Callouts & quotes from 306+ activist slides

""We believe the exit of CEO Kevin Johnson raises some concerns around execution, which has been largely uneven of late. That said, his eventual successor could be more opportunistic around costs and buybacks, while simplifying the product line. Time will tell" — Barclays (7/24/13); "Can we speak about the cost structure of Juniper and the scope for it to become more efficient? Because compared to many of the larger IT telecom equipment networking stocks, the operating expense to sales ratio ... [is] almost one of the highest of all the companies that we've looked at. ... Is it a case of direct cost-cutting?" — Credit Suisse, CS Tech Conference (12/4/13); "One of the frustrations I hear from investors is around OpEx and OpEx management. I think you have one of the highest percentages in terms of sales of R&D spend. We've seen other companies in the sector that have throttled back on OpEx, returning cash in an aggressive way, and they're being rewarded for that" — UBS, UBS Tech Conference (11/19/13); "Cost cutting should be focal. Juniper's operating margin structure has been under pressure for several years ... Over the same period revenue has grown at a CAGR of 3.3% per year which raises questions about management's ability to control operating expenses. On an absolute dollar basis, operating expenses have risen by over $300 million from $1.8 billion in 2010 to $2.1 billion in 2012 which, as a percentage of sales, is the highest within our coverage universe" — Credit Suisse (9/18/13); "The retirement of CEO Kevin Johnson, while not expected this quarter, could provide an opportunity for a new strategic approach given the difficulties the company has faced. At the very least, it gives the stock a chance to benefit from the restructuring and realignment story that usually occurs after a CEO transition" — Morgan Stanley (7/24/13); "We view the increased opex as disappointing as leverage was one of the main reasons investors were attracted to Juniper's stock" — Stifel Nicolaus (7/24/13); "We continue to believe the company's R&D level is far too high and generates below average returns compared to rivals such as Cisco and F5 which have R&D in the 10-11% of revenue range" — Wedbush Securities (6/13/12); "The main issue that is impacting Juniper's opex structure is the number of new projects the company has undertaken ..., each of which required big new investments. ... In our view, the underwhelming initial reception for MobileNext and QFabric is evidence that the company should adopt a more prudent investment strategy going forward .... We also believe that Juniper should address its cost structure ... including exiting lagging businesses" — Bank of America Merrill Lynch (5/23/12)"

"Question, Justin Post: "I know one of the initiatives of the Company is to move up to team sales. Just wondering how you are thinking about enterprise sales force and whether you might accelerate hiring there. And then on the CapEx versus the capital leases, maybe talk about why you choose to use capital leases, what are the advantages to the Company and how you think about the cash flow around those? Thank you." Answer, CFO Ajay Vashee: "This is Ajay. I'll jump in on the question on capital leases and thank you for the question. So the high level update there is that in the last quarter we added $25.5 million to our capital lease lines, and we made close to $30 million in payments against our capital lease obligations. And as a result, our ending capital lease balance was $170 million in Q1, and that was down about $4.3 million from Q4. And at a high level, while there may be some variances within a given quarter and between quarters, we expect to generally maintain our outstanding capital lease balance over the long-term, as capital lease repayments will roughly offset capital lease additions. And to your question on how we choose to buy equipment versus leverage a capital lease, we receive favorable financing terms on our capital leases. And we believe that for a portion of our infrastructure hardware, that they better match our capital investments with our cash inflows, and so that's why we leverage them. And we of course continue to evaluate our capital allocation strategy on an ongoing basis." — Q1 2018 Dropbox Call"

""High marks for management. CEO Mark Donegan has a manufacturing background and graduated from the GE manufacturing management program in 1979, two years prior to Jack Welch becoming CEO. His chief success prior to taking the reins at [PCC] was at the helm of Wyman-Gordon, a [PCC] subsidiary where he led the business to historically high operating margins and growth. We think the most notable aspect of Mark Donegan’s career was his ability to manage a manufacturing concern profitably through the aerospace decline in the 1990’s." — Goldman Sachs, October 10, 2007; "From there, we want to take that baseline cost structure and we want to go back into the market where we want to drive for market share. We'll also take and add to that the ability we have on vertical integration... So market share is key and then we take that and drive that back across the assets that we created more capacity... We're not looking for just sales growth. We're looking for key assets that give us an expanding portfolio, attack our costs, long-term market share gain and growth." — Mark Donegan, December 3, 2014; "[PCC] generally leverages superb execution for market share gains through pricing strategies and long-term contracts. We believe [PCC] is one of the best operators in our space, as operating margins are generally above peer companies." — Bank of America, June 4, 2014"

""PFE best positioned for top-line growth among large cap pharma with the pipeline capable of replenishing 41% of the FY17 revenue base by FY25 (vs. peers 7%), well in excess of the 16% of sales exposed to generic/biosimilar headwinds (vs. peers 42%). While near-term growth will be depressed by the loss of Lyrica, we believe investors will look through this to a period of renewed growth. Post-Lyrica LOE, we model revenue CAGR rising to 7.7% (FY20-25) from 2.7% (FY17-20)." — Atlantic Equities, November 27, 2018; "Perhaps the greatest legacy of outgoing CEO Ian Read is a reinvigorated R&D pipeline that should sustain top-line growth beyond key patent expirations. We expect new CEO Bourla to leverage this significant boost in late-stage R&D assets to a level that could preclude the need for M&A or financial engineering" — Oppenheimer, December 11, 2018; "Pfizer has had pipeline success in 2018 with surprisingly good data from Tafamidis, Tanezumab meeting efficacy endpoints in smaller duration phase-3 trials but with questions on safety remaining, early encouraging data from next-gen JAK's for Inflammation and advancement of 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine into phase-3. We believe these events have a played a key role in changing the narrative on Pfizer from an M&A/Split story to a pipeline/growth story." — UBS, January 22, 2019"

""PFE best positioned for top-line growth among large cap pharma with the pipeline capable of replenishing 41% of the FY17 revenue base by FY25 (vs. peers 7%), well in excess of the 16% of sales exposed to generic/biosimilar headwinds (vs. peers 42%). While near-term growth will be depressed by the loss of Lyrica, we believe investors will look through this to a period of renewed growth. Post-Lyrica LOE, we model revenue CAGR rising to 7.7% (FY20-25) from 2.7% (FY17-20)." — Atlantic Equities, November 27, 2018; "Perhaps the greatest legacy of outgoing CEO Ian Read is a reinvigorated R&D pipeline that should sustain top-line growth beyond key patent expirations. We expect new CEO Bourla to leverage this significant boost in late-stage R&D assets to a level that could preclude the need for M&A or financial engineering" — Oppenheimer, December 11, 2018; "Pfizer has had pipeline success in 2018 with surprisingly good data from Tafamidis, Tanezumab meeting efficacy endpoints in smaller duration phase-3 trials but with questions on safety remaining, early encouraging data from next-gen JAK's for Inflammation and advancement of 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine into phase-3. We believe these events have a played a key role in changing the narrative on Pfizer from an M&A/Split story to a pipeline/growth story." — UBS, January 22, 2019"

""[Verint] didn't have a good feel for the rate or pace of change and how quickly, in the last 12-18 months, how the cloud has become ubiquitous. It's not an 'if' question anymore, it's how quickly can we migrate to the cloud. I think Verint has missed the signals there – and, to be honest, inexplicably so." — Verint Customer; "Two to three years ago, I would have put [Verint] in a clear leading position. Now, I do not view them in a lead position, as I have them as one of three or one of four. They are going to play catch-up over the next two years. They should have had the foresight to lead the push into the cloud. And they missed that opportunity. Their market share will have declined from previous levels because of the fact that they missed the opportunity with the cloud." — Verint Customer; "Verint, in my opinion...I have worked with them for 18 years.... It's a little bit of 'shame on them' that they have missed the cloud play." — Verint Customer; "[Verint] is behind the curve." — Verint Customer; "There is still growth in the SMB space that I think NICE is better poised to take advantage of because of the inContact [acquisition] and transition to the cloud that Verint hasn't been fully able to leverage." — Former Verint Employee; "I think Verint has dropped the ball completely in terms of cloud." — Verint Competitor"

"We ended up selling our entire position in DND. I simply couldn’t stomach the risk that management wouldn’t try to pull something in the midst of your activist campaign. — Former shareholder (Sept 2024); Matt keeps saying he wants to delever the balance sheet to 4x but in the meantime, he keeps making acquisitions and increasing the leverage. We have told the Board for years they need to pay down debt, but they just don’t get it. — Top 10 shareholder (June 2024); As long as Matt is involved, I am not touching this stock. — Former shareholder (June 2024); The Board is a joke. Colleen seems like a nice person, but she is in over her head and can’t manage someone like Matt. Matt controls this Board and unless we have a clean fresh reset, nothing will ever change. This is why this stock trades at such a discount to the peers. — Top 20 shareholder (June 2024); I asked Matt in December 2023 if he would issue equity to delever the balance sheet. Stock was around $14 per share. Matt replied – at this price, no way, it’s way too cheap. Barely a month later, company announced a bought deal at $12.10 per share. — Top 10 shareholder (May 2024); Matt says one thing and does just the opposite. It’s so frustrating. The stock is uninvestable. — Former shareholder (May 2024)"

"“I have not seen a big uptick for Omnia in our territory. I think it'll be a dud. We've been pushing hard against their being all in on high frequency, and now allowing low-dose and multiple waveforms even though everything they've done and all their studies are around 10khz. They're trying to get Omnia into some of their old accounts now. If a patient comes in requesting Nevro, that's about the only time that Nevro is getting implanted in other accounts” — Regional sales manager at one of Nevro's largest competitors; “Part of Nevro's messaging is that it's easy to implant. You throw the leads in; you scan T9/T10; there's no in or out testing. It's very simple. But if you need to switch to low-dose and you need to do mapping, you have no idea what you're getting into as a doctor. Nevro never trained a lot of their reps on it. Now they're asking their field to retrain on classic spinal cord stimulation. We leverage that. You've done an about-face and now all of a sudden you're trying to do what every other company is doing. At least in our market, high frequency hasn't been the silver bullet you promoted and now you're just like everybody else.” — Regional sales manager at one of Nevro's largest competitors"

""Great. And then maybe in the final minute or so, just weigh in on capital deployment." — Analyst Jack Meehan; "I didn't see share repurchases come up." — CFO Vadala; "You guys are very disciplined there, too. So how does the environment look for deals? It's been a couple of years since your last notable acquisition. Is it tougher to find the quality deals or is it valuation." — Analyst Jack Meehan; "I think it's availability. Our definition of strategic fit continues to be the same which is tight. We're looking for – we tend to like the bolt-ons. We like the adjacencies in the Lab and the product inspection space. We like targets that can leverage our Spinnaker program, serve the same end markets, so we have good cross-selling capabilities. But the pipeline hasn't changed. Typically when you're looking at that profile of company, it's an availability, whether it's a private company or something like that. In terms of capital deployment, we also do like share repurchases. We continue to use our free cash flow plus option proceeds to buy back our stock. We've been very consistent about that over the years. We don't try to time the market. We're in the market every single day." — CFO Vadala"

""I hear what you're saying about the acquisition and the history, but really it's been six, seven years since we've made an acquisition more than $100 million. So we've moved past that. Really the financial priority for the Company as set out by the Board and the senior management team is continue to improve the credit profile." — Steve Heskett, Vice President - Treasurer, September 2011; "Smaller bolt-on acquisitions, particularly in fast-growing, developing markets that have a very strong synergistic, a post-synergistic sort of a payback for us, $10 million-$20 million sort of acquisitions -- I don't believe this is the time to kind of bet the farm and go out and leverage up the balance sheet. I don't think that we've -- I think reducing our debt right now is more important than expanding our debt." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, May 2012; "But I don't see in today's -- where the market, I think, is putting a premium on risk reduction. I don't see a scenario today, at least not one that sits readily before me, where we are going to take our balance sheet and load it up with debt. So, M&A, large M&A I don't think is a high priority." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, November 2012"

"“I think it’s about control. So, if you can control the surgeon, the team, the airplane - everything - as a consumer, I’m stuck. I might know what the cost would be, but then there are all these delays. Sometimes, we can’t even get a plane because of the delay in the procuring arena where we have to then field another jet because we’ve got 90 minutes. So, that adds to the additional cost, too. But I would say when it comes down to why their team needs to be the one and only to make the decision, I think that’s a control thing. I think that’s them making the call. And I have no control over that.” — Veteran transplant administrator/executive at Massachusetts General Hospital; “...so there may be a feeling of being kind of forced or leveraged into taking on that service. At some point, the cost, the economic analysis—I think they’re bordering on eating into all of the margin or most of the margin that would be gotten from doing another case of liver transplantation. I think that when you start pushing up against that, at least as an institution, you have to start asking the question, is this viable?” — Transplant hepatologist in a leadership role at Massachusetts General Hospital"

"I don't think misleading. However, I think, certain divisions look like they perform better because they're grouped into certain segments. Spine is an example. Now they disclose and its separate. A while ago it wasn't. It was struggling and before actually was losing money and they thought K2M was gonna fix it. Because the goal of K2M was to acquire market share. There was significant overlap and redundancies between K2M and Stryker spine. But the idea was to do a pure spine play and acquire market share. But because of the redundancies and the cost and, and ironically, K2M became the surviving entity, and the headquarters moved to Leesburg. Pricing pressures were significantly hurting Stryker when I was there. Spine was probably experiencing high single digits. One maybe two percent is probably (company) average. There were so many competitors in spine with lower overhead cost that they could drive the price down. Hospitals want single source suppliers. Stryker doesn't leverage the fact that it can sell so many different types of products. Divisions don't communicate or work well together, they're very competitive with each other. — Former Stryker M&A Professional"

""Power of One is emerging as a significant competitive advantage for PepsiCo in North America...PepsiCo offers multiple go-to-market systems and flexibility to our customers." — PepsiCo Management (10/23/2006); "We think we have...distinct capabilities at PepsiCo that give us a competitive advantage in the marketplace...Power of One is more than a catchy phrase." — PepsiCo Management (02/20/2008); "In terms of Power of One...there's so much more we can do to align merchandising efforts across beverages and snacks." — PepsiCo Management (2/11/2010); "With the acquisition of the bottling company, we can take Power of One into areas we've never done before...we can cut out redundant costs." — PepsiCo Management (3/22/2010); "PepsiCo's value is maximized as one Company...it provides compelling cost leverage across the value chain." — PepsiCo Management (2/9/2012); "We think the benefit of having the global snack and beverage business together is north of $800 million, so $800 million to $1 billion of synergies created by virtue of having those 2 together." — PepsiCo Management (2/21/2013)"

""One of the things that is really setting us apart [from our competitors] post-transformation is the fact that we do have one global platform...When we spend dollars to build the future functionality, we do it once. And then we leverage it across the world. If you have six accounting platforms and you were doing a regulatory change six times, that's 1/6 the IT efficiency" — Gunjan Kedia, State Street EVP, 2/25/15; "And I think I've mentioned about the challenges with the merger & acquisitions is we have so many different fragmented technology in various businesses and various products...I think the nature of the acquisitions have resulted in lots of fragmentation of technology" — Suresh Kumar, BNY Mellon CTO, 3/13/13; "The traditional approach for any of these acquisitions is steeped in the thesis that you'll see more synergies the more simplified your back end, and the more common systems you share, especially those that benefit from scale. That's been time-tested in the trust banking business" — Tim Keaney, Former BNY Mellon CEO Investment Services, 2010"

"I'm going to come back to the number you're not going to give in a second, but before I do that, this topic of restructuring, most of your company, you've hinted at this notion of there's cost inside Stryker, largely SG&A cost that can come out, but you've been sort of hesitant to give us that number. Why not come out and say, "We have a $500 million cost plan, it's got a 3-year term, thank you very much, this is what you're going to get?" — Morgan Stanley Analyst Lewis, Sept 2016. "I have a new CFO we named earlier this year, and he's -- we're working through our plans. And at this stage we're not really ready to sort of throw out a number. What I'm telling you is each year I have -- the cost transformation that we have underway, with moving from 41 different ERP systems to 1 ERP system, having indirect procurement, rationalizing some of our products, closing some of our factories, all of this activity that we have underway will deliver. That gives us the confidence that we can year after year deliver leveraged earnings." — CEO Lobo, MS Conf, Sept 2016."

"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"

""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)"

""So if you go anywhere in the world and you order McDonald hamburger is gonna taste like a McDonald hamburger, right? And the reason behind that is they have an infrastructure and an ingredients and a process that they've really dialed in so they can get predictable results wherever they go... there's no secret that they have stumbled with new offices and, and that, that would be an ongoing concern is, you know, they're hiring people from bigger BPOs who have seen that and wanna put that into place. Um, but it's tricky." — Fmr Business Dev. Employee. "All the BPOs servicing Facebook, and I'm not sure but probably at least a dozen, are doing low margins just to have the name, to learn, and leverage that name in their sales efforts. It's not uncommon for BPOs to take a haircut or even a loss for the first year or two for a long-term relationship. Now with wages increasing, it throws a bomb in the middle of everyone's strategic plan." — Fmr Business Dev. Employee."

""Between 10%,15%. Sometimes, let's say, there be a new player or let Stats Perform wanting to have one property, which Sportradar currently has, they will pay everything or they will go up by 20%, 30%, 50% if they must have it because their clients otherwise break away." — Former General Manager Sportradar (3/31/2021); "That's a really good question. I think that they will. I think they'll try to. I think that we'll actually see that happen pretty soon with the NFL." — Sales Director Sportradar (3/5/2021); "Great question. That's a bit of my concern with the industry as I think as I talk to people about this, some people think Genius will have pricing leverage. I'm probably in the camp that the leverage is against them because if I take an example, we have the NFL on one end of the spectrum, the Sportradar, Genius sitting in the middle and FanDuel on the other end of the spectrum." — Former EVP of Strategy FanDuel (1/19/2021)"

""Advances in security related technology have made it a viable option for reducing labor costs while improving the level of protection and service provided. Cameras, optical recognition, portable hardware, AI-driven applications, management software, and connectivity have all become integral parts of the typical protection solution." — Jamie Ridenhour, National Training & Compliance Manager, DSI Security Services; "The HVAC industry seems likely to be dominated by technology. From eco-friendly heating and cooling options to field service management (FSM) software that can increase operational efficiency (AI), virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT), technology will impact virtually every aspect of the HVAC business. HVAC companies need to determine how they can best leverage tech innovations to remain competitive in the face of heightened demands and a tightening economy." — Garrett Wilson, CEO, FieldBin"

""Can you talk about if the Company through this process discussed taking the Company private through a leveraged buyout and how you decided that this was the better alternative?" — Gary Lieberman, Analyst, Stanford Financial Group. "Yes, this is Bill Schoen speaking. We absolutely did, and we had several conversations with several people regarding that. And we came to the conclusion because of our extraordinary, outstanding balance sheet, that it would be a better approach -- the directors felt it would be a better approach to go ahead and give this cash dividend to our shareholders and then allow our shareholders to continue in the growth of our Company." — Bill Schoen, HMA Chairman. "In a bold move, Schoen fended off private-equity investors that have snapped up rival hospital companies, such as HCA last year, by using some of the same tactics." — Business Observer."

"Gross profit. Gross profit increased $4.1 million, or 3.0%, to $142.0 million for the thirteen weeks ended July 1, 2023 from $137.8 million for the thirteen weeks ended June 25, 2022. As a percentage of net sales, gross profit was 37.0% and 37.7% for the thirteen weeks ended July 1, 2023 and June 25, 2022, respectively. Gross profit increased primarily due to higher sales. The decrease in gross profit rate of 70 basis points was driven primarily by 160 basis points of deleverage in buying, occupancy and distribution center costs partially offset by a 90 basis-point increase in merchandise margin rate. The increase in merchandise margin rate was driven by 80 basis points of product margin expansion resulting primarily from growth in exclusive brand penetration and a 10 basis-point tailwind from lower freight expense as a percentage of net sales. — Q1'24 10-Q"

"FBR, July 2013: “CLB is one of the most attractive secular growth stories as its core competency of improving reservoir recovery fits in the sweet spot of our technology thesis.”; RBC, April 2014: “The company continues to establish itself as one of the best secular growth stories in the oilfield service sector with a suite of technologies geared toward the exploration and development of offshore and onshore unconventional oil plays with out-sized leverage to deep water field development.”; Morgan Stanley, September 2013: “Given our expectation for long-term secular growth, we believe the appropriate valuation methodology for CLB is discounted cash flow analysis. This differs from most of the stocks in our coverage universe, which we value on multiples (typically P/E and EV/EBITDA) because they tend to exhibit cyclical rather than secular growth.”"

"Importantly, we'll have strong cash flow generation as a result of this transaction, about $1 billion in operating cash flow in the second year and accelerating, which means we can quickly de-lever from approximately 5 times to less than 3 times by the end of the second full year post-close... — CEO Jeff Simmons on Acquisition of Bayer by Elanco 8/20/2019; The global diversified strength of the combined business will generate enough cash flow for us to bring our leverage below 3 times adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2022. We realized the timing of our deleveraging is different than what we planned at the IPO by approximately two years. But we believe this delay is warranted by the compelling value proposition that our combined focused animal health company creates. — CFO Todd Young on Acquisition of Bayer by Elanco 8/20/2019"

"“Substantial long-term operating leverage: Longer term, our hypothetical margin expansion analysis shows the potential for a significant ramp in pro forma operating margins from 12% currently to 30-40%, in theory, as revenues grow to scale and sales and marketing (S&M) costs normalize. We strongly believe that the SaaS business model can ultimately achieve a margin structure similar to that of traditional on-premise software businesses—a view that we believe is underappreciated by the Street.” — Nomura, Aug 2012; “Performing the same analysis for Ultimate Software Group, with its current renewal margins between 48% and 50% over the last four years, this would imply long-run, fully- scaled potential operating margins in the low-30% range (Ultimate’s non-GAAP operating margins today are ~20%).” — Goldman Sachs, July 2017"

"“Of our net sales, we believe that 73% of our business or our cost structure is highly variable. Our royalties that we pay distributors, about 36% of sales. Our product costs, 21%, and distributor facing spending, which is sort of sacrosanct. This is what Des mentioned earlier, and Michael. This is the last area that we want to touch as it relates to trying to leverage our margins. In fact, if anything, what we try to do is over-invest in this area because we do believe that complementing our royalty expense with very prudent incentives and promotion can actually drive incremental ROI on the spending. So, when we look at our essentially fixed overhead, and fixed is relative depending on what time horizon, we look at 12% of our cost structure being essentially fixed.” — Rich Goudis, CFO, Herbalife"

""On the ShopKeep and Upserve payment amendments, I just wanted to clarify, is it sort of largely the scale now of Lightspeed that allows you to sort of kind of get that bargaining power? Or is it kind of your relative operating prowess to sort of recognize that opportunity post those acquisitions that led to those amendments?" — Analyst Tse, Q4 2021 Conf Call; "I think it is all of those things. If you think about how this naturally would play out, you've got a partner of those businesses who now gets the deal with a much larger entity where the greater opportunity is aggregating all these things together. So that creates opportunity for them/leverage for us, and then the conversation then into what's important to Lightspeed, what's important to our customers?" — CFO Nussey, Q4 2021 Conf Call"

"The Company recognizes the importance of innovation and renovation to its long-term success and is focused on and committed to research and new product development activities, primarily in its maintenance product group. The Company's product development team engages in consumer research, product development, current product improvement and testing activities. The product development team also leverages its development capabilities by partnering with a network of outside resources including the Company's current and prospective outsource suppliers. In addition, the research and development team engages in activities and product development efforts which are necessary to ensure that the Company meets all regulatory requirements for the formulation of its products. — WD-40 Company Filings"

"“...as I mentioned in the last quarter, we're predicting now that our gross margin going forward, we're sort of at the trough now of gross margin. So as you've seen over the last several years, we've had, primarily because of mix, the strong growth of Eliquis, we've had margin degradation, but we feel that we're now bottoming out on that gross margin.” — Charles Bancroft, CFO, Q2 2018 Earnings Call, July 26, 2018; “And if you look back last year and again this year, we've continued to up-invest in R&D, while we have reductions in MS&A. So, we've continued to leverage our operating margin and we continue to see operating margin favorability going forward.” — Charles Bancroft, CFO, UBS Global Healthcare and Life Sciences Conference, May 22, 2018"

""Great union relationships are founded on really making the investment of ensuring that issues are brought in a timely fashion and dealt with." — Unknown Participant; "Having spent ten years of my life at the Southwest of Canada, and having been a part of some exciting changes that led to great outcomes, [it's exciting to have] the opportunity to be part of the grandfather of the low cost carriers, to help them get back to a point of real prominence and profitability in the industry." — Unknown Participant; "Southwest just has such a great story and such a great history and so many good things to be proud of and to leverage, that being a part of that, as an airline person, would be the best thing possible." — Unknown Participant"

"“All of the engineering and that synthetic biology happens in Boston. So, there’s that. I do think that was a bit of a power move…” — Former director-level employee; “Joyn was sort of set up as a, I mean, it was the first big joint venture, and it was set up to be independent. At the time, Ginkgo HR facilitated things, and there was some outsourcing of those types of G&A functions to Ginkgo, like they had kind of a part-time CFO, kind of independent contractor types that worked in different administration and executive functions. So, it wasn’t entirely run by Ginkgo, but it did leverage some kind of Ginkgo’s people in those roles, and it did use the same software systems and things like that.” — Former director-level employee"

""It is our intention within the 24-month period to be able to take this combined business, this pigments business, which will be in excess of $3.5 billion in sales..." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013; "It is our intention within the 24-month period to be able to take this combined business, this pigments business... and have a normalized EBITDA in excess of $0.5 billion" — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013; "We continue to remain focused as a Company and our Board of Directors on deleveraging. I think that when you look at our targets going out 2015 and 2016...our leverage ratios go to our long-time stated objective of 2.0 times our EBITDA." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013"

"We believe MAKO has demonstrated excellent market acceptance of their partial knee application. However, our analysis suggest there's a bigger opportunity in total hips and total knees to leverage Stryker's reconstructive implants. We look forward to sharing more regarding our plans for robotic-assisted surgery later in 2014. — IR Owen, Q4 2013. In terms of the integration, I think the most challenging part, and I think it's fair to say, we underestimated the complexity of it, but feel very comfortable with the trajectory we are on. — IR Owen, Q3 2013. Yeah, I would tell you, when we look at the performance in the quarter, I think it's just simply too soon. We are not seeing a competitive impact. — IR Owen, Q2 2019."

"We continue to remain focused as a Company and our Board of Directors on deleveraging. I think that when you look at our targets going out 2015 and 2016, our leverage ratios during that time period, particularly when you take into account an IPO during that time period, that our leverage ratios go to our long-time stated objective of 2.0 times our EBITDA. It is our intention within the 24-month period to be able to take this combined business, this pigments business, which will be in excess of $3.5 billion in sales and have a normalized EBITDA in excess of $0.5 billion, take this Company public and use that as an opportunity to create further shareholder value. — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2013"

""The other thing I would point out is before we'd even sell stock, that there's a lot of value in these assets. I hear people talking to me about regional malls selling at six cap rates or parking garages selling at five cap rates or 20 times cash flow and you think about -- or highways selling at 50 times cash flow, you think about prisons as infrastructure or some type of real estate asset, I think these could be even sold and harvested in some fashion to avoid selling stock in the future. So there are a number of things that we could do to finance our growth, but just with respect to cash flow and leverage, we could go quite a ways." — Irving Lingo, Former-CFO of Corrections Corp, Q2’06 Earnings Call"

""We expect China to eventually be $100 million revenue, so we will gain the leverage there." — CEO Ridge, Q1 2016; "Today, the China market is our third largest market for WD-40 in the world." — CEO Ridge, 2018 Shareholder Meeting; "We made an investment in China 14 years ago to open our own subsidiary there. China is now the second largest market in the world for our blue and yellow can with the little red top. We anticipate we'll continue to see double-digit growth in China going forward." — CEO Ridge, Q4 2019; "In China, net sales in U.S. dollars decreased to $2.3 million in the first quarter, down 23% compared to last year due to the timing of customer orders." — CEO Ridge, Q1 2020"

"“With your stock price near an all-time low, with interest rates near all-time lows...you could basically buy back 25% of the company and still be within your [target leverage] range. Have you thought about that?” — Investor at 2010 Investor Day; “You’ve got a rather miniscule dividend. With lack of big acquisition opportunities, no need to reduce debt, why not establish a really significant payout ratio? You’re a slow growth company.” — Investor at 2010 Investor Day; “On the dividend strategy...it’s basically $50MM. Your business throws off $300MM of cash, just seems like a very small amount given the growth nature of the business.” — Investor at 2010 Investor Day"

""As we think about you adding adjacencies and what you've done recently adding things like Fetch and Matrox and other markets... can you leverage that and your customers will be more comfortable maybe deploying a new solution, something more kind of like advanced like Fetch or Matrox in their operations?" — Vertical Analyst. "But that is -- our customers are giving us an opportunity to sell solutions in that space because we have a relationship with them already." — CEO Burns. "Can you give us an update on trends within like RFID and with Matrox and Fetch, and maybe how you see those businesses in terms of like growth in size exiting this year?" — TD Analyst."

""Though we acknowledge that DIN trades at a premium valuation relative to its leverage, we believe this is warranted due to the stable characteristics of its franchise model. That model provides a stable stream of royalty revenue that is generally immune to negative operating leverage and fluctuations in commodity and labor costs. Furthermore, the model enables low capital expenditures, thereby maximizing free cash flow." — Goldman Sachs, May 11, 2011; "The company has evolved its business into a more profitable franchise-centric model while bolstering its capital structure and balance sheet with significant debt reductions." — B Riley, October 12, 2011"

""Though we acknowledge that DIN trades at a premium valuation relative to its leverage, we believe this is warranted due to the stable characteristics of its franchise model. That model provides a stable stream of royalty revenue that is generally immune to negative operating leverage and fluctuations in commodity and labor costs. Furthermore, the model enables low capital expenditures, thereby maximizing free cash flow." — Goldman Sachs, May 11, 2011; "The company has evolved its business into a more profitable franchise-centric model while bolstering its capital structure and balance sheet with significant debt reductions." — B Riley, October 12, 2011"

"As we look forward, we will continue to grow organically in 3 primary ways: attracting new merchants, entering new markets and expanding ARPU. First, continuing to attract new merchants within our existing core markets. Our market is vast and underserved by cloud technology solutions, and we will leverage our growing global brand to attract an increasing number of new merchants to the Lightspeed ecosystem. In fiscal 2019, approximately 8,000 net new merchant locations joined the Lightspeed ecosystem, and we are well positioned to continue this trend while simultaneously generating solid underlying unit economics. — Q4 2019 conference call"

""ADP. Automatic. The irony of what ADP is doing is often keying data in manually… That’s essentially what many of these people [in implementation] are doing." — Former VP, Business Transformation; "There [were] probably 7 or 8 completely different implementation organizations [within Enterprise]… Implementation was the most inefficient part of National Accounts." — Former Senior Director of Business Transformation at ADP; "[The] service and implementation organization were never touched – [that's] where most of the bodies are – there's basically no leverage across the organization in these functions." — Former Executive Officer"

"“TSMC will keep a minimal share for Lasertec...KLA is what we call opportunistic...they increased the price...they deal with a hard hand. For the past three years, Intel purchased some tools, maybe two or three from Lasertec. But we believe they want leverage with KLA. We mainly think they purchased Lasertec because they want to give some leverage power to KLA because KLA’s price is even higher... TSMC spent a lot of money on KLA’s particle inspection tools, like SP5, SP7, and SP6. That’s very, very expensive.” — Longtime ex-TSMC procurement executive who introduced Lasertec inspection tools into TSMC"

"“We discussed this last time, too. [Redacted] would - there were numerous occasions whenever [redacted] would be in front of a provider and just say, you know, we may have to take you off this lucrative speaker’s program because you’re just not writing enough. You don’t have enough clinical experience with our drug because you’re not writing enough of it. Some doctors would take that offensively. And keep in mind, you know, Stark law; you can’t do that. You can’t provide compensation for speaking based upon—you can’t use that as a leverage tool.” — Ex-field reimbursement manager working with Harmony"

""This quarter, we reported a positive gross margin of $1.8 million, and we expect to continue to improve our operational synergies..." — Leproust, April 30, 2019 press release. "In addition, we delivered continued improvements in our gross margin, which increased to 16 percent of revenue in the third quarter..." — Jim Thorburn, CFO of Twist, Aug 1, 2019 press release. "We posted a positive 21% gross margin for the fiscal 2019 fourth quarter and 13% for the full year as our revenue scaled and we leveraged our cost structure," — Jim Thorburn, CFO of Twist, Dec 11, 2019 press release."

"We continue—we continue to drive both of the levers that create de-leveraging. One is higher EBITDA, on the denominator, and the other is driving higher free cash flow. We talked at Investor Day and reiterated today, activities that are underway, including looking at various assets on our balance sheet that can be monetized and turned into cash, whether that’s the securitization of additional orbitals or other opportunities. So we’re working all of those. And our goal, as Anil said, is very clear: to achieve 3.8 times leverage by the end of 2018 — CEO Lance Q1’18 Conference Call"

"“you would be very unlikely to see us overnight, going and exploding the leverage profile of this business.” — Burford Management; “I think we have you know, at least I have largely been focused on public investors and on rebutting the various,” — Burford CEO; “We are, after all, a firm run by lawyers.” — Burford Management; “The line in our report today was more about the prospect that, you know, in the in the relatively near term, we suspect, well, we believe that one of our existing directors is likely to retire from the board and be replaced.” — Burford Management"

"When you think about how cash flow and leverage should play out over the balance of the year, we should incur an additional $140 million to $150 million of CAPEX and approximately $140 million, $145 million of cash interest costs in the second half of the year. If you layer on the conservative assumption of working capital, ending the year as cash flow neutral, you get to a free cash flow number of somewhere between $275 million and $300 million for the back half of the year, depending on your views of where we end up in terms of EBITDA. — Q2 Earnings Conference Call"

""We heard investors and reducing our leverage ratio is a priority for us. Our aim is to bring the business down to below 4x total net debt to adjusted EBITDA as soon as possible." — Mr. Proud, Q1 2024 earnings call; "We are committed to driving our leverage ratio below 4x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, including the converts as quickly as possible." — Mr. Proud, Q2 2024 earnings call; "We understand the importance of reducing our leverage, and we have set a clear target to reduce it below 4x total net debt to adjusted EBITDA." — Mr. Proud, Q3 2024 earnings call"

""When you think about how cash flow and leverage should play out over the balance of the year, we should incur an additional $140 million to $150 million of CAPEX and approximately $140 million, $145 million of cash interest costs in the second half of the year. If you layer on the conservative assumption of working capital, ending the year as cash flow neutral, you get to a free cash flow number of somewhere between $275 million and $300 million for the back half of the year, depending on your views of where we end up in terms of EBITDA." — GFL Management"

"When you think about how cash flow and leverage should play out over the balance of the year, we should incur an additional $140 million to $150 million of CAPEX and approximately $140 million, $145 million of cash interest costs in the second half of the year. If you layer on the conservative assumption of working capital, ending the year as cash flow neutral, you get to a free cash flow number of somewhere between $275 million and $300 million for the back half of the year, depending on your views of where we end up in terms of EBITDA. — GFL Management"

""And the second one on your guidance for French EBIT in 2016, I know it's a sales conference call but you give some guidance on earnings in France next year. So I have an easy question, how can you split the improvement between purchasing and OpEx efficiency? Thank you." — Cedric Lecasble, Raymond James; "On your question on the French EBIT, you know our business model. You see that when you have a ....operational leverage generated by good volume growth you get technically an improvement." — Antoine Giscard d'Estaing, Casino CFO"

"“Leverage Ratio” means, as of the last day of any Test Period, the ratio of (a) Total Indebtedness as of such date to (b) Consolidated EBITDA for such Test Period; provided that, for purposes of determining Total Indebtedness, at any time after the definitive agreement for any Material Specified Acquisition shall have been executed, any Acquisition Indebtedness with respect to such Material Specified Acquisition shall, unless such Material Specified Acquisition shall have been consummated, be disregarded."

"Monsanto announced a fundamental change in its idea of an appropriate capital structure...Monsanto intends to begin an accelerated share repurchase program of $6b in 4Q:F14 or 1Q:F15 and to repurchase $11b in shares over a two year period or approximately 85 million shares or 16% of outstanding common [shares]. Monsanto is a good free cash flow generator and maintaining a 1.5x leverage target would imply meaningful future repurchase beyond the current $11b target by mid 2016. — JP Morgan (6/26/14)"

"BR lists its number #1 driver of Non-GAAP operating income margin is from “Scale and Natural OpEx leverage from a SaaS business.” However, Spruce Point does not believe that BR is a high-quality SaaS business, if one at all, given it admits it drives no pricing power and does not report metrics consistent with other SaaS companies such as Net revenue dollar retention or remaining performance obligation, and has just $414m of deferred revenue in relation to $3.7 billion of recurring fee revenue."

"“And if you do come in below that target or budget, I mean do you think – would we expect to see you drill incremental wells for the same CapEx over the year, or just come out with a lower CapEx budget?” ... “our goal is to accelerate value. We have a deep multi-decade inventory and we want to bring as much of that value forward. So, our plan would be to leverage those efficiencies and be able to drill additional wells…” — Rick Bott, Continental President & COO"

"Our strong order backlog provides us with good long-term revenue visibility... We still firmly believe that four times leverage is the most efficient capital structure that we can put together going forward, that provides us with the lowest overall cost of capital, we are very confident about the visibility of the cash flow to service this as well as providing the capital for all the programs that we have — CFO Wirasekara Q1'17 Conf Call (May 2017)"

""Disney has an incredible legacy as one of the leading and most successful consumer entertainment companies in the world... But in recent years, the Company has lost its way resulting in a rapid deterioration in its financial performance from a consistent dividend-paying, high free cash flow generative business into a highly leveraged enterprise with reduced earnings power and weak free cash flow conversion," said Nelson Peltz."

"I expect to get into clinical studies early part of next year on our path to commercialization of the 2025 time frame. So I remain excited about that. I think we’ve learned a lot about our capabilities in terms of algorithms and how to leverage our clinical back end and the options kind of available to us from a strategy standpoint. So excited about where that’s headed. — iRhythm CFO Wilson at Morgan Stanley Conference, 9/13/23"

"In terms of the leverage ratio, I really haven't been overly focused on it at this point. I don't think it will be the constraining ratio for us...I don't think it's going to change business behavior at this point as I look at it — Todd Gibbons (4/19/11). We now know most of what the rules are and so far it's been the supplemental leverage ratio that is turning out to be our binding constraint — Todd Gibbons (10/28/14)."