Callouts & quotes from 26,677+ activist slides

"MDA has consistently produced poor free cash flow. From 2012-2017 average free cash flow was C$33m (US$30m). Leading up to the DigitalGlobe deal, it even reported bank overdrafts of cash. YTD 2018 overdrafts have continued, and debt is rising through credit facility borrowing."

"We believe that if our nominees are elected they can help oversee the execution of this plan and the Company can realize $300 million in profit upside over consensus EBITDA estimates, leading to a clear path to achieving $4.00 or more in earnings per share in the coming years."

"Warning: Given concerns we will document about Oatly's: 1) Lack of adequate financial disclosures, 2) Three auditors in six years, and 3) Evidence of key financial and operational metrics not adding up, we find it curious that the Company appointed Frances Rathke to the Board."

"Nelson Peltz, and Jay Rasulo – who ran Disney’s Parks business for nearly a decade – will work with the Board to execute on a clear vision for Parks targeting at least high-single digit operating income growth to ensure adequate returns on the $60 billion of capital investment"

"Legg Mason, Inc. (NYSE: LM) announced today that it has increased the size of its Board of Directors from 10 to 12 members and has appointed Nelson Peltz and Ed Garden of Trian Fund Management, L.P. ("Trian Partners") to the Company's Board of Directors, effective immediately."

"The evidence suggests that Axon has aggressively recognized revenues. These aggressive accounting choices were known to be blessed by Arthur Andersen, the now defunct auditor, that famously signed-off on Enron’s financial statements and was charged with obstruction of justice."

"There is evidence that CHD is stretching the truth about the performance of FLAWLESS. When asked directly about any surprises, the CFO said "only good surprises". However, the evidence contradicts this with the integration taking longer than expected by a revision in the 10-Q."

"However, we believe that unadjusted EBITDA and unadjusted earnings are far more accurate measures of Hill-Rom's profitability, as these restructuring and acquisition-related charges are effectively recurring and/or capitalized costs for an M&A-driven business such as Hill-Rom."

"According to the SAIC records, Branch No. 4 and 88 are registered on the same street, only two stores away. We visited these two branches' registered addresses. Yet we only found one Lianjia store (Branch 88). The location where Branch No. 4 should be is actually a restaurant."

"Despite their late start, COVID, growing trade wars, and the massive disadvantage of competing against some of the world's most dominant companies, the emerging Chinese WFE players have experienced explosive growth, making it no longer reasonable to question their credibility."

"As stated, we have concerns about Wilson’s level of engagement with Heska. Therefore, we were surprised to find that he lives 2.5 - 3 hours from Heska’s headquarters. While the pandemic has obviously resulted in more remote work, this situation persisted for years prior to it."

"Nelson Peltz, and Jay Rasulo – who ran Disney’s Parks business for nearly a decade – will work with the Board to execute on a clear vision for Parks targeting at least high-single digit operating income growth to ensure adequate returns on the $60 billion of capital investment"

"Perverse incentives are central to understanding TransMedics business model. It exists solely as a creature of a preposterous Medicare reimbursement loophole unique to transplants – which regulators are racing to kill off, unbeknownst to bulls, taking TransMedics down with it."

"However, the Company’s reactive changes to date, while a step in the right direction, have for the most part failed to address the serious operational issues facing the Company, namely the current Board’s unwavering pursuit of a high-cost, value-destroying status-quo strategy."

"Dollarama has no promotional expense. Meanwhile, promotional expenses average 1-2% of revenue among U.S. peers. As established competitors continue to expand, and as new competitors enter the market (Amazon included), Dollarama’s no-cost marketing strategy may prove untenable."

"The second red flag is that both rodent studies used a “supramaximal dose” of pitolisant in order to come up with a relatively modest increase in T-meha vs. the control animals – which of course also implies a supernormal human dose far higher than the max 35.6mg on the label."

"The statistically significant finding for cataplexy in HARMONY 1 was dependent on how missing values were handled (i.e., missing or zero values were assigned a value of 0.5; if they were excluded from the analysis, the treatment effect was no longer statistically significant)."

"Each has a similar structure: Ginkgo and its investors create and fund the entity, which then simply returns and round-trips back cash or “non-cash consideration” to Ginkgo under the guise of R&D “prepayments” or services, which it books as Foundry revenue or deferred revenue."

"We Believe the Loss of Government Funding for Pentagon Contracts That Had Comprised Up To 86% of Recognized Revenues, and Additional Bookings of $54.6 Million Led to Potentially Illegal Insider Sales, Massive Dilution, and a Desperate Rollup of Non-Quantum Computing Businesses"

"Party B voluntarily accepts the management, direction, and guidance of Party A, shall strictly adhere to the educational ideas, safeguard the brand, refer to the management model, instructional model, and accept Party A's supervision over the quality management of the school."

"The paper states that experiments were run on "the newest generation IonQ quantum processing unit (QPU)," yet the second to last paragraph - buried near the end of a dense 12 page paper - makes an amusing admission: "Note that we restricted the experiments to four qubits....""

"His executive profile at the Potomac Officers Club states that “Chapman obtained his various degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard University Extension School.” His bio in the SPAC pitch deck states that his “career began at 16 in MIT AI Lab…”"

"Another large consolidation play in the U.S. Coal industry was Arch Coal's acquisition of International Coal Group (NYSE: ICG). The $3.4 billion merger was completed in June 2011.(1) Here we also observe that no revaluation was made to the coal inventories upon consolidation."

"AMR acts as if its approaching being "debt-free" and now it’s time to reward shareholders with stock buybacks and a dividend policy. But wait a second, is the Company really debt-free, or has it forgotten about its obligations to other stakeholders beyond financial creditors?"

"Saputo has exhibited the largest increase in Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) among its global set of dairy industry peers. Whereas its DIOs were below average, now they are above industry average. In fact, over the past 4 years, Saputo's DIO have increased by nearly 20 days."

"While this trade worked out well for FMCN insiders, FMCN shareholders did poorly. By Q4 2009, FMCN had written off Allyes by at least $258.4 million (including any amortization of acquired intangibles), which was a loss to shareholders of 87.0% of the original purchase price."

"The result has been dramatically more favorable for TWX's bondholders than stockholders. Since the current management team was installed, the bondholders of TWX have, on an indexed basis, generated a 40% overall return, while the stock has simultaneously lost 8% of its value."

"MSCI may be understating the increased pressures in the index business, notably from Qontigo which has integrated and merged various offerings under Deutsche Börse and was launched in 2019 with backing from private equity powerhouse General Atlantic's $720 million investment."

"Spruce Point believes there are better points in the home purchasing timeline to build stronger relationships with potential home buyers, and through professionals that have developed deeper relationships with customers (eg. Real estate brokers, mortgage brokers and lawyers)."

"We also do not have any means or desire to look at other company's bid or user data; our models use solely behavioral data, ad engagement data, win/loss notifications from mediation (same data shared to any bidder on our platform), and advertiser data to generate predictions."

"An interview of a former Newell manager who worked in the Connected Home & Security (CH&S) business sold to Resideo revealed a strong opinion that the acquisition was troubled with lots of talk from management, but little substance of how the transaction would increase value."

"Only with over 100 launches, well above our estimate of the entire addressable market in 2024/25, and generously holding price constant at $3.75m per launch and giving the company credit for lowering material costs to $1m, does Astra begin to break even on a per rocket basis."

"The move was a bait-and-switch. As alleged by Congressman Gosar and confirmed by numerous transplant centers we interviewed, TransMedics would no longer train hospital staff to use their device, forcing them to pay for its dedicated device technicians, surgeons, and aircraft."

"TransMedics has – and will never have – any opportunity in kidney as 1) only 40% of kidneys are pumped due to cost, despite the pumps being around for decades; 2) LifePort has 85% market share with its kidney pump; and 3) their pump is a third of TransMedics OCS cost at $30K."

"The plan that will be implemented with the election of all seven of our nominees and appointment of our proposed management team is projected to grow EPS from $11.81 (as of 2023) to $21.00 (as of month 36) to ~$23.00 (by FY 2027), a 93.7% earnings increase in just four years."

"The ex-employee indicated that Soleno’s best-case TAM is a mere 10-15% of PWS patients, as younger patients’ hyperphagia is manageable; and older patients tend to be institutionalized and on Medicaid, which won’t pay, leaving Soleno with a small potential niche in the middle."

"Spruce Point interviewed a former Lightspeed employee who was intimately involved in the Lightspeed Payments product, launched in 2019. During the course of our discussion, we heard an opinion that Lightspeed's talk of GTV is "smoke and mirrors" and to "not very transparent.""

"The findings suggest that regional subsidiaries owned by Accor SA and/or local hotels operated through management and franchise agreements by Accor SA have shown willingness to knowingly provide hotel accommodation in circumstances that materially facilitate unlawful conduct."

"We believe a meaningful share of NCAA handle is driven by college students, since Kalshi is 18+ versus OSBs at 21+. The result: Kalshi is capturing would-be DKNG users three years before they can legally bet on sportsbooks, potentially hurting DKNG’s future pipeline of users."

"Spruce believes Kalshi and other prediction market entrants (e.g., Polymarket) represent a much larger threat to DKNG than to Flutter (FLUT). DKNG is almost entirely U.S.-dependent, with ~61% of its total revenue coming from its U.S. sportsbook, compared to just 29% for FLUT."

"Notice how ABML issued a press release that announced a $4.5m DOE grant, whereas days later American Lithium issued the same press release but clarified their role along with another partner. We believe this illustrates how ABML tries to glorify its position in the industry."

"At best, Carvana (CVNA or “the Company”) is a used car dealership masquerading as a high-growth tech business. At worst, it’s an uneconomical subprime auto loan originator being supported by an unknown party willing to purchase subprime auto loans at vastly off-market rates."

"Penumbra is a laggard in BOTH 1) scale and 2) stent retriever quality. The simultaneous growth of bundling and the solumbra technique - even as solumbra expands the market for aspiration catheters - will put Penumbra at a significant competitive disadvantage to larger peers."

"Given the reckless and chaotic actions that Southwest’s leaders keep taking in an attempt to preserve their jobs – and the resulting risk to the Company and its constituents – the need for change is urgent, and our request for a special meeting may come as soon as next week."

"A reasonable explanation is that YY is using bots on their cloud infrastructure, and when the VPN or external anonymizing service has an outage or there is a problem, their bots continue to send transactions to YY.com through the internal network until the VPN comes back up."

"Spruce Point has conducted a benchmarking analysis of AMR's reported maintenance expense. AMR has relatively high maintenance capex spending to its gross property, plant and equipment base. Excluding sub-scale producer Ramaco Resources, AMR is a significant outlier to peers."

"Oasis estimates freeplus revenue for 2023 was less than USD 150 million, however, the estimated global retail value of its product peers, Kenvue’s Neutrogena (USD 2.9 billion) and L’Oréal’s Garnier (USD 6.4 billion), demonstrate the potential growth opportunity for freeplus."

"Spruce Point sees an inherent conflict if Director Sastry has received funding from Mr. Siebel. Berkley's website says it is an endowed chair.(1) How objective can he be in his decision-making, and will he look out for shareholders' interests ahead of Mr. Siebel's interests?"

"Is nearly all of HIMS’ mental health physician organization operating without a valid corporate registration? Our research of PC laws in several states, including California, suggests that a current registration is required for healthcare-related entities to operate legally."

"We look forward to a collaborative and positive dialogue with Cognizant’s Board and management. To that end, we respectfully request a meeting in the next few weeks with the full Board during which we can share a detailed presentation of the Cognizant Value-Enhancement Plan."

"This presents a real strategic risk to Intuit, as the stated rationale for the Credit Karma acquisition and recently announced integrations of the two products was Intuit's ability to “leverage” customer data that was explicitly collected for the sole purpose of tax filings."

"Given the various concerns we've documented in our analysis of Perion's revenue and customer inconsistencies, along with shrinking accounting disclosures, we believe shareholders would benefit from a fresh pair of eyes with a new external and internal audit firm and partner."

"An investor spoke with FTAI. FTAI confirmed that the new language indicates that the test to report Aerospace Products income on the Operating or Investing side of the Cash Flow Statement is determined by the amount of capitalized costs to the assets while held in Inventory."

"Indeed, IQE posts some of the same job openings on its own website. When our researcher inquired about the technician role listed on CSC's website, we he was told that although the technician role is with CSC, it is “essentially the same contract as all other IQE employees.”"

"Industry sources suggest that MGPI's key customers are Diageo, High West, Sagamore Spirit and Templeton Rye. Each of these customers (as well as Terresentia) are adding their own production capacity and storage which suggests they may no longer need to do business with MGPI."

"The Annual General Meeting of Phillips 66 (the “Company”) shareholders is scheduled to be held virtually on May 21, 2025. You can vote your shares using one of the voting options listed below. Elliott urges you to use the GOLD universal proxy card or voting instruction form."

"Spruce Point finds evidence that Danimer’s CEO Stephen Croskrey potentially attempted to cover up defective body armor after DSM, a Dutch developer of performance materials, publicly released data showing Zylon lost strength under certain temperature and humidity conditions."

"We cannot understand how this issue could have been a surprise to the Company. Even basic accounting due diligence would have detailed Olapic’s contract structure, its revenue recognition policy, and any changes to revenue recognition that would be required post acquisition."

"The following assumes that Bob Evans separates BEF Foods and Restaurants through a tax-free spin-off of its Restaurants business; that is, the existing parent company Bob Evans effectively becomes the stand-alone BEF Foods business and thus a pure-play packaged foods company"

"A possible motivation for these inventory transfers would be to overstate gross margins by moving high cost inventory to PP&E, or eliminate the need to write-down obsolete/slow-moving inventory in the current period, and instead depreciate the expense over a 3-5 year period."