Callouts & quotes from 26,677+ activist slides

"Should we be correct that SOFI's balance sheet excludes the $312 million of borrowings, which would likely have resulted from intentional management misconduct, it is entirely possible that Deloitte will resign as auditor while stating that SOFI's prior financials cannot be relied upon."

"Given INOD’s precarious liquidity position and limited access to capital, the PR-driven rise in its share price, and the significant amount of insider sales in the last nine months, we believe a highly dilutive equity raise at a significant discount to its current share price is likely."

"We believe Evoqua and Xylem have misstated their interconnectedness. Evoqua CEO Keating said that Xylem was never a competitor, but more of a partner. Yet, his own employment agreement listed Xylem as a restricted enterprise and Xylem listed Evoqua as a competitor in its Annual Report."

"It is crucial, Elliott wrote, that the Board understand that Southwest’s leadership has already lost the trust of its shareholders, and that shareholders simply do not believe this Board and management team are capable of devising and executing a bold new plan to turn around Southwest."

"WSP has cumulatively misforecast net capex by approximately $146 million since 2020. This level of misforecasting is even more surprising given it spent approximately $4.3 billion on acquisitions during the same period which significantly grew the scale and footprint of its operations."

"Arora reported potential income tax evasion by WSP entities in India through five emails sent under the Whistleblower mechanism from September 2018 to January 2019. Despite assurances of protection against retaliation in the company's code of conduct, he was dismissed on June 11, 2019."

"Without limiting our ability to propose different agenda items, we currently intend to propose resolutions at the AGM removing Bertrand Kan (Chairman), Peter Shore and Alexandra Reich as directors and appoint Jonathan Amouyal (of TCI) as a director and potentially additional directors."

"O Realty's management team is comprised of a diversified group of investment bankers – skilled in the art of financial engineering. Prior to joining O Realty, none of its top management team have had much experience rolling-up their sleeves and managing real estate at the ground level."

"How can HIMS claim “clinical excellence” when most interactions involve automated chart reviews followed by a check by a physician. Also, a former executive corroborated that the HIMS systems simply allowed users to change any questionnaire answers that resulted in prescription denial."

"Instead of embracing responsible governance and a spirit of collaboration, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Jordan have resorted to entrenchment tactics – so-called “poison pills,” one-off announcements of long-overdue changes, and a rushed, unilateral Board refreshment process that lacks legitimacy."

"Axon has not explained why the total cost (land lease purchase + prepaid rent) increased 25%. Also, recall it said total capex of $12 - $15m in 2019. Does this mean its total capex budget will be just to purchase land, and its operating business requires no growth or maintenance capex?"

"Looking carefully, we see that at the time Axon started ramping up its inventory reserves, it also stopped providing standard disclosure about inventory “Work-in-Process” which it listed at just $100k for two years, and paints the picture that it literally has no production in-process."

"Investors ascribe CHD the highest valuation in the consumer products sector, mostly on the misplaced belief that its growth is fastest among peers, but fail to account for the low quality contribution from acquisitions, and recent price increases that have temporarily boosted revenues."

"We intend to vote “AGAINST” George S. Mayes, Jr., Javier Polit and Laurie A. Tucker at the 2025 Annual Meeting to hold them accountable for their missteps and to send a message to the Board that shareholders will not tolerate more episodes of avoidable value destruction at Forward Air."

"BR promotes itself as a “Global Fintech Leader”. But in reality, we believe at least 40% of its revenues are tied to mundane, low-valued added business process outsourcing (BPO) activities such as printing and distributing business statements, some of which carries literally no margin."

"PGNY's client base is skewed toward large technology companies and other knowledge workers. Most of these companies are located in major metropolitan areas where quality healthcare is more accessible, and the employee demographics at these companies do not mirror the general workforce."

"Note that the announcement states that these farms were designed for beef ranching, which strongly suggests that the farms were never intended to be operated by Huishan, and that the plan all along had been to use Huishan investors’ money to build beef cattle ranches for Chairman Yang."

"If inventory and working capital growth is a signal of Cintas’ flourishing business, as suggested by the CFO’s recent quote, then investors’ should be concerned that inventory growth has slowed for three quarters. Inventory growth historically outpaced sales by an uncomfortable amount."

"CLEAR's CAO worked with Ubiquiti's CFO and CAO Kevin Radigan for years prior while at Tunstall Americas. Mr. Radigan was named in the securities lawsuit. Ubiquiti reported a massive "error" in registered users covering the period that both Liu and Radigan held key roles at the company."

"The OPO expressed fury, stating that TransMedics conduct resulted in wasted organs that were viable and could have saved lives, by refusing access to the device unless they commit to paying for multiple aircraft and “mystery fees” – what a reasonable person may label textbook extortion"

"Using the Wayback Machine, we have carefully analyzed LSPD’s customer and GTV disclosures leading up the IPO. There is evidence the growth of the business was stalling. A new CFO was hired while headlines touted “explosive growth” at Lightspeed, and disclosures ceased ahead of the IPO."

"We find it hard to believe that within 34 days, the property went from an empty piece of land to a complete set of buildings, and thus have to assume that the $312,500 was the valuation of the land plus buildings, which implies that IIPR purchased the property at a significant premium."

"It is crucial, Elliott wrote, that the Board understand that Southwest's leadership has already lost the trust of its shareholders, and that shareholders simply do not believe this Board and management team are capable of devising and executing a bold new plan to turn around Southwest."

"RELY only reports period changes in transaction expense drivers such as direct costs and loss reserves. When we analyze the annual increases in these costs relative to annual increase in revenue and send volume, we see that trends mostly worsened in 2024 after a period of improvement."

"Spruce Point conducted an interview with a former senior Nuvei employee who was at the Company prior to, and after the closing of SafeCharge. The interview reveled multiple challenges with the acquisition. In addition, suspicions of accounting changes to boost performance were raised."

"So, what’s driving the massive increase in DSOs? 70% of systems are being placed at large hospitals, and we doubt that the Company’s lower volume hospital customers electing to purchase a relatively expensive single-indication system are so troubled as to be delaying invoice payments."

"Phillips 66 intentionally excluded Valero, the only pure-play refiner of scale, as well as all pure-play midstream comps. When adding in Valero and relevant midstream players, it is clear Phillips 66 trades in line with both Valero and Marathon and not at all like a midstream company."

"The solid-state battery researcher who we asked to analyze this data – a leader who is highly published in the field - pointed out yet another red flag: the current density profile makes no sense and, contrary to Quantumscape’s claim, does not represent actual laps around a car track."

"The deterioration of Skechers' cash flow margins since 2018, coupled with a history of mismatch between its CFO and net income (before non-controlling interest) and thus highly suspect earnings quality, suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with the Company's financial model."

"Inside the company the bonding of relatives, their clan and extended family ties are strong. For example, like Mr. Ding Shizhong, currently his largest partners they all started out with him, they are all from the same village, they are all family or relatives, they have strong bonds."

"RINO claims to be the leader in selling desulfurization (“FGD”) and other environmental equipment to Chinese steel mills. It reported 2009 revenue of $193 million. In reality its revenue is under $15 million, and its management has diverted tens of millions of dollars for its own use."

"Phillips 66 has repeatedly highlighted the absolute dollar amount it has returned to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases, without mentioning that it trails its peers relative to its market cap on this metric. Management's omission of key information deceives shareholders."

"We struggle to explain how gross margins expanded in the face of a structural decline of inventory turnover, and a material drop in revenues in 2015 (from emerging market challenges), and the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly changing policy in early 2015 to strengthen the Swiss Franc."

"The data integrity problems flagged by ex-employees are not only devastating enough to prevent adoption, but they make the machine a non-starter for any FDA-related submission, according to a former BLI executive, who indicated that customers therefore won't take the risk of using it."

"Aldi and Lidl continue to gain Weis customers. Earnest Research data shows 36.2% of Weis customers transacted at an Aldi in the 12 months prior to July 2018, up from 30.4% in July 2017 and 8.0% vs 0.8% at Lidl over the same period (n = ~42,000 Weis customers observed since July 2016)."

"We provide evidence that since 1999, the Company has generated a cash flow deficit of -$1.6bn after capital expenditures, business investment, and asset-shuffling and repositioning, while making +$4.7bn and +$3.9bn of dividends and share repurchases effectively through debt-financing."

"Phillips 66 intentionally excluded Valero, the only pure-play refiner of scale, as well as all pure-play midstream comps. When adding in Valero and relevant midstream players, it is clear Phillips 66 trades in line with both Valero and Marathon and not at all like a midstream company."

"Current investors are paying a premium to the Company’s historical valuation. In addition, we believe the fundamental valuation of Aerojet is substantially higher than it appears given numerous off-balance sheet liabilities being ignored by the market and diminishing revenue programs."

"An interview with a Senior Executive at a Danimer competitor reveled there will likely be challenges to scale within the trillion-dollar plastics industry. In addition, Danimer’s reliance on canola oil looks to be a competitive disadvantage compared to lower priced alternative inputs."

"While we admire Director Geller’s entrepreneurship and acknowledge that microcap investing is a high-risk venture, we find instances where companies that Director Geller’s Leonite Capital funded were the subject of litigation, allegations of bad faith and SEC investigation or charges."

"He is not well-liked. His style with the community of physicians. My contacts are mainly with the heart transplant centers, including the administrators all the way up to the C Suite in lots of cases. When I joined, my phone just kept ringing, saying are you crazy? That man is insane."

"60% of ELF’s sales are through Target, Walmart and Ulta Beauty. ELF must adhere to Supplier Codes of Conduct that reference ethical conduct and standards that are open to the interpretation of their customers, none of which have any obligation to continue purchasing products from ELF."

"Pre-portioned boxes cost ~50% more than delivered supermarket groceries and even more versus in-store shopping. This premium is inherent to the added logistics layer and widely known (e.g., The Guardian, Reddit threads, viral YouTube clips). No amount of efficiency can close this gap."

"This means one of two mutually exclusive possibilities is true: a) ONP churns and burns its customers and miraculously finds new ones to make up for the lost volume (plus 62.5%); or, b) that ONP is lying about its sales volumes to these customers (which is the possibility we believe)."

"While US$6.0 million and 34 towers normally would not be a material amount for a company of AMT's size, we strongly believe that in light of the US$250 million discrepancy in the Site Sharing transaction, the transactions with NIHD should be closely examined for possible impropriety."

"What they have shown is data for one. One layer. So, you can understand that the ability for them to scale that up is going to take some serious time and effort because to get from just having one cell cycling to having technically 200,000 layers cycling, that's a huge scaling issue."

"Perhaps the most brazen statement in the release comes from Chris Monroe himself, who goes so far as to boast that the system has already been deployed: "The new system we're deploying today is able to do things no other quantum computer has been able to achieve...the holy grail....""

"We believe that Mr. Smith’s extensive knowledge of the capital markets, corporate finance, and public company governance practices as a result of his investment experience, together with his significant public company board experience, would make him a valuable addition to the Board."

"Ancora is concerned that this may have potentially been an attempt to “juice” the stock ahead of the nomination deadline by providing an incomplete picture considering the financial metrics indicated a strong top-line performance, but no detail was offered regarding margins/earnings."

"Skechers’ purchase commitments relative to LTM revenue are approximately 64% higher than that its peers as of their most recent fiscal year end. Moreover, Skechers’ increase in relative purchase commitments since before COVID-19 (FY-2 for all) is over twice as high as that of others."

"Thus, even if we assume iRhythm can achieve the low end to consensus of Wall Street analyst revenue estimates for 2026, which we doubt, applying a more appropriate 2x to 4x revenue multiple range yields approximately 40% to 70% stock price downside and material underperformance risk."

"Dropbox does warn that its Free Cash Flow excludes payments for finance leases and that it may be calculated differently from other companies in the industry, limiting its usefulness. When asked about finance leases, the CFO avoids highlighting the effect on the financial statements."

"2U is the highest valued “Cloud based SaaS” company. 2U is currently priced for perfection and we believe the stock will re-rate as downward estimate revisions come to fruition as well as the realization that the EBITDA margin profile will never mature similar to its SaaS peer group."

"With ~30% of revenues tied to BH, the equity story is very dependent on success of the partnership between Baker Hughes and C3. However, multiple contract amendments pushing revenue into the future, and the resignation of BH's CEO from C3's Board all point to a troubled relationship."

"Former HIMS employees and physicians confirmed the high degree of control HIMS exerts over the AMGs. In states with strict CPoM provisions, the MSO should not make personnel decisions. Yet, several physicians we spoke with said HIMS effectively controlled physician hiring and firing."

"Note shift in language to YTD penetration. It implies that Q3 penetration was 15.2% of sales or ~$133M, down -3% from the prior quarter. Q3'19 ecommerce sales were $53.2M (10.2% penetration). If the 67% 2-year CAGR claim were correct, Q3'2021 sales would have been $148M and not $133M"

"We believe that Mr. Smith’s extensive knowledge of the capital markets, corporate finance, and public company governance practices as a result of his investment experience, together with his significant public company board experience, would make him a valuable addition to the Board."

"A consistent theme among recent employee reviews of Mettler is that the company’s “operating systems are dated”, computer programs are “outdated”, and “growing pains” related to SAP. This should be an extreme concern to investors given $660m+ of capitalized software over twelve year."

"Total impairments approximated the $144m enterprise value SGHC originally booked for DGC, effectively erasing the entire acquisition within roughly 24 months and highlighting the potential engineered nature of the asset and the questionable strategic rationale behind the transaction."

"Since the Company has little interest in letting shareholders have their say regarding the Red Lobster Separation, the Special Meeting will provide an alternative forum for shareholders to show the Board that Darden's shareholders will not stand to be silenced on this critical issue."