Callouts & quotes from 902+ activist slides

""Despite Juniper's strong fundamental performance this year that has driven the Street's EPS estimates higher versus a year ago, Juniper's stock (up 10% YTD) has underperformed relative to the S&P 500 Index (up 26%) in 2013. As such, we discussed the opportunity for an accelerated stock repurchase program with Juniper. ... We believe a $3 billion stock repurchase program could be 15-20% accretive to EPS" — Cantor Fitzgerald (12/11/13); "With respect to uses of cash, is there an argument for giving a committed level of cash return to shareholders out of free cash flow, given the healthy cash balance you have, given that it feels like cash flow, as a trend, should be rising going forward?" — Credit Suisse, CS Tech Conference (12/4/13); "Over the past three years, free cash flow generation at Juniper has averaged over $550 million per year. Further, the company has a relatively strong balance sheet with $2.8 billion of net cash at the end of the June quarter or 26% of the current market cap. ... we believe Juniper could and should institute a more formal capital return strategy" — Credit Suisse (9/18/13); "We believe there is scope for increased cash distribution" — Credit Suisse (9/18/13); "Healthy cash flow, no dividend. A quarterly dividend of $0.08/share would be very reasonable (potential yield 1.6%), but nothing's planned as yet" — RBC (8/12/13); "Juniper is a member of a club that most investors would like to see it resign from: Out of the 35 largest Hardware & Equip companies globally, JNPR is one of only four that is not expected to pay a dividend over the NTM. We believe it is time for JNPR to quit this club. ... we think a dividend would be viewed as a much-needed sign of mgmt's longer-term confidence. ... The knock-on positive effect of paying a dividend is bringing a whole new class of shareholders into the ownership base" — Citi (6/7/13); "We think it is time that Juniper quits the non-dividend payers and joins the overwhelming majority of global peers that directly return cash to shareholders" — Citi (6/7/13); "Risks to our Sell rating include a stronger carrier spending environment, improved competitive positioning, or a more aggressive capital allocation strategy, including the introduction of a dividend or a large buyback" — Goldman Sachs (4/24/13); "What would make us more positive? More aggressive capital allocation and/or activist shareholder involvement. Juniper's strong balance sheet ... and cash flow generation (estimated 7% FCF yield in CY13) make it a strong candidate for a significant buy-back or initiation of a dividend" — Goldman Sachs (3/19/13); "Juniper's share repurchases are typically used to offset stock option dilution resulting from the company's employee stock plans rather than being opportunistic buybacks based on price" — Goldman Sachs (6/13/12)"

""Consumers increasingly see the value of a fiber broadband connection and the utility of a gig plus sort of in terms of what serves their household." — John Stratton, Executive Chairman of the Board, Frontier Communications - May 2024; "We grew ARPU because our customers are increasingly choosing gigabit speeds and value-added services to enhance their Internet experience, and they're willing to pay for it. As a result, we accelerated fiber revenue growth to 13% and lifted our overall company revenue growth to 2% year-over-year." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications - August 2024; "Firstly, building 1.3 million fiber passings this year will mean we will have delivered by the end of the year exactly the build ambition that we set out at emergence 2 years ago. And secondly, we are actually accelerating our build this year...The way to think about our build ambition of 1.3 million homes passed this year is at a minimum build from here on. We think we've got plenty of operational gas in the tank to further accelerate if and when the conditions are ready for that." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications, February 2023; "We are moving fast on 2 of our key value drivers, building and selling fiber and it's translating into financial growth. If you look at the left-hand side, you will see that our fiber passings are up 31% year-over-year. And customer growth for the quarter is up 17%. With data consumption expected to triple by 2025, it's a great time to be in the fiber business." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications, February 2023; "The long-term trends in our business remain extremely encouraging. Our industry thesis is based on the view that the significant growth in data consumption that we've seen over the past 2 decades will continue to ramp up, tripling over the next 4 years alone. We're confident that fiber is best positioned to meet the long-term demand for data consumption." — John Stratton, Executive Chairman of the Board, Frontier Communications, November 2022; "We built fiber at a record pace again, adding 351,000 new fiber locations. And as John shared, we will hit the halfway point in our initial goal of passing 10 million fiber homes later this month." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications, November 2022"

""Think, first off, on ERP, we are executing our program. We're now live with sort of 3 of our entities on our global SAP platform, corporate, CMF and Instruments. We have an active rollout plan for all of our divisions. And honestly, it's 2 to 3 a year, so that will roll out over the next couple of years here before we really start to feel that the platform is spread enough across the company that will drive significant efficiencies." — CFO Boehnlein, Q3 2019 Earnings Call. "Yes. So certainly, we've delivered the 30 to 50, but the underlying performance has been better than that, as you know, because we -- our acquisitions have had dilution. So underlying op margin has been expanding more sort of the 70, 80 bps range. And we really are just started on our -- on the big heavy lifting margin expansion. The way we've been getting it is through indirect procurement. It's been through I'd call it sort of hustle and sort of old-fashioned cost reduction. The bigger rocks, we haven't moved those yet and that has to do with the plant network. That has to do with the ERP. We've gone live with 3 of our divisions right now, but we still have a lot more to do, and frankly, globally to move to one SAP system. We had a huge implementation that occurred in July this year, which went very well. So we're really excited that we do have the right platform of ERP. We've been through some big integrations. Now it's just a question of rolling them out. That will take us 2 to 3 years to move to one ERP system." — CEO Lobo, MS Conf, Sept 10, 2019. "Impairment charges in the six months 2021 were not significant. In the second quarter of 2020, due to the significant negative impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on our operations and financial results, we suspended certain in-process investments resulting in charges of $189 to impair certain long-lived assets (primarily the portion of our investment in a new global ERP system that was in-process of being developed for future deployment) and product line and other exit costs. These charges were included in cost of sales and selling, general and administrative expenses." — Q2 2020 10-Q."

""We've seen [auto] revenue off of a substantial base doubled in each of the last two years. And we expect to grow, while not at that faster rate, well over 50% for several years to come" — CFO Stifel Conf June 2016; "Yes, for the automotive in MPS, as you know, we entered the market about 4 or 5 years ago, and 4 or 5 years ago, our revenue almost 0. And even 2, 3 years ago very teeny, teeny, tiny. And it takes a long time to get the revenue. And so design cycle is about 3 to 4 years. And we are total TAM in automotive, it's about $6 billion, probably a little -- now they're more than that. And so what is our percentage? It's less than 1%. So it's a total greenfield for us to grow" — CEO Hsing April 2017; "Yes, it is fair that the growth rate it will not change much. Okay, but don't quote me exactly what's the rate. It would be very similar to this year. Which applications or which segments, I think in the next couple of years we're going to expand lot more segments. Now the lighting, infotainments and the safeties, and we will have a lot more safety products come out. And as Bernie said in his script, we have an ADAS and also the battery management as well as the connectivities. And those areas have a very little revenue or some of the items have no revenue, only sampling. And we expect to have a very high percentage growth in -- a very dollar amount growth in 2019, '20 and '21" — CEO Hsing Commenting on Auto Feb 2018; "The other thing I want to also point out is we're growing so fast, okay? 55% year-on-year growth last year. Take a look at the total semiconductor market in auto. It's about 13%, right? 4x growth versus the market. And you can see the TAM that we're going after, $7 billion. ...Really, we're at this moment where the opportunity is incredible. MPS happens to be at the right place at the right time. We've learned from the last 5 years of innovation of selling. We understand the customers. We have the great products. We see the growth really continuing over the next 5, 6 years, easily, 40% to 50% CAGR" — Allan Chan MPWR Auto Marketing June 2018"

""It was always on the radar that they were going to run out of customers for cell line development specifically. So, the general idea was let's try to expand the range of applications to capture more customers that are not necessarily doing cell line development or are doing immuno-oncology or antibody discovery." — Former BLI scientist; "They've kind of gotten rid of cell line development and they've stopped touting it..." — Former BLI employee; "I think cell line development is a hard sell because everybody's got their version of what they think is the best path, a little bit of witchcraft which biology has sometimes, In CLD, it is very difficult to make an unambiguous statement. And that's because you're trying to say the counterfactual; if I would have run it on this other system, it would have been better. The only way to do that is to literally learn 300 independent campaigns on both types of systems and then measure the variability and the distributions of the cells." — Former BLI executive; "The status quo is to transfect the CHO cells... They have data, know it works, know the cost, have already bought the systems; it's sunk cost. And here comes this really expensive machine, and it's like, we can do things better. You go, that looks really cool, and I think that is true, but how can you prove it to me? Maybe that was a fluke. How much money am I prepared to spend to figure out whether that's true?" — Former BLI executive; "Sometimes pharma's are just rich and they just buy them. And it's just done. Sometimes they're very skeptical and have a hard time figuring out if they can spend $2 million. It's a lot of money. It's very difficult to prove how you are better without running something like a $200-million study, and who the hell is going to run a $200-million study with the risk of it not looking good if your total market is $300 million and your pricing actually takes that market down to $80 million. The return's not there." — Former BLI executive"

""The main issues our engineers and experts are raising are trust in the data, a lack of transparency. Behavior in certain situations like extreme temperatures and so on. This is a big question mark where they're saying that we are having a lot of issues and a lot of risk. Those are [some of the] core questions that are circling around. They don't trust that you can charge it in 15 minutes, for example." — Senior member of Volkswagen’s EV battery effort. "I wouldn't say that nothing that we tried worked. I've been on a number of calls with people, a lot of them are into the hype, and they hear a hesitation in my voice, and they just can't believe that it's not real for whatever reason. But this is an extraordinarily hard thing to do to the point that most people can't really understand how hard it is...Most people who have not done some kind of industrial work in the past just have no idea how difficult this stuff is, how uncertain it is... This is a super-difficult problem like, basically, Nobel-Prize-winning work needs to be done to make solid-state batteries real." — Former employee #1. "A lot of the upper management have very good backgrounds, a lot of Stanford grads there. They absolutely wouldn't falsify data or fudge things. But the CEO, his [pause]...his [pause]...he's a different [pause]...he's different. He's different from the rest of their team, and he is totally in charge...Dissenting views have no place at the company...different interpretations of the science. You're picking up on it [the discrepancies]. I'm sure a lot of the science team there would do it differently, but it's all up to the CEO. Jagdeep is picking every slide, every picture, what the colors are...[he's] selling this vision on Jim Cramer's show and he hopes the data catches up to him...It's taking a long time, taking longer than Jagdeep wanted and his backers wanted." — Former employee #2."

""...with Starboard now nominating a slate of directors it has formally challenged HUN's board structure. These nominees are quite qualified in our view, and we think could be quite effective at aiding and improving the upstream, downstream, and financial footprint at the company...productivity should be a perpetual process, and additional oversight and guidance through its evolution could be helpful for a company that does not have a longstanding productivity culture." — BofA Securities, January 2022; "Mr. Gallogly carries high esteem for making money for Chemicals investors over the past 10+ years – As CEO of LyondellBasell (LYB), shares outperformed the S&P 500 by 382% and outperformed peer Dow Chemical by 357% from emerging out of bankruptcy in 2010 until Mr. Gallogly announced his retirement in late September 2014...We think he carries four main attributes that investors would welcome to the board of Huntsman (or any Chemical company for that matter): 1) operating acumen and focus on safety + cost, 2) a track record of prudent and shareholder-friendly capital discipline, 3) a reputation of being forthright and outspoken in his views, and 4) a track record of delivering on results." — Barclays, January 2022; "Importantly, we believe that Jim Gallogly stands out among the proposed Starboard nominees and the newly added board members with the potential to be especially impactful on investor confidence, and on the contribution that the refreshed board could make to the Company's bottom line and valuation. In our experience covering LyondellBasell when Mr. Gallogly was its CEO, his leadership was both evident in the Company's results and was rewarded by the equity market. We believe that a candidacy of Mr. Gallogly's caliber could greatly enhance the board, in particular in the areas of operational efficiency and cost control." — KeyBanc Capital Markets, January 2022"

""...with Starboard now nominating a slate of directors it has formally challenged HUN's board structure. These nominees are quite qualified in our view, and we think could be quite effective at aiding and improving the upstream, downstream, and financial footprint at the company...productivity should be a perpetual process, and additional oversight and guidance through its evolution could be helpful for a company that does not have a longstanding productivity culture." — BofA Securities, January 2022; "Mr. Gallogly carries high esteem for making money for Chemicals investors over the past 10+ years – As CEO of LyondellBasell (LYB), shares outperformed the S&P 500 by 382% and outperformed peer Dow Chemical by 357% from emerging out of bankruptcy in 2010 until Mr. Gallogly announced his retirement in late September 2014...We think he carries four main attributes that investors would welcome to the board of Huntsman (or any Chemical company for that matter): 1) operating acumen and focus on safety + cost, 2) a track record of prudent and shareholder-friendly capital discipline, 3) a reputation of being forthright and outspoken in his views, and 4) a track record of delivering on results." — Barclays, January 2022; "Importantly, we believe that Jim Gallogly stands out among the proposed Starboard nominees and the newly added board members with the potential to be especially impactful on investor confidence, and on the contribution that the refreshed board could make to the Company's bottom line and valuation. In our experience covering LyondellBasell when Mr. Gallogly was its CEO, his leadership was both evident in the Company's results and was rewarded by the equity market. We believe that a candidacy of Mr. Gallogly's caliber could greatly enhance the board, in particular in the areas of operational efficiency and cost control." — KeyBanc Capital Markets, January 2022"

""We think the most viable form of unlock would likely come via spin-off of Midstream....That said, we think it might make the most sense to not include refinery-related assets/EBITDA with the Midstream spin, given the integration with and commercial value to the company's refining business." — J.P. Morgan, February 2025; "However, when [the Company was] pressed on these points, some of the integration case fell apart, in our view. For example, management acknowledged that a midstream spin could be done tax-free." — TPH & Co, April 2025; "In our view, the potential (transformative) investment case for PSX comes down to a question of 1) the potential value uplift of a particular action, and 2) the likelihood of that action taking place. For example, on one end, the monetization of the European retail business is highly likely, but the shareholder impact is relatively modest. On the other end, a spin/sale of the Midstream business is by far the single largest source of potential value creation ($40B-$45B of proceeds at a potential multiple - 10x - that offers by far the largest multiple uplift/arbitrage), but is also the strategy to which the management has been the most strongly opposed." — Piper Sandler, February 2025; "We believe the strong valuations and ability for a standalone company to better capture growth opportunities in the sector make a Midstream spin/sale appealing, in our view." — T.D. Cowen, February 2025; "At our theoretical SOTP of $160/share (our DCF-based price objective is $147), selling some midstream assets could unlock value." — Bank of America, February 2025; "PSX is unlikely to ever receive sufficient credit for much of its marketing and midstream business...there is clearly value to be created via disposals, of which is the initial $3.0B plan is a good start." — Piper Sandler, November 2023"

""Management's initial announcement on asset sales and increased payouts to shareholders, while significant, appeared to undershoot the high expectations that had buoyed the share price at the start of the year" — Border to Coast. "Keisei initially announced it would sell 1% of its OLC stake, which disappointed the market. The value of the OLC stake has different meanings for different shareholders of Keisei; however, if it continues this path, they can unlock capital to fund growth in capex or return funds to shareholders." — MFS Investment Management. "In our view, Keisei Electric Railway is a discounted asset with the potential to unlock significant value by reducing its 20% stake in Oriental Land." — Franklin Templeton. "We also expect the company to monetize its 20% stake in Oriental Land, which equals Keisei's entire enterprise value" — Boston Common Asset Management. "The entire market capitalization of Keisei is $6.6bn, and they've got this $8bn post-tax investment sitting there. On top of that you're also getting this profitable rail business thrown in there basically for free." — Fidelity International. "The Fund considers that the valuation [of Keisei Electric Railway] is extremely inaccurate." — Sparx Japan Small-Cap Fund. "...it's remarkable that Keisei Electric trades at about a 50% discount to the value of that stake in Oriental Land, as well as the value of the land and the railway line business as well." — AVI Asset Value Investors. "Keisei Railways ... have significant latent value hidden in net cash or cross-holdings. Through the efforts of both ourselves and others, we believe this value has a strong chance of being unlocked amidst this new atmosphere of reform in Japan." — M&G Investments."

""Enabling technologies to us, we're big believers that this is going to be important for the future. We're very excited about Mobius. That - we launched that at our sales meeting, and we're very excited about the potential of that being part of the enabling solution portfolio." — CEO Lobo, FY 2019 Conf Call, Jan 2020; "So we're actually trying to ramp our capacity of Mobius, which is, as you know, a mobile CT scan and really the only one in the market that's mobile, and they're using it for coronavirus. So we're actually ramping that capacity." — CEO Lobo, Q1 2020 Conf Call, April 2020; "Listen, we're thrilled with the Mobius acquisition. We bought a terrific technology. Our biggest challenge, honestly, has been scaling up the manufacturing. So we've had very, very high demand for Mobius. It was a small company based in Shirley, Massachusetts, and we're just -- large challenges really scale up. And it's the same challenge we've had, frankly, with TSO3, which is the sterilizing company that we've bought." — CEO Lobo, Q3 2020 Conf Call, October 2020; "Mobius was like over $200 million, you have to be pretty optimistic with what you think your revenues are going to be. And so that sells the deal and the price you want to pay for it, and gets you approval for the funds. And that's why I was telling you, it's a bit of a slight game internally in order to get the funds... We didn't realize how long training time and how manual the process this was, and supply chain and the parts, some of the lead times were almost a year to get components of this very highly electronic, specific parts for this." — Former M&A Professional on Mobius, Spruce Point Interview."

"“We find it odd management believes value can be created by separating the business into two mature companies... We think one of the most interesting statements in the Darden release was the following one: ‘A spin-off will also allow us to target our efforts and investments on value creation opportunities that may be material to a stand-alone Red Lobster but not to Darden overall.’ Management did not elaborate on this value-creation opportunity during the conference call, but we believe monetizing the real estate Red Lobster owns may be impactful for shareholders.” — KeyBanc, December 20, 2013; “On the day Darden’s strategic plan was announced, the stock closed down 4% to $51. This didn’t exactly strike us as a vote of confidence in management’s plan to create value. Two days later, Starboard Value announced a 5.5% position in the company and the stock rallied 6%. For the most part, the stock has traded sideways since then, until rallying 3% on the news that Starboard retained former Olive Garden president Brad Blum to serve as an advisor in its battle against Darden. The takeaway from stock action and, in our opinion, sentiment since 12/20/13 is the stock rallies when there is movement toward replacing management and sells off when management publicly digs their heels in.” — Hedgeye, February 24, 2014; “Moving forward with Red Lobster sale or spin. Unless the separation helps drive a significant improvement in operating results, we don’t envision this being very accretive to valuation. Mgmt has previously stated standalone RL will do mid-to high single-digit EBIT growth, a target that appears aggressive.” — Oppenheimer, March 3, 2014"

""Programming is usually done by the rep. I have a programming computer, but the reps do it all day long. Legally, ethically, appropriately, the rep is supposed to meet the patient in my office. The reality is that some of them meet at the patient's house. They're not supposed to do that. They'll go to their house and they'll hook up their programmer and they'll program right there." — KOL; "Who has more experience programming the device - me or somebody who spends their entire life programming stimulators? Being a stimulator rep is not like being a pharma rep selling Viagra. You have clinic hours. It's a very unique sales position. You actually have patients. You actually come into clinic. I'll walk by a room and go, oh, Mike the rep is in room three and he's programming somebody. Cool, I didn't even know. I can make recommendations to reps but they're really the experts in programming." — KOL; "If a patient is not responding or the pain comes back, I have the rep come talk to them. They can check in a rough way whether the leads have moved so in most cases, they get an X-ray of the leads before they come in so they have a better idea of how to program it. If it's just that the therapy has diminished, then Nevro has a special group of clinical specialists that manage those cases remotely and guide the representatives on what to do if they cannot solve the problem themselves. Now, if everything is in place and everything is functioning as expected, but a patient is not getting pain relief, that's when they start trying other programs and they start engaging the Therapy Optimization Team as Nevro calls it." — High volume Nevro implanter"

""We agree with Elliott's assessment that there is more upside potential in the refining business, on both capture and opex, and we think Elliott's presence itself could refocus management towards this business." — J.P. Morgan, April 8, 2025; "Where we agree with Elliott that PSX is undervalued - at current levels we see no value for refining in the share price at current levels, under our integrated DCF analysis." — Wolfe Research, April 25, 2025; "We prefer a spin, or large selldown of non synergistic assets as we believe the volatility in Refining EBITDA swamps growth in more stable premium segments, keeping stability seeking midstream investors away." — Bank of America, April 25, 2025; "Despite the noise, expect that Elliott's pressure to execute on these targets will be a strong positive for the stock." — Piper Sandler, November 29, 2023; "We think PSX's 1Q25 results will have a mixed impact on near-term share price performance... the market may interpret the bad news as good news because it will give more support to Elliott's case and thus provide a potential catalyst to the shares." — Scotiabank, April 25, 2025; "We suspect Elliott's updated position will result in PSX having to find additional ways to close the refining performance gap vs large cap peers... A M/S spin seems like easiest to execute...A sale could be a more beneficial outcome, though requires a willing suitor." — T.D. Cowen, February 12, 2025; "Here Elliott sees Midstream assets as potentially worth ~$50B, assuming a ~10x multiple on synergized '26E EBITDA... We agree with Elliott on valuation disparity." — Citi Research, February 13, 2025"

""We recognize that the discrepancy where the market value of held shares exceeds the company's total market capitalization is a significant challenge. We evaluated this proposal as one that contributes to addressing this issue. Additionally, we believe it could serve as an opportunity for the company to reconsider its capital policy" — Nikko Asset Management. "The Company has determined that considering the option of selling the shares, taking into account the formulation of its capital allocation policy, would contribute to improving its corporate value in the medium to long term" — Daiwa Asset Management. "...the Company has not been transparent regarding its plan to further reduce its ownership in OLC and how it plans to use those proceeds to grow corporate value. As such, we believe support for the shareholder proposal is warranted and that its implementation would both increase transparency of the Company's capital management strategy and improve the Company's capital efficiency and sustainable growth as these proceeds can be used to either reinvest for growth opportunities or be redistributed to shareholders." — Neuberger Berman. "We believe that this proposal will remove an accounting 'overhang'... forcing management to be more disciplined in its capital allocation decisions and accountable for the performance of Keisei's operating businesses" — ISS. "The board does not appear to substantively address the rationale for why a partial sale of Keisei's interest in OLC would be inimical to the Company's stability and sustainability" — Glass Lewis."

"“the easiest sale ever because everyone wanted to try this paresthesia-free stimulator” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “this all worked” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “Nevro changed the entire dynamic of the spinal cord stim industry. They created excitement. It was the first company to do a head-to-head level one RCT study against the competitor and their data was remarkable. It was the best data that we’ve seen and so, that’s one of the main reasons I went there. There were doctors that were reaching out to me—it was the easiest sale ever, because everyone wanted to try this paresthesia-free stimulator that sort of crushed axial, back, and leg pain. The only thing I had to bring in was the stim and it sold itself.” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “So let’s go back to 2015. We’re growing. The trials always did very well with Nevro and with HF10 and across the board, trials typically do very well in this industry because it’s sort of like the patients get this burst of: “Wow! Pain relief.” It’s remarkable, right? They only have this for seven days and, you know, the representatives, they’re reaching out to them, they make sure everything is going well, so the trials always did very, very well at Nevro.” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “We went up to around 15% of the market. But this all worked because the data they were selling was based on choosing the exact patients they wanted. A lot of it was just biased. It wasn’t real-world data.” — Former Nevro district sales manager"

""This was certainly hallway conversations at ATC. The discussion that people had in the hallways was, first of all, we’re glad there’s going to be competition, so TransMedics can’t be the only game in town. Almost everybody was saying that. Again, I’ll leave it to you whether this would devastate their earnings reports or not…this is not going to stay exclusive much longer." — Cardiothoracic transplant surgeon, director of a leading academic transplant center; "If there is not much of an advantage of having this incredibly expensive setup versus a $30k different technology, then I think they’re going to have a very hard time selling it." — Transplant hepatologist and director of the liver program at a Midwest academic center; "There’s going to be a point where the cost is going to go down. Right now, TransMedics doesn’t have big competition. The only competition is called OrganOX. That is the same type of machine perfusion. There are other new companies that are going through the FDA to get approved. Those are different types of pump like hyperthermic machine perfusion. So, I can guarantee you that these companies, they are going to get approved by the FDA. I think that in the next year or two years at the most, you are going to have other competitors with TransMedics. Because of the cost, people are going to start shifting gears, and they’re going to be changing to a different pump because it’s not sustainable for a transplant center..." — Transplant surgeon in a leadership role at Vanderbilt"

"You know, MPS carries a certain buyout premium. It's already baked into the price. Pick a number, 20%, 25%, assuming it's going to be bought. I think that's in there. Otherwise I can't figure out the P/E ratio. Uh, so, so the biggest issue is Michael not interested in selling the company. I mean, it's not the money. He does it because he likes to run it and the executives are with him I would say are not necessarily executives who would succeed at another company. I don't know how to put it in any other way that's just based on their culture and style. They would not necessarily show up at Intel and get a job. Right? So, so they all, I'm just being straight forward with you. Well, there's, as you said, the numbers. I think the thing that kept people from buying it, it's like, what happens if all these guys leave. And then what do we got? So that's always the biggest thing is the magic sauce leaves then really getting anything from the deal, right? The whole different culture, I think that's the biggest thing that keeps anybody from even trying to buy it. And so they're not, they're not sure. Uh, you know, and particularly since all the engineering now is mostly done in China and if you're not Chinese, you're not exactly sure if you're not speaking the language, if that's true or what's going on or who your key people are, all those kinds of things. So I think, uh, I think that's the strength of MPS, but also something that would keep a buyer away. — Former Senior Executive (Post IPO era)"

"We view nearly all aspects of the Red Lobster transaction as not particularly compelling. — UBS, May 20, 2014; $2.1billion represents a seemingly compelling 9.0x EBITDA multiple, but it's on artificially depressed F14 ests and offers no premium to a conservative DCF. — Credit Suisse, May 20, 2014; It is unconscionable that the Darden Board would allow the Company to sell its Red Lobster business for what amounts to a 'fire sale' price after shareholders clearly indicated that they did not want the Company to enter into a transaction unless it was subject to their approval. — Barington, May 19, 2014; In short, in our eyes, “the taxman stole the show” by taking 25% of the gross proceeds. — Stifel, May 16, 2014; Today, Darden announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Red Lobster business and related assets to Golden Gate Capital for $2.1 billion in cash. Destroying a business and giving it away for free is a familiar practice for CEO Clarence Otis. He first did it with Smokey Bones and has done it again with Red Lobster. — Hedgeye, May 16, 2014; Management's decision to ignore shareholder concerns and go forth with an undervalued sale of Red Lobster as opposed to waiting for operations to improve or entertain monetization without fully disposing the brand during a depressed earning's period will likely result in meaningful changes at the board level and among senior management. — Buckingham, May 16, 2014"

"Part of the commodity here is that...it's hard to have IP around a plastic tube. Especially if you argue that you can put any suction on it. Just to give you a bit of context, there have been some companies engaging in a somewhat nefarious game of trying to sell supply chain departments that their aspiration catheters can only be used with their aspiration pump or their aspiration tubing, because that's the way that it is approved by the FDA. I mean - that's great, right? But obviously that is also a hollow argument because I could hook these things up to a wall suction and they would work just the same way. And everyone knows that. So, it is things like - some things they've been trying to do by essentially putting fear of human destruction into the hands of people who are not clinical, and they don't know how to respond to that. — Neurosurgeon; Penumbra went around to, and made a very big deal about, physicians using Medtronic, Terumo and Stryker aspiration catheters that previously did not have the stroke label indication. They freaked out a lot of doctors. This annoyed the doctors a lot because [the Penumbra salesman] should not be telling the doctors how they should be treating their patients. This also swayed some doctors to use Penumbra. — Neurovascular Products Sales Director; The FDA label matters more to less-sophisticated doctors, like radiologists. People like me do whatever I think is best. — Neurosurgeon"

""I was seen by this clinic several times, a different person each time, and only on the last visit did I get to see the lauded Dr. [redacted]. He stormed into the room, introduced himself, and told me, without hearing a word from me, what he had determined I needed to do next, which was another procedure. When I told him I was not interested at this point in that procedure, and tried to discuss what I had come to talk about, which was concerns about contraindication with the medicine he had prescribed, he raised his voice and began telling me about how his way is the only way that works, and all my other doctors are incompetent. The longer I tried to get back to what I needed to speak with him about, the nastier/louder he got, until he was literally standing in front of me, yelling at me. In the end, he yelled he wouldn't treat me any more, and yelled from down the hall for me to leave. He absolutely did not care about anything I had to say. Please beware of this clinic and this man." — Patient review, 11/11/2019; "I felt he was trying to SELL me a spinal stimulator, rather than explain what it is. He blatantly lied about the size of battery and the pain level associated with it."- Patient review 6/26/2018; "Dr. [redacted] is the greatest doctor in the world, and if you don't believe it just ask him. His explanations are poor, doesn't seem to want to listen to the patient." — Patient review 11/1/17"

""The founder of the company and all the people that he brought over were all semiconductor guys. The company is really built around semiconductor engineers who were getting into biology. So, there's definitely this rift in the company between engineers and biologists. They're making equipment for biology and were kind like we're in charge. They didn't value or listen to their biologists so much." —Former BLI executive; "It was engineered by people who are not biologists, and it had some conceptions of biology that didn't match biologists' views...The problem is that they built this thing without a biologist's point-of-view, and so, in the beginning, they were battling biology. But these are the people that you're supposed to be selling equipment to...There was a conflict, engineers thinking they knew better how to do something than the biologists. It was this general-purpose concept-driven thing then had to try to find a home in terms of commercial or research value." —Former BLI executive; "For the longest time, we were missing a really good biologist at the executive level. I think that took a toll. Some of the mismatch was the semiconductor guys trying to understand biology, how biologists think, how research happens. That has a long-lasting impact. It was hard to get the biologists a voice there. There were a lot of engineering-driven decisions." —Former BLI senior scientist"

"I think there’s a lot of window-dressing with Grossman and that’s why you’re not seeing this big uptake in revenue. If Omnia is so good and you’re got a hundred more reps out on the field and you’re doing all this great selling and all these customers are happy, why is it not going up? They’ve eroded their price. Nobody’s going to buy Omnia, unless you’re getting paid a couple thousand bucks to be put in a study to use it. — Former Nevro executive; When I listen to earnings calls, it’s “the business has stabilized, we’re excited about all these new platforms and new disease states, we’re going to do more of this” but at the end of the day, I just don’t see it. I really don’t see it. You’ve seen massive losses in Australia where that business used to be number one and now they’re number three or four. In Europe, high percentages of business are just going away because they don’t have the core competency in leadership. Here in the US, they’re going to have to start making changes in leadership and when that happens and stock options expire, then Keith is back in a corner. They’re going to lose a lot of their high-quality reps that have been on guarantees. For their management team, the stock options have already hit. They’re going to sell those and get out of there and then you’re back to pretty average people with pretty average performance. — Former Nevro executive"

""A bunch of the guys that are [titles redacted] at Nevro used to work for me. I hired them into the neuromodulation space. Grossman's chief commercial officer doesn't know this space. I don't know that she understands the war that she's in for [...] Internally at Nevro, I don't think they see the substance, based on what I've been told, and they're scratching their heads and saying, "Hey, whatever. I'll take it. I hope the stock keeps going." There aren't fundamentals behind it." — Longtime SCS executive; "On his first two quarterly calls he basically said, 'I'm too new to give you numbers. I'm not going to commit to anything.' I've said all along; eventually, this guy is going to have to perform. His timing [in getting a pass from COVID] is pretty damn good because I know the people on the street at Nevro who are selling product, and I know the roadblocks they're up against. They haven't out-performed from a revenue standpoint. They've been given a 24-month pass. Rami was the scapegoat, and then it was, "Okay, let's give Grossman a year to get his feet under him," and now it's COVID. So, when does Nevro actually have to perform in Wall Street's eyes? They were the first company to say that that SCS market was shrinking and that just wasn't true. It's that they were losing market share, and they didn't know how to explain it away." — Longtime SCS executive"

""The salesperson is controlling the customer, it's a tabletop sale. You know that salesperson is going to direct that sale to the residential solar financing company that pays them highest price. Yeah. There's no differentiation either, even the colors are the same. Just to prove it to yourself, get a copy of Sunnova's contracts and compare that to SolarCity's. There's just not that much different. The salespeople want to maximize their gain and they'll sell that contract to the highest bidder." — Former Sunnova Employee; "I think if people look, Sunnova discloses to be paying exclusivity payments to channel partners. So in order to prevent the channel partner from shifting the volume to other players and bidding it out fluidly, they have been making advanced payments to these channel partners to secure volume, which is important and is prudent in the sense that if you don't have the volume you can't get scale. I think it's a good idea, but it's diluted to the equity of the business because you're buying the volume. It just means you're just paying an advanced payment to lock it up. But the next time, that goes on for a year, and next year I guarantee you that channel partner is going to be talking to Sunrun, SolarCity and a couple of the other players out there to see if they can get the same deal." — Former Sunnova Employee"

"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)"

"It is about as competitive as wealth management is in the United States. There is a lot of margin to be made and because of that there is a lot of competition. The U.S. market is really crowded. Some get big and some get destroyed. Most grow small segments in market niches, and then sell the company as their primary strategy. Everywhere is less competitive than the U.S. market. Over the last 15 years there has been an evolution to integrated software, integrated payments, cards on file, mobile, online, all these things really being supported by software as a service or ISV. Pivotal was not really a player in the ISV business and was just behind significantly in the technology delivery, integration, flexibility and products and services offered to the ISV market. They were lagging in that business and using a gateway company, Worldnet, as their primary infrastructure. Most other payment products in the market owned their own infrastructure. When you own the infrastructure, you get to decide ultimately the product roadmap as opposed to when you use a third party, you have to compete for products, services and direction. I would say you would see a decline in those numbers because that market is being dominated by their competitors. — Former Nuvei Executive"

"The issue with Xylem’s purchases of technology companies is scaling them. You’ll hear the CEO talking about scaling things, but to scale them you had to add people. That’s not a good scaling model. The second challenge, either we didn’t do good due diligence or its was sloppy, is that the technology platforms were not compliant with Xylem or other cyber standards. We ended up with a hodge-podge of different technologies and platforms. We’re presenting them in a uniform way, but the technologies on the back-end aren’t talking to each other. Very heavy integration costs to get them on the same cloud and code environment. And the third thing is, to get the pull through fulfilled (e.g. if we had 1,500 direct sellers and another 10,000 distributors) – getting them to understand the cross-sell opportunity and then the digital opportunity and bring in the right expertise, it’s very hard to do. To navigate Xylem and find the right person and bring them into the sales discussion, it’s very hard to do. There’s a lot of friction in the process of execution, either through technology integration offering, finding the right people to deliver the specialized value proposition, or flat out missing how these digital technologies scale. — Former Xylem Executive"

"Through early August of last year, we could buy CTV cheaper on our own without Magnite, then we started using Magnite's platform for some spend. We had mostly a legacy relationship with Rubicon going back. Transparency, cost and data would all have to be there for us to increase our use of Magnite for CTV. There's no way if I moved all of my CTV spend to them, could they deliver for me at the price we need. There's simply not enough inventory at the prices we need. Magnite is aggregating long tail CTV inventory – the niche content. Will Magnite be able to get quality inventory? That needs to be debated. It may be tough for them. Let me give you an example. Let's say Lifetime has digital enabled content they are developing and allow Magnite to sell it. Magnite's fee probably can't exceed 15%. As scale increases, volumes go up, and their 15% take rate will certainly go down. To do more volume, they need more inventory. But, there may be a stage where Lifetime says, hang on a second, we are paying such a large amount of fees, that maybe we should be doing this ourselves. Why pay Magnite? I think that is the fundamental challenge of the model. They need scale, but scale could then make customers think about leaving. — Magnite Customer"

"Partly, yes. I mean, that's already happened in markets like the DC area market, in Seattle. It's required for buyers to sign a buyer's agency agreement. I think some of this is about legal and regulatory compliance. Some of it is just an ethical mandate that people should not hire a buyer's agent without realizing it. They should know what that buyer's agent charges, and they should know what services are entailed. They should know when they're committed. And so this is good salesmanship, but it's also just an above board way to treat a customer. Now, the reason that I said partly is that we're also seeing some trends where more listing agents are selling homes directly to home buyers. So I think there is just going to be more consumer choice, John. In some cases, a consumer is explicitly going to decide that I want somebody on my side, that I want my own agent. And other times, the agent, the listing agent, excuse me, will be the one handling both sides of the sale. The buyer is going to directly to that listing agent. I don't think that's going to be the majority of cases, but I do think there's going to be clear consumer choices and more consumer power. That's great. — Redfin CEO, Q4'23 Earnings Call"

""Full transparency, the ice cream mix for chocolate is the nasty stuff. The half and half that fails will be re-processed to sanitize it and add chocolate mix." — Former Saputo Executive. "I can think of few reasons why. I don't think they're doing it to be deceptive, but it certainly sounds deceptive. They're losing major customers. Not all assets have to be used at 100%. It's not practical capacity. World class is 80-85%." — Former Saputo Executive. "They implemented SAP and there was a specific module - the Dairy Management System - when I was there it was supposed to roll out on the third go live. They implemented it in waves. If 80% of your business is milk, this DMS When I was there it wasn't working. The purpose is to help you understand the costing of your milk and derive a dairy financial stamen. When I was there, they still didn't have it figured out when I left 2 years ago." — Former Saputo Executive. "I'd bet against them, that's my view. Picture the McDonald's, Burger King's of the world. If they are having bad years, then Saputo will have a bad year. If McDonald's isn't selling milkshakes, Saputo's not making them. There's a high degree of correlation." — Former Saputo Executive."

"“Colleagues who were enthralled with Nevro are not as enthralled with it now. They were the first kid on the block. Now it’s 4 companies. Abbot doesn’t call their device high frequency, just Burst but it ramps up and down. Same with Medtronic. Then Wavewriter from Boston Scientific The uniqueness of paresthesia-free isn’t there anymore and that was the main selling point for Nevro, and then you have the bulky battery.” — KOL, previously a high-volume Nevro user; “Nevro came out with something new and got a lot of share in a crowded space. I doubt they can hang on to the IP, and it’s not the only IP out there. The sheen is off Nevro. I’ve known [Nevro executive, redacted] for many years. I don’t know that he’s the right guy. I wouldn’t buy stock in Nevro right now. Their story is getting stale.” — KOL and Nevro trial investigator; “Abbot’s Burst and Medtronic’s Intellis are what changed my usage of Nevro the most. It was a big switch for me was when Burst came out. Then Intellis came out and was smaller than anything anyone has ever been by quite a bit. My average patient doesn’t want a big device sticking out of their ass. And Intellis is one charge a week.” — High volume implanter and KOL"

""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"

"“...on balance we tip the scales in Starboard’s direction on the strength of one James Lawrence Gallogly. Having years of experience with Jim from the LALLF/LYB days and having a detailed 1x1 conversation with him back during the Trian/DD board nomination saga, we don’t doubt he would be a superior addition to the board. We further know Sandra Beach Lin from her CE days and also have a favorable opinion.” — Fermium Research, January 2022; “Investor questions have centered on one particular nominee, James Gallogly (nominated by Starboard). The primary reason why Mr. Gallogly has stood out to investors is as a result of his strong track record at LyondellBasell. Specifically, Mr. Gallogly joined LyondellBasell in 2009 shortly after the company filed for bankruptcy. Over the subsequent approximately five years, Mr. Gallogly engineered the transformation of LyondellBasell from a company in disarray to one that is now broadly considered to be a best-in-class operator of chemical assets world wide. Of note, the restructuring that took place at LyondellBasell was primarily focused on embedding a culture of cost efficiency and capital discipline.” — Morgan Stanley, January 2022"

"“…on balance we tip the scales in Starboard’s direction on the strength of one James Lawrence Gallogly. Having years of experience with Jim from the LALLF/LYB days and having a detailed 1x1 conversation with him back during the Trian/DD board nomination saga, we don’t doubt he would be a superior addition to the board. We further know Sandra Beach Lin from her CE days and also have a favorable opinion.” — Fermium Research, January 2022; “Investor questions have centered on one particular nominee, James Gallogly (nominated by Starboard). The primary reason why Mr. Gallogly has stood out to investors is as a result of his strong track record at LyondellBasell. Specifically, Mr. Gallogly joined LyondellBasell in 2009 shortly after the company filed for bankruptcy. Over the subsequent approximately five years, Mr. Gallogly engineered the transformation of LyondellBasell from a company in disarray to one that is now broadly considered to be a best-in-class operator of chemical assets world wide. Of note, the restructuring that took place at LyondellBasell was primarily focused on embedding a culture of cost efficiency and capital discipline.” — Morgan Stanley, January 2022"

"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"

""I realized there was a large gap between the products we were developing, the products we were marketing and the products we were selling." — Former Lightspeed Employee #2; "So SEOshop, when it moved to the North American market for initial testing, it became very clear that the needs of North American retailers are very different than European retailers in the ecommerce space. There was a lot of work to integrate and adapt features to make sure it was ready for the North American merchants that they have. To be fully transparent, it was a rocky start." — Former Lightspeed Employee #2; "Regarding acquisitions, there were ones that once under the hood, I would say there was a lot more work than was estimated. In terms of actual functionality and meeting the needs of the market, there were expectations that were poorly set, meaning the delivery time to bring back to market was much longer and more difficult. They are very particular about what products are going to be brought to market. There have been ones that were completely stalled weeks before a launch because they were just not up to par with what the experience needed to be." — Former Lightspeed Employee #2"

"“I mean, this seems almost like a sudden discovery. Until about a year back, they couldn't solve the problem, and all of a sudden, it's just solved and not just solved but stabilized and now scalable as well? That's something that I would pause to look at and seriously evaluate from a materials perspective... The core team was extremely strong. Having said that, some of the claims just do not sit well with me because I feel like, like some of the materials, there are certain problems that they just could not have solved...And high-energy-density...That's where the problem is. If they really had a solid-state battery, their claims would be much different...” — Former employee #3; “Jagdeep is a great seller. When I was there, I was amazed that he was able to raise so much capital with such little data. I agree with whoever you talked to that said he goes to the edge of the line. I've worked for many CEO's, and I'm more in the camp of being honest with your investors. That's not the Quantumscape way.” — Former employee #4; “Absolutely not. That much I can tell you for sure. The answer to that is absolutely not.” — Former employee #1"

""We've got to bring more milk into the platform. Right now, if I look at the WCB platform, we're running close to 97%, 98% capacity utilization. On the MG side, we're running somewhere around maybe 58% capacity utilization. So one of the easiest ways to drive synergies and drive profitability is getting more milk through the plant, but of course, it's got to go into profitable products that we can sell either domestically or internationally?" — CEO on Australia (August 2018). "But our projections in terms of the respectable levels of profitability for the combined Australian platform, we believe that we will be there within year 3." — CEO on Australia (August 2018). "Leanne, it just seems that Australia has been problematic for a number of years now because of the inadequate supply of milk coming off the farm..." — BMO Analyst (June 2022). "And I believe that there is a way with the amount of milk that we're processing or we expect to process, this still drives very healthy profitability... So it doesn't mean that we have to reduce our expectation for EBITDA generation because we have less milk." — CEO on Australia (June 2022)."

""AbCellera is a big one. In terms of a technology competitor, like think of who else can do that single-cell secretion assay and then identify that cell. AbCellera can do that, but it's so damn hard that they could not productize, so they did a very good job in making it as a service...Customers who want to just outsource everything; they go to AbCellera." — Former senior scientist; "For antibody discovery, there is obviously AbCellera that has a similar system for – it's a comparable system for evaluation of single cells. AbCellera also is based on a microfluidic device. But again, AbCellera's business model is different because they don't sell platforms." — Former scientist; "And, of course, then there's the service providers like AbCellera, which is already doing two or three-fold Berkeley Lights revenue, has a slightly different technical approach, but effectively, it does exactly the same workflow—screens cells for antibodies, picks out the ones that are making the relevant antibody and allows the research and development teams to then go and further characterize those antibodies." — Former executive"

""BOL has likely been misunderstood because the complexity of its structure makes it infeasible to use Excel to estimate the percentage of circular ownership. We engaged consultants that created a program to do the calculations necessary. The main issue with understanding BOL's structure is that it has circles within circles within circles." — Muddy Waters, February 17, 2015; "Analysts call Bolloré SA one of the most complicated business structures they've seen, designed to protect family control. Children of Vincent Bolloré run key businesses." — Barron's, January 13, 2018; "Counselled by who would become his mentor, Antoine Bernheim, Bollore created a series of holding companies. And invested in a plethora of industrial activities. 'It is absurd in the context of economic efficiency, but intelligent in the context of dynastic continuity,' explains Bolloré." — Géraldine Meignan, L'Express, June 1, 2010; "There is a sense that Vivendi is now being run in a less transparent way, with one investor making decisions based on information which we don't have." — Claudio Aspesi, Bernstein Research, March 8, 2015"

""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"

""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"

""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)"

"“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"

"“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"

""Their ability to enter the broader NGS market is limited because of the fact that they make probes for hybridization capture —targeted sequencing. The rest of the market is either of the two: one being old genome sequencing, that’s just library prep. It doesn’t involve an enrichment step. They can sell into that, but they don’t have the core competency to go after run rate business that is owned by their competition like Roche." — Former employee now at a key competitor; "The other part of the market that they can’t address is making primers, which is something that IDT does and tother companies. Their technology doesn’t really produce enough mass—and this is well-known—to make primers, which make up a significant portion of the targeted sequencing market." — Former employee now at a key competitor; "Twist just can’t make primers because their technology is limited in making the mass, the actual mass of primer that’s required to run PCR." — Former employee now at a key competitor"

"When the price was set at U.S. $220 million this meant, however, a higher price than would be applied under the pricing model in the shareholders’ agreement. The pricing model was reportedly perceived more as a reference point when the transaction was negotiated ... The future value of Coscom was deemed to be very positive. The higher price compared to an application of the pricing model in the shareholders’ agreement was motivated by the fact that Takilant was not forced to sell the shares while TeliaSonera, given a comprehensive strategy to increase their holdings in partner companies where possible, desired increase its interest ... Furthermore, the higher price was motivated by the importance of having a continued good relationship with the local partner. According to the repurchase agreement, Takilant was also provide certain services, including to assist in currency exchange—something that had proven to be a practical problem. — TeliaSonera internal document translation"

"The heart of the growth algorithm, as you've heard from us, is really around the cross-sell momentum, okay, the cross-sell opportunity. — CFO Eric Shander; But just going through motions of a cross-sell we talked about, on average, getting our customers from 2 to 4 products, we can grow 10% for the next 10 years. Just by getting a $1, we can continue to grow 10% every year. That's how much exciting cross the momentum and how much white space is there. — CEO Hardeep Gulati; So in any given quarter, anywhere from 65% to 85% of our business comes from our existing customer base. And yet, only 70% -- and 70% of them only have 2 or 1 products. So there's a great opportunity to sell more into our customer base. If we just did that, we can grow to Hardeep's point organically. — CRO Tony Kender; risks related to the unavailability of additional U.S. federal government stimulus packages focused on educational initiatives following the COVID-19 pandemic — 2023 10-K"

"“One of the big benefits of Twist is the lower entry point if you’ve got a custom panel. You can get a custom panel from Twist for around $2,000. With the likes of Agilent, the minimum is something like $10,000 to $20,000... IDT, their minimum level of synthesis is like 1,000 times higher, and you will pay $10 per oligo, whereas, with Twist, you’re getting millions of oligos for $1,000. Each oligo costs way less.” — Major Twist customer, one of largest genomics centers in Europe; “Customization is sort of an inherent aspect of the DNA synthesis industry... To your question about why are they so unprofitable? DNA synthesis is extremely low margins, and the reason is there are so many competitors out there.” — Former Twist manager in a manufacturing role; “It’s like going to the supermarket and buying a pack of 1,000 eggs. Twist will sell you six eggs; Agilent will sell you 1000 eggs.” — Major Twist customer, one of largest genomics centers in Europe"

"The company executed the acquisition of Ströer Interactive Group, including freeXmedia and businessAD, with diligence in every respect. The board of management and supervisory board were fully aware of the special aspects of the transaction in terms of the related party position of the seller and took these into account in a particularly sensitive manner. All legal and valuation issues were examined step by step by legal firms of international repute, and their legality and correctness were documented in expert opinions. The supervisory board was informed of every step taken by the board of management and received detailed written and oral reports from the advisers. The company filed special valuation reports with the commercial register in connection with the capital increase performed during the transaction and made this publicly available at an Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting of the company in March 2013. — Ströer conference call transcript"

""With specific regard to the [short-seller] Report, the Committee concluded that the allegations were either factually incorrect or that there were reasonable explanations as to their non-materiality." — China Agritech, Inc. press release. "FTI independently obtained and reviewed documents which state that as of June 30, 2011, ChinaCast had cash, cash equivalents and term deposit balances reported in the Company's form 10-Q for the second quarter ended June 30, 2011." — ChinaCast Education Corp. press release. "We believe the findings contained in the FTI report should provide some comfort to shareholders as to the integrity of the Company's financial reporting and should serve to distinguish the Company from other Chinese companies that have received adverse publicity after failing to provide adequate verifications with respect to their financial statements." — Daniel Tseung, Chairman of the Audit Committee, ChinaCast Education Corp."

"Booms and busts in stock prices are often greatest in speculative mining and technology plays that tantalize investors with optimistic revenue and profit outlooks, yet often come from unproven claims and companies with a history of failure. We saw this in 2012 and have a proven record of calling out stock promotions in these sectors, namely Liquidmetal Technologies (OTCBB: LQMT) and US Antimony (AMEX: UAMY). We see extreme parallels between these promoted failures and American Battery Metals Corp (OTCBB: ABML) and Comstock Mining Inc.(NYSEAmex: LODE). These companies appear to have hitched their wagon to investor enthusiasm for electric vehicle battery recycling, and their prospective plant’s proximity to Tesla and its Gigafactory in Nevada . We recommend investors exercise extreme caution at these extended valuations and urge shareholders to closely examine why we believe companies are Strong Sells. — Ben Axler, CIO Spruce Point"

"“Nevro was categorically against what we called Quantity Purchases for the first 3 years the product was on the market. Then as they started to fall short and needed to meet quarterly numbers – we say it’s like a drug where you try it and then you’re hooked. Nevro began utilizing QP’s in Q2 2018 and by Q1 2019, within 3 quarters, they were completely hooked. Once you do one, you can’t hop off that ride. You’ve now provided the account a new price point. You’re demonstrated you’ll sell at that price, and they’re shown willingness to buy at that volume. The company can’t say no because they know the volume they can move. As a director, I was the one negotiating those. I’d joke I’d write it as a one-time offer, every time I did it. For my region, on a quarterly basis, as much as 16-17% of my sales were driven by channel stuffing. I’ve heard it still takes place but more scrutiny of it.” — Former Nevro regional sales director"

""We view nearly all aspects of the Red Lobster transaction as not particularly compelling..." — UBS, May 20, 2014; "Who Knew Lobsters Had Middle Fingers?" — Janney Capital Markets, May 16, 2014; "Destroying a business and giving it away for free is a familiar practice for CEO Clarence Otis." — Hedgeye, May 16, 2014; "Management's decision to ignore shareholder concerns and go forth with an undervalued sale of Red Lobster..." — Buckingham, May 16, 2014; "In short, in our eyes, "the taxman stole the show" by taking 25% of the gross proceeds." — Stifel, May 16, 2014; "Count us among the many who believe DRI is destroying shareholder value with this deal to sell Red Lobster for $1.6 billion post tax and transaction costs" — New Albion Partners, May 19, 2014; "It is unconscionable that the Darden Board would allow the Company to sell its Red Lobster business for what amounts to a 'fire sale' price" — Barington, May 19, 2014"

""L'Oréal is proud to announce the development of the very first paper-based cosmetic tube... We plan to improve the environmental or social impact of 100% of our new products by 2020." — L'Oréal (Bioplastics News, October 18, 2019); "PepsiCo, Inc. today announced a new target to reduce 35% of virgin plastic content across its beverage portfolio by 2025" — PepsiCo (September 13, 2019); "Halve its use of virgin plastic, by reducing its absolute use of plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tonnes and accelerating its use of recycled plastic" — Unilever (July 10, 2019); "Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, two major sellers of plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments. Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying group." — CNN (August 5, 2019); "Company Aims to Make 100% of its Packaging Recyclable, Reusable or Compostable by 2025; Increase Usage of Recycled Materials." — Kraft Heinz (July 31, 2018)"

"“Within two, then into three years, BLI will be relegated to a more stagnate position. They're not going to get better, and there's no breakthrough that's coming. We've seen what they've got.” — Board member at a key competitor; “They're not selling many instruments, but their instruments are expensive... If Mission Bio were to sell as many units as Berkeley Lights has placed in total, it'd be a bloody disaster.” — Board member at a key competitor; “There is a small company called Scribe Biosciences... I'm aware of another one, Bioelectronica in Nevada, which is trying to create effectively a low-cost, high-throughput version of the Berkeley Lights platform.” — Former BLI scientist; “For some of the assays that we developed in terms of T cell analysis, there is IsoPlexis that has a system that performs single-cell analysis of cytokines produced by T cells... I think it's also $100k.” — Former BLI scientist"

"“As the prescriber, I don’t think that the benefit will be to the tune of the amount of money the drug costs. As I’ve been describing the drug to families, I’m trying to undersell the expectations. The unique thing about this patient population is just the desperation from the families to try something, and to have something that’s available, and to have me say I’m not willing to try — that is not really acceptable. If there’s something that’s been FDA-approved for families to hear there may be a benefit, but we’re not going to try to prescribe it. I guess, from the insurance company’s perspective, I don’t disagree with their denials. But if they’re going to approve it, then I’ll take advantage of that for the patients and see if we get benefit that was described in the —” — Pediatric endocrinologist, leads one of the largest PWS clinics in US with 30-40 patients; 11 endocrinologists, major academic center"

"[H]istorically our mix has been 50/50 -- about 50% of bookings roughly towards new client counts and new logos, and 50% of upsell. And but obviously, at the elevated levels of ACA selling, the mix has shifted a little bit because most of the ACA has been really selling to our existing client base. So in the current year, that mix is a little shifted [more than 50% sell-in]. — Jan Siegmund (Q2’2016); [W]e've kind of tilted our focus now more towards new logo growth and new share from kind of the traditional approach... But this is a fairly significant change from a sales force mentality standpoint where we were for several years, focused on upgrades and on incremental sales of other modules to the existing client base as we upgraded them, combined with selling something called ACA, which to some extent, was a significant tailwind. So we're moving into a different environment. — Carlos Rodriguez (Q3’2017)"