Callouts & quotes from 37,061+ activist slides

""The company's software scans some 400 million YouTube videos a day, analyzing descriptions, views, likes, comments and shares. It then ranks each clip on a scale, deducting points for risque topics like politics, religion, sex and even twerking." — Mark Henry, OpenSlate Founder / Bloomberg Interview, May 4, 2018"

"We link pay with performance through our cash incentive plan, called POBS Plus. The purpose of the incentive plan is to provide an incentive to key employees of the company to reward them for driving the success of the company as measured based on objective financial criteria — Mettler-Toledo 2019 Proxy Statement"

"A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened. — Wikipedia (via footnote 115)"

"That's the DaaS [driver as a service] market opportunity that we are going to go after and also deliver value for our customers... Our indicative DaaS pricing range, and again recognizing we're a few years away from operating our DaaS business model, is $0.65 to $0.85, okay? — Sterling Anderson, Investor Day 2024"

"I would say that about 50% is a fair number... that throws up some errors... For some reason, the instrument gives you readings all over the place, and then you try to troubleshoot, they'll say, it's too close of a light spectrum and that side's overlapping; you've got to try something else. — Expert Consultation"

"“Exactly. I would say that the person that was the director of R&D, pretty much overseeing the project, was actually a Ginkgo employee at first, so he had really little say because he was an insider from Ginkgo, so he couldn't really tell them what you're doing is not the perfect thing.” — Current Motif executive"

"Fears that PwC Australia's burgeoning conflict-of-interest controversy over retirement payments made to former partners will spread to overseas member firms is piling pressure on local leadership to resolve the widening issue. — Australian Financial Review "PwC Fears Payments Issue Will Go Global", March 22, 2019"

"“I don't know anybody who's gotten approval from their insurance yet”; “they're sort of watching and waiting...again, people are going to look into it, but I don't know many of those will actually end up getting on it...” — Longtime researcher involved in PWS clinical trials at one of the two key PWS associations"

"The Committee is responsible for “periodically reviewing and advising the Board on the Company’s strategic direction and investment in research and development and technology (“R&D”). Such oversight shall include key aspects of internal and external investments.” — Charter for the Science and Technology Committee"

"Smart2Pay’s margin increase is unlikely to be explained by its ability to rationalize its operational footprint. Using the Wayback Machine, we see that even through May 2021, it was still operating out of five global locations. The website has recently been updated and now omits operations in the U.S. and Spain."

"Because of these issues, and the questionable overlapping audit committee chair with NIHD along with prior transaction discrepancies, we strongly suggest that AMT's shareholders and independent Board members scrutinize the transaction, and consider rejecting it, as the incremental risk may outweigh the benefits."

"If, per our survey, 70% of G5 users were willing to assume the risks involved in hacking their transmitters for the sake of 33% annual cost savings, we suspect that a material proportion of Dexcom G-Series users will be willing to switch to the now-comparable Libre 2 for the sake of over 80% annual cost savings."

"If, per our survey, 70% of G5 users were willing to assume the risks involved in hacking their transmitters for the sake of 33% annual cost savings, we suspect that a material proportion of Dexcom G-Series users will be willing to switch to the now-comparable Libre 2 for the sake of over 80% annual cost savings."

"Using data from Semrush, we find that "Free Cloud Storage" is the most popular search term used to drive traffic to companies such as Dropbox. The data shows that the cost per click for this key terms has been rising materially. Consequently, we observe that Dropbox's ranking for "Free Cloud Storage" is falling."

"Zebra’s solutions are used heavily in applications to track and report inventory in retail and supply chain markets. Ironically, we identify a range of issues with Zebra’s inventory accounting and reporting that indicate Zebra itself fails to accurately manage and report inventory and may be delaying impairment."

"Recent data from the National Bicycle Dealers indicate a substantial decline of independent bike dealerships. Meanwhile, using iconic Harley Davidson as a proxy for motorcycle demand, we observe that sales fell for a fifth year in a row as the it struggles to find new buyers, and has its own electric bike debut."

"Rather than welcome the involvement and expertise of one of the pre-eminent energy executives of our time - and a large shareholder - Phillips 66 greeted the news of Mr. Goff's investment in its stock and his support for our campaign by immediately and angrily impugning his motives and questioning his integrity."

"GILEAD scientist with five years of experience with BLI, across several large pharma/biotech companies, is one of the most experienced users and has declined to recommend purchase at Gilead; suggests BLI's pipeline has dwindled in last 4-6 months; "limited market" with competing technologies about to take share."

"In 2013, OrthoSensor signed a manufacturing contract with Valtronic to produce between 5,000 – 30,000 per year of its knee balancer. The contract detailed that a 10% failure rate was to be assumed. In August 2017, Valtronic filed a lawsuit against OrthoSensor for non-payment and alleging failure rates up to 40%."

"Comparing the Company's supplier disclosure between its 2019 and 2020 10-K Annual Report, Heska eliminated references to four external suppliers despite the fact that either current product sheets pre-date the change or the products remain the same, meaning no actual change in supplier relationship has occurred."

"the worst-performing product is definitely the lung...that organ is preserved on ice just as well, if not better, because of the complexity of the physiology and anatomy of the lung...it’s pretty expensive...the majority of the cases can be safely preserved on ice...this is a method that was working pretty well."

"One of the most serious issues – which came up repeatedly in our interviews – is livers becoming necrotic on the device, a known risk specific to normothermic perfusion machines like TransMedics but which our research indicates is far more widespread than known – with surgeons alleging a cover-up by the company."

"Spruce Point believes that Dollarama is significantly overvalued based on its undifferentiated and increasingly uncompetitive business model, inflated and unsustainable margins which are posed to decline, and its limited growth prospects which will restrain its ability to hit its long-term earnings expectations."

"What’s worth noting is that IIPR’s purchase was actually in the form of a quitclaim deed which typically only transfers the grantor’s interest in a piece of real estate, whereas 3G Management’s purchase was in the form of a warranty deed which guarantees the transfer of legal title and rights to the real estate."

"We calculated this total by examining all the Form 4s listed for IONQ insiders listed on SECFORM4.COM. First, we included any non-discretionary sales that were done from March 11th-14th, as well as any Form 4s that specifically stated that the sale was made pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan adopted from March-11th-14th."

"It seems to us that the lease model may quickly become a huge liability if one of the following occurs: (i) AXDX depletes its cash reserve; (ii) negative clinical data about the Pheno system are published; (iii) a new strong competitor comes in a picture; (iv) hospitals will underutilize installed Pheno systems."

"“Let me be very clear. The foundational plan that we have that we launched the IPO on [...] is delivering on expectation. We've seen that in the last four quarters. You've seen that in our guidance. We see no change to our foundational plan and feel very good about it.” — Acquisition of Bayer by Elanco 8/20/2019"

""It feels very expensive to me. If you go through the three methodologies, valuing the cash flows, on a relative value basis and the third thing is what its worth on a price to book basis if you were to think about it as a financing company. In all three metrics, it's quite expensive." — Former Sunnova Executive"

"In 2021, we made approximately $15 million in equity contributions and made $10 million in member loans to one of the Lighthouse Partnerships for the settlement of hedging activity under one of the project’s power hedge agreements as a result of the February 2021 winter storms in Texas. — HASI 2021, 10-K, p. 100"

"And again, I want to emphasize that as we look at this $2 billion objective, this is coming from every one of the divisions. This has got to be a broad front approach, it's going to be a broad front attack, every division has to be able to perform up to expectations. — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, March 2014"

"We've never been positioning Momo as a live streaming company. We have always been positioning Momo as a social company and we're seeing these - the user experience, the social experience around the newer used cases are actually pretty good in some ways actually better than the live streaming service. — Tang Yan"

""Nutrition Clubs, conducted at residential or [brick and mortar] non-residential locations are social gatherings, bringing together persons who become members wishing to focus on good nutrition and regular exercise in order to achieve optimum health." — Herbalife, Sales & Marketing Plan and Business Rules Manual"

""The project was not successful as it could have been because there were 21 business units and we were not tough enough on limiting the customization. And it's not going to cost $500 million. The overall cost is going to be much bigger, close to $1.0 billion." — Former Stryker Information Technology Professional"

"On February 28, 2020 Atlas acquired all issued and outstanding shares of APR Energy plc ("APR Energy") from the company and other APR Energy shareholders in an all-stock transaction at a deemed value of $405.8 (including certain Atlas shares reserved for holdback). — Apple Bidco Limited Financial Statements 2020"

"Our International business makes up about 10% of our sales. It's highly concentrated with over 50% of International sales in Australia, primarily from 3 well positioned brands that we have there: Hydralyte, FESS nasal sprays and Murine eye care in excess of 20%. — Ron Lombardi, CEO, Q3 2020 Call February 6, 2020"

"CCMS Payment Services Inc was formed by John Cooper and Richard Cesario on November 2014. We see that the assumed name under which the business to be conducted is also "Fifth Manhattan" and was changed March 2015. This is the exact same name that Pivotal Payments declared its entity to be named Fifth Manhattan."

"Changes Undermine Confidence In The Consistency And Comparability Of Reporting: We express concerns that WTRG is shifting its references to unit customer additions to its business from "customer connections", to "equivalent dwelling units" and finally, "equivalent retail customers or equivalent dwelling units"."

"Spruce Point finds a common theme of uncollectable receivables within the Pramac Group. Its Asian subsidiary domiciled in Singapore was recently liquidated in 2021 and its last filed financial statements showed a large portion of receivables due beyond 1 year and an allowance of 36.5% against gross receivables."

"The overlap between Piedmont Lithium and IperionX extends beyond just its leadership team and management. We observe that both companies engaged the same technical consultants in areas of engineering, procurement, and construction (Primero), lab analysis (SGS), permitting (HDR), and engineering studies (Hatch)."

"Our analysis of Maxar's order backlog reveals two key insights: 1) Its backlog has shown no positive organic growth since 2012 when adjusting for the acquisitions of SSL and DigitalGlobe, and 2) Maxar stopped providing a breakdown of order backlog by segment, rendering it impossible to track SSL/Communications."

"In addition to receiving up to c.US$3.7 in potential value per share in the demerged US petroleum business(1), Australian tax-resident shareholders could receive additional value, depending on their marginal tax rate, of up to c.22%(2) per core BHP share that they tender into the discounted off-market buybacks."

"J.B. Thome & Co is a well regarded bulk spirits brokerage in the distilled spirits industry founded in 1977. Their current price list contains two 95% Rye Whiskies listed from Lawrenceburg, IN which we can safely assume is MGPI's product. We observe no price difference between the 2011 and 2013 vintage product."

"The Data Verification division of responsibility for Nova's SK-1300 Initial Assessment Technical Report for the Estelle Gold Project is entirely in the hands of Mr. Khounphakdee, an individual we cannot fully verify but whose academic claims of an advanced degree in geology an engineering appear to be spurious."

"NetQin feels very sorry about the stockholders' loss due to the great decline of stock price. However, the loss was caused by the defamatory comments made by Muddy Waters; therefore, NetQin has taken legal action in Beijing to sue Muddy Waters and the report's writer. --NetQin CEO Lin (Source: The Beijing News)"

"NQ Yu Lin: Who says farmers cannot program? Poor people can also have the Chinese dream! They are pointing at the CEO of one of our sub companies, Ruide. The CEO himself will sue Muddy Waters for it. He is a computer science major college graduate. I'd say he has higher education than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates."

"“We use a chip trap developed by Sandia National Laboratories...” — University of Maryland website. “Surface trap fabricated by Sandia National Labs, supported by IARPA. This type of trap has been used to capture ions at JQI and Duke University, as well as other institutions.” — Joint Quantum Institute website."

"We're also adjusting the timeline by which we expect to achieve our longer-term margin targets laid out at our December 2020 Investor Day.... We remain committed to 60% gross margin and 31% adjusted EBITDA margin, and we'll provide an update on timing in 2023... — CEO Jeff Simmons Q2 2022 Earnings Call 8/8/2022"

""It was clear that Keurig and Green Mountain control MBlock." — Former GMCR / MBlock workers; "Nobody in that warehouse can tell you what is MBlock’s, what is Keurig, what is Green Mountain’s, nobody can tell you that. I honestly don’t think the owner of MBlock can tell you that." — Former GMCR / MBlock workers"

"My material costs per aligner are about $5 to $6 and when I factor in labor, I am printing aligners for approximately $10. As my staff gets more efficient, the cost will go lower. 3D printers are getting faster and cheaper as well, so a new investment there will eventually lower the cost as well. — Orthodontist"

"Leading independent proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis has recommended shareholders support meaningful boardroom change by voting for the election of three Elliott director nominees – Brian Coffman, Sigmund Cornelius and Michael Heim – to Phillips 66's Board of Directors at the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders."

"“We've made clubs visible to investors. We have taken investors to clubs. Amy is consistently putting club tours together. I think it's important for somebody interested in this model to go see a club. And you'll understand that within clubs, it is all consumption based.” — John DeSimone, CFO, November 14, 2012"

"We only recently closed on the deal and are still working to quantify the extent of these synergies. But expect there to be significant opportunities to rationalize expenses by eliminating duplicate sales efforts in combining certain aspects of our teams both of which are based in Seattle. — CFO on Q1’2018 Call"

""That business had been for sale for years, and years, and years" — Former 10 Year Executive Manager. "That acquisition was a bit surprising to me" — Former 10 Year Executive Manager. "Waterpik had a lot of cats and dogs, a lot of SKUs and a lot of potential liability issues" — Former 10 Year Executive Manager."

"“We use EBITDA Less Float to measure the profitability of our core business (excluding “float” revenue, over which we have less control), and believe EBITDA Less Float acts as a guardrail to ensure that Core Revenue performance is achieved in a sustainable way.” — BILL 2024 Definitive Proxy Statement (10/25/24)"

"“While unfortunate, this disappointing trajectory has created a historic opportunity: With the right mindset and an appropriately ambitious turnaround plan, PepsiCo today represents a rare chance to revitalize a leading global enterprise and unlock significant shareholder value,” — Elliott Investment Management"

""For both aircraft and engines, depreciation begins when the asset is initially placed into service, which generally coincides with the date when the asset is ready for its intended use. Depreciation continues whether leased or not, until the asset is permanently removed from service." — FTAI SEC Comment Letter"

""Our strategy is a transformational change into a midstream logistics company..." — Greg Garland, Phillips 66 CEO; "I think Midstream will certainly continue to be a growth vehicle for us... I think Refining is a good business. It's just -- long term, I just don't see it growing" — Greg Garland, Phillips 66 CEO"

"“they’ll throw a lot of money your way” or “it’s basically like a reward system.” — Former Nevro executives and KOLs; “everyone knows” — Former Nevro executive; “100%” — Former Nevro consultant; “their whore for California,” “a guy who takes money,” “borderline unethical,” “coin-operated.” — KOLs and executives"

"the planning permission is unlawful because [A1.3c] the Defendant failed to take into account an obviously material consideration, namely addressing whether it was approving more panels over a larger area than were required to produce the stated (and a lawful) electricity generating capacity. — High Court Judge"

"“There’s a very insular circle of Egyptians at the top: the CEO, Tamer, Magdy, Waleed’s sister, runs the lung business. It seems to be a similar Egyptian circle among their highest-volume users, this guy at Houston Methodist, Mark Ghobrial is Egyptian.” — Executive at a West Coast OPO, longtime industry veteran"