Callouts & quotes from 26,677+ activist slides

"The business units of TWX, if separated, should have the ability to manage even more debt (estimated at up to $23 billion) without jeopardizing their ability to secure investment grade ratings."

"The company forecasts revenue will grow to $1.4 billion by 2024E, with half of that coming from full-EV and heavy-duty vehicles upfits that don't exist yet, which we view as typical XL bluster."

"Spruce Point believes that increased competition amongst platforms and consolidation amongst agencies will force Momo to lower virtual gift retention and increase cost of revenues going forward"

"My belief is that shifting trillions of dollars from active management to passive management meant shifting money from strategies that generally at least consider valuation to those that don’t."

"Petitioner's analysis indicates that the post-marketing safety signal from Wakix, particularly with regard to cardiotoxicity, is exponentially worse than that which led to terfenadine's recall."

"This estimate does not include harm done to the ~10mm¹ former Non-Sales Leader distributors. As such, we think the true financial damage Herbalife has inflicted is materially higher than $3.8bn"

"McGraw-Hill must move past long overdue "reviews" and finally execute on transforming its corporate structure to improve operating performance and realize the true value potential of its assets"

"Trian is concerned that DuPont is spinning off Chemours to stockholders with a poor corporate governance structure – this “entrenchment” tactic could be a barrier to unlocking shareholder value"

"In November 2004 Taser executives were reported to have sold $91.5 million of their own stock, raising suspicions that they sought to maximize their own profits before their product lost ground"

"We believe many shares are owned by investment advisers, and up to 10% by retail holders, who have historically thought of CHD as a safe and defensive investment run by conservative management."

"Merlin@home devices and implants now have additional RF capabilities, with a communications range of approximately 50 feet. They now pose a far more significant risk to user safety than before."

"The SEC issued a comment letter to Intuit on 2/23/24 questioning the Company’s lack of transparency on the disclosure of key metrics and the factors driving period changes in financial results."

"Trian is concerned that DuPont is spinning off Chemours to stockholders with a poor corporate governance structure – this “entrenchment” tactic could be a barrier to unlocking shareholder value"

"If SGHC's internal South African software is robust enough to run one of their leading markets, it begs the question: why pay €140m+ to consolidate a potentially duplicative asset from Apricot?"

"Darden's stock price has materially underperformed both the broader equity markets, its Proxy Peer Group and its closest direct competitors over the last 1-, 3-, and 5-year measurement periods."

"While we estimate BR has invested $1.0 billion+ in the UBS wealth platform since launching the project in 2018, its end customer, UBS Americas Wealth Advisors, is slowly bleeding in population."

"BLI 2021 guidance of $90-100MM requires all-time record revenue in Q3 and Q4 – an implausibly sharp spike from a flat trend. "Back half weighted" is the usual canard of companies about to miss."

"Stryker claims days inventory has improved. However, based on our analysis, which adjusts for reclassified loaner inventory, we believe days inventory have not changed from pre-COVID-19 levels."

"With the right mindset and an appropriately ambitious turnaround plan, PepsiCo today represents a rare chance to revitalize a leading global enterprise and unlock significant shareholder value."

"Lasertec's light source is "not a well-controlled process...it was painful but we would get some light...if you choose a bad technology you just can't just get there...DPP has inherent issues.""

"We believe that TAL should restate its financials to include the costs to develop Shunshun consolidated as of the date of initial investment in July 2015 or the transfer of DFRL in August 2015."

"Historical intransigence about considering stock repurchases demonstrates a deep seated bias by HMA's Board to even consider share repurchases as an effective tool to increase shareholder value"

"There are no limits to the amount of bundled services tied into home services. For example, masonry and construction services can also be used as an angle towards selling pest control services."

"We think Core is likely to miss. With its dependence on offshore and international capex, Core should underperform some of the same North American oriented peers that it outperformed last time."

"Mr Harwood KC submitted that the Developer fell short of its duty of candid disclosure in failing to explain to the Court how, internally, it calculated the capacity of the proposed solar farm."

"For this reason, we are nominating four exceptional, experienced and highly-qualified nominees for election to the Board at the 2022 Annual Meeting, including a direct Starboard representative."

"This factor, along with REZI now signaling that third party services are being used to develop products, suggests to us that any revenue uplift from new product introductions is likely to slow."

"The platform that Ginkgo is using is Pichia pastoris, which is a yeast; it's well known to produce a lot of protein. The strain engineering that they're doing for us is mostly yeast-based, yes."

"For this reason, we are nominating four exceptional, experienced and highly-qualified nominees for election to the Board at the 2022 Annual Meeting, including a direct Starboard representative."

"Here's Jonathan Bush one last time in November, when the stock was trading at 142, proving that he gets the joke, and that he understands Wall Street even better than he understands healthcare."

"Regardless of their recent claims of success, the Company is nowhere near meeting its 2022/23 Analyst Day Targets, repeating the failure of Phillips' 2019 “AdvantEdge66” cost-cutting initiative"

"USCR also reports total ready mix volumes annually in its 10-K along with total trucks. By calculating average trucks during the year, we find that volumes per truck are also in modest decline."

"Trian is concerned that DuPont is spinning off Chemours to stockholders with a poor corporate governance structure – this “entrenchment” tactic could be a barrier to unlocking shareholder value"

"You are still living with the consequences of that burn, and everyone involved in this failure needs to be held accountable. And frankly, it's a reminder that Norfolk Southern can't be trusted."

"Mr. Orr has been accused of abusive behavior and serious misconduct in the workplace, according to legal filings found by Ancora and interviews Ancora conducted with executives in the industry."

"Speculated that Soleno removed critical investigators as authors on papers and buried them under acknowledgments, and played hardball by keeping them in the dark about the status of the papers."

"Something appears very shady. How is it possible that ShopKeep and Upserve recognized $31.4m of transaction expenses pre deal-closing, while LSPD only recognized $6.5m of expenses post-closing?"

"Despite Herbalife's claim that its compensation structure in China is different from other markets, the pro forma Contribution Margin in China essentially mirrors those in the rest of the world"

"The FDA’s reviewer’s conclusion – shown below – exhibits no awareness that a 2 point reduction in ESS is a failure: “HARMONY 1-bis provides confirmatory evidence of pitolisant’s effect on EDS.”"

"neither Harmony nor Bioprojet has ever shown this to be the case, which means there is no evidence for the key claim and that their advertising and marketing is therefore false, in our opinion."

"Comp plan paid reps for off-label referral forms; highly prevalent practice across the salesforce; open secret in the company; was brought to “senior leadership” attention on numerous occasions"

"Notwithstanding the strategic benefit of an extensive branch network across Hong Kong and China, BEA HK’s fee income business falls below its peer group average, on both a gross and a net basis"

"Spruce Point recently interviewed a company that considered using DV, but eventually decided not to use their services. A major pressure point was their inflexibility and classification system."

"Trial investigator #5 highlighted the enormous discontinuation rate close to 80%, and admitted that the trials were basically unblinded because the side effects were so obvious and significant."

"Zoetis’ share price has increased 44% (including dividends) from the inception of our position in July 2014, and 28% from our average cost basis prior to the position being made public, to date"

"QTT claimed that we are dishonest, yet they failed to disclose that 5 of Shanghai Jifen’s subsidiaries had their equity frozen by the Chinese courts the day before their response was published."

"Today, however, poor execution and leadership’s stubborn unwillingness to evolve the Company’s strategy have led to deeply disappointing results for shareholders, employees and customers alike."

"We believe that INS’s common stock is uninvestable, given that these significant and material related party transactions in our view cast doubt onto the integrity of INS’s financial statements."

"the idea that data centers are the “silver bullet” market for SOFC (and by extension for Ceres) appears structurally flawed and overly optimistic given current technical and market constraints."

"It was clear that this building was far from any kind of production or manufacturing. At best, some areas may have been staged for pictures to be used in a future press release, in our opinion."

"We see a large disconnect between the high costs and high margins and how they can co-exist with each other. This was our first clue that something might be amiss with the company’s financials."

"TSMC views Lasertec as merely a niche R&D tool that is not suitable in a fab: “we call it a lab tool, R&D tool...not a production tool...because you have a lot of limitations for productivity.”"

"I think they will never cancel those POs because some of those POs are basically there because of the investment they got. It's just there because they owe Intel money, so that's what they did."

"In fact, RUN investor relations referred to tax equity as “effectively debt”, which underscores our concern that RUN is, in essence, selling the ITCs or using them as collateral for financing."

"With recent catalysts, including promoting the partnership with DraftKings for the NFL deal, now behind Genius, we believe going forward, there are more downward risks than positive catalysts."

"The FIGS origin story is riddled with small inconsistencies. While we acknowledge the business has grown, we believe such inconsistencies are indicative of a general inattentiveness to detail."

"We believe this should be considered a related-party transaction. We believe this is an excessive perquisite for an employee, even if a portion of the land is being used for business purposes."

"As AMT has not hedged its currency risk we believe that this could cause further devaluation of revenue and assets in the future and will most likely lead to AMT performing below expectations."

"Our expectation is that a larger number of the Brazilian towers will need to be redeveloped in order to add more tenants to towers and that the total cost will be approximately US$100 million."

"At the risk of this report seeming to be a love letter to Jay Brown, we quote him regarding the incompatibility of the REIT structure with the risks of emerging and frontier market cash flows."