiyear transformation that continues today." — Jon Pepper, Hess spokesman, February 2013"

""As Patrick mentioned in his comments, and as Franz (VP of Emerging Markets) is going to speak about shortly, emerging markets is still a key growth focus for us. We're in a strong position now to accelerate our product development capability in the region to develop more products and solutions locally that are more aligned with the needs of customers in those markets." — CFO Rowland, Analyst Day Sept 2021; "They invested heavily and early in China, India and the MidEast. We look like a local competitor with local nationals running them. The challenge there in China and India (less so in the MidEast) – there's a market segment that wants premium products and willing to pay a premium price. That's 20% of the market. The rest are price sensitive, looking for the cheapest price. That drives a market dynamic that's different from the rest of the geographies. Places like India have dilutive margins. Growth potential is there, but margin potential is dilutive." — Former Xylem Executive Response"

""The more my team and I talked about it, the more we saw the franchisees as our primary customers...Our market share grew from the teens to the mid-20s [and we] attracted franchisees who owned other fast-food restaurants and wanted to open a Popeyes" — Cheryl Bachelder, Popeyes CEO, Harvard Business Review, October 2016; "[T]he beauty of a franchise business is they run their stores more efficiently in most cases than Corporate folks do. And that's consistent not just at any Denny's, but in any franchise brand you see" — Denny's at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Consumer Conference, 3/9/11; "So the whole concept of refranchising [is] a result of a certain level of impatience and a certain level of frustration over the fact that we just need to operate better at the local level with some of our franchisees...we think it's time for us to be more aggressive in terms of transforming the composition of our franchise system to a higher performing group" — Domino's, Q4'07 Conference Call, 2/26/08"

"Like NRP, I think it’s going to be a huge game-changer. And you see some of this initial data that’s coming out even from Europe, and you’re like, “Why are we not doing this?” NRP is going to probably be standard. There’s going to be no real utility in using an OCS in comparison to other cheaper, more widely available, and more preferable from a business-to-business standpoint—it’s a no-brainer. [...] For livers, probably in the next six months [...] I think we’ll probably stop using it. It’s gotten to that point [...] the market has shifted...the clinicians who have been very, very concerned about the poor business practices and misalignment of incentives with TransMedics, that there are now going to be other technologies...it’s very promising that there’s going to be a different option, not only from the actual product standpoint but just from a business standpoint, I would switch right away. — Veteran transplant administrator/executive in a senior role at Massachusetts General Hospital"

"“In the PKU program, we have two programs for PKU: one is a first-generation strain that we developed ourselves, homegrown. The second-generation program has an enzyme that we did work with Zymergen on, and Zymergen was able to identify an enzyme with improved activity. And that's one of the enzymes that we ended up engineering into our next-generation strain.” — Synlogic executive; “For the two clinical-stage assets for the PKU [phenylketonuria] program and the HOX [enteric hyperoxaluria] program, they have not impacted those programs at all... We're not trying to do science experiments, we're trying to develop drugs.” — Current Synlogic executive; “The whole SPAC pitch deck, it's very aspirational and beautiful, and it looks great and all that stuff. If you like that kind of stuff, it's an impressive example of how to do that, I guess. I hope that they can make a bigger impact than some of the stuff that has been their successes so far, things like the fragrances.” — Synlogic executive"

""I am proud of the accomplishments of the Board and management team." — Glenn Tilton, Lead Independent Director, April 2025; "But when you look at what we’ve done over the long term, we’ve been on a great and accelerating path to growth and enhancing our ability to return capital to shareholders." — Mark Lashier, CEO, April 2025; "I’ve had board members tell me that they’re just stunned at the progress that we’ve been able to make in such a short period of time." — Mark Lashier, CEO, April 2025; "We’ve completed the strategic priorities that we laid out in 2022, enhanced in 2023, and committed to achieving by the end of 2024. I am proud of the work our employees have done to accomplish these important priorities and deliver on our commitments to shareholders while maintaining industry-leading safety performance." — Mark Lashier, CEO, January 2025; "You simply don’t achieve results like this without a high functioning, deeply engaged board." — Bob Pease, Independent Director, March 2025"