Callouts & quotes from 26,677+ activist slides

"Current investors trading TEM's stock may not be aware that the CEO was COO of HA-LO Industries (NYSE: HMK), which went bankrupt after acquiring Lefkofsky's Starbelly.com. His current bio fails to disclose this controversial period of his work history."

"Without the surplus emergency funding that supported excessive spending for the past three years, and facing weak economic growth, inflation, and rising labor costs, we believe K-12 district leaders will be forced to make difficult budgeting decisions."

"We can see this quite clearly in company guidance. For its $1.85 billion of budgeted Capex, production from the end of last year to the end of this year is expected to be flat, while the “overspend” (their euphemism for cash burn) will be $200 million."

"During the monitoring period, the highest gift revenue we observed for a dating channel room was approximately RMB 150,000 in a week, while weekly gift earnings for the top 10 dating performers as of March 2020 ranged from 16,000 up to 99,000 per week."

"We believe a clear and publicly communicated, value creation-oriented and aspirational plan tailored to DND’s opportunity set will be instrumental in attracting and retaining highly skilled talent and creating value for shareholders over the long term."

"P&G’s $6bn of COGS reduction target from FY 2011 to 2016 translates into less than 3% annual COGS efficiency. Many CPG peers undertaking productivity initiatives have demonstrated significantly higher annual COGS productivity in the range of 3.5% to 4%"

"WD-40 talks about its market dominance and great market position. Spruce Point believes it is a market that others chose to largely underinvest in because there either isn’t enough growth, or its not financially attractive enough to deepen the channel."

"Despite little discussion of competition in China from Ballard, Spruce Point believes that the “Sinohytec chain” is best positioned to capture the China fuel cell opportunity given relationships with influential research universities and manufacturers."

"While Samsara wants investors to know that it is ahead of the curve in AI, continues to invest in the technology and that it is a key competitive advantage, it does not freely disclose that its practices have historically been to give it away for free."

"C3.ai ascribes a $60 million annual value to the “in-kind” donation of its unlimited AI Suite (including $10m of runtime). However, that appears to be unusually large relative to the fair market value of what it receives from its two largest customers."

"Oklo falls squarely in the second camp, which is a shame because rather than changing the narrative of a technology that has never lived up to promises, its eventual struggles and losses will only cement the technology's negative historical perception."

"We believe Axon should be valued relative to traditional weapons and firearms manufacturers and connected device and location electronics companies, not high growth SaaS peers with bigger TAMs, lower business risks, and proven recurring revenue models."

"We see this as a tremendous opportunity to deliver real shareholder value, corporate governance and transparency improvements, to help Samsung Electronics achieve an equity market valuation that properly reflects its first-class portfolio of businesses"

"This is the highest revenue Mettler-Toledo company in China with 38%, or $464m in revenue, and it has an incorrect address. Our investigators visited the 3rd floor and found one abandoned company and one in operation, but no evidence of Mettler-Toledo."

"Spruce Point is alarmed that PERI's audit chairman Michal Drayman held multiple financial roles at Lumenis Ltd. during the same period where the CFO and COO were charged with a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and misrepresent financial metrics."

"Even with evidence that Microsoft revenue is falling below plan, Perion retracted Yandex as a search partner, made search its #1 risk factor, and experienced a sharp decline in revenue per day per search, sell-side consensus estimates are still rising."

"Spruce Point was early in identifying the disruption from prediction exchanges for the legacy online sports betting operators. We believe the rising popularity of prediction markets is also a growth impediment for Super Group's sports betting business."

"We were unable to expand BLI use case beyond one simple cytotoxicity assay; original plan was to start with one assay and find other applications; spent a year trying to figure out what to do with it and failed given difficulty of using the instrument."

"At present TFS does not have sufficient mature harvests to sell, and is still dependent on MIS investors for cash. At the same time, TFS is paying cash to ‘buy out’ MIS investors through the buy-back scheme and increasing TFS’ share in the plantations."

"Given these conflicting financial interests, how can we, as shareholders of NHI, be expected to trust that these individuals will be able to represent our best interests in the boardroom, particularly as it relates to negotiating the NHC lease renewal?"

"The striking absence of dedicated finance, treasury, HR, legal, or other G&A staff in LinkedIn searches makes it apparent to us that Allonnia is controlled and run by Ginkgo as a captive entity, with no purpose we believe except to create fake revenue."

"Our rigorous forensic analysis suggests it may be outright impossible for Amcor to meet lofty analyst expectations, with revenues already vanishing, deal costs higher than planned, and critical maintenance and growth capital expenditures being delayed."

"The seeming chain of dependency thus became: FV gains depended on whole Personal Loan sales that SOFI financed, which depended on SOFI finding a third party willing to both pay par (or above) for a Secured Loan receivable and take full ownership of it."

"we remain incredulous at the mere possibility that the Board could interpret the regulations enacted in January 2024 in such an unreasonable and potentially abusive manner, that could be viewed as a means to circumvent the proper authorization process."

"As a result of the merger transaction, DZH Limited became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Orient Paper, which, in turn, made Orient Paper the indirect owner of DZH Limited’s operating company subsidiary, HBOP, pursuant to the terms of the trust agreement."

"We are shortly filing a Citizen Petition with the FDA requesting suspension of PMA (Premarket Approval) of TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS), in conjunction with a public letter to members of Congress probing abuses in the US organ transplant system."

"Surgeons provided devastating color that there is no correlation between how organs look on the pump and how they turn out in the recipient - that organs that look great may fail, and that organs which look questionable on the pump have performed fine."

"Given that this exchange is seemingly enabling Vivion’s shareholders to extract further repayments of shareholder loans (whose values – if not existence – we have questioned), investors should be asking whose interests are truly served by the exchange."

"In essence, neoclouds allow Nvidia to expand its sales reach without relying exclusively on hyperscalers who not only command significant pricing power but are also aggressively developing their own custom AI chips to reduce their dependence on Nvidia."

"It really is that simple. Patients are unlikely to choose to undergo an invasive, expensive surgery with a cumbersome list of restrictions that must be followed for the rest of their life to fix a condition that generally doesn't bother them very much."

"Spruce Point believes LSPD is opaque and does not give investors enough information to evaluate its business model. For example, management admits it tracks CAC, LTV, monthly retention and churn. Yet, why doesn't it disclose these metrics to investors?"

"Oh, there were other sales directors like that, too, absolutely. What would happen is their sales reps would push back, and they would just move that sales rep to somewhere else. I'm not kidding. I saw that happen twice because of what they were doing."

"Procept proclaims its vision is to become "the BPH Treatment of Choice For All Prostates", but urologists with whom we spoke believed such a statement amounted to exaggerated marketing hype, and we believe that such a vision is unlikely to be realized."

"Spruce Point believes our assumptions are conservative given there is a good chance the state litigation ends up at SCOTUS, allowing Kalshi to operate at least through 2026. In our base case, we estimate DraftKings risks missing 2026 revenue by ~15.0%."

"Elliott believes such measures would create in excess of EUR 7 billion of value, representing more than 35% upside for Sampo shareholders, and would restore market confidence and reinforce management’s reputation for delivering value-creating outcomes"

"As part of its false advertising lawsuit against FIGS, SPI alleges that FIGS misrepresented the volume of its donations. We note the challenges faced by a start-up giving away half its product and believe FIGS' responses in discovery lack credibility."

"We have shown that both GFL's operating cash flow and capital expenditures do not reconcile. As a result, we believe its free cash flow is also potentially misstated. We believe adjusted H1 2020 free cash flow burn was ~60% worse than reported by GFL."

"We believe that because WTRG cannot cover its dividend with free cash flow, money raised from investors through these programs could essentially be used to pay back the same and other investors dividends, or “taking from Peter, to pay Peter and Paul.”"

"As we've already shown: 1) MPWR's Chinese tax filings do not account for ~$262m of revenue, and 2) MPWR's inventory turnover metrics are ballooning and a significant industry outlier despite stable and steady gross margin growth that management touts."

"Even if we’re wrong on both the value of the standalone operating opportunity and the transaction value, we believe shareholders will still make money owning FDO due to the company’s attractive growth opportunities and modest forward earnings multiple"

"Spruce Point is alarmed that management's annual cash bonus structure is most heavily weighted towards fund raising and investor relations. Shouldn't management be compensated foremost on finding long-term committed customers to validate its business?"

"Investors cheered iRhythm's Q2 2025 results, as the Company's shares rallied 18% the day after the earnings release. Based on our review of the results, including information that was conveniently saved for the 10-Q, we question the positive reaction."

"Considering that EPs are supremely confident in their ability to isolate both cardiac structures, we expect Convergent to be a massive commercial failure, ending up exactly like AtriCure’s previous attempts to popularize stand-alone surgical ablation."

"If investors are hoping that Zebra’s autonomous mobile robots will provide it industry expansion opportunities, we believe they will be sorely disappointed. Fetch previously offered robots for research and cleaning but has discontinued these products."

"Silicon/CMOS-based DNA synthesis arrays are such an ancient commodity that one can watch decade-old YouTube videos on how to replicate Twist’s “proprietary technology” and “new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by ‘writing’ DNA on a silicon chip.”"

"The Revised TOB disregards many of the core principles underpinning these frameworks, including: Lack of true majority-of-minority protection; Financial advisors that lack independence; Abuse of minority shareholders to benefit Toyota Group companies."

"In less than twelve months, durvalumab, demcizumab, ACY-241, and RPC-4046 had all been removed from the list. While fedratinib was added to the list, current Wall Street analysts' estimates expect fedratinib to generate peak revenues of <$500 million."

"Ballard is currently trading near an all-time high valuation on the belief its China growth story will materialize and profits will finally appear. Our on the ground research in China suggests a different base case outcome of financial disappointment."

"A former C3 employee we spoke with said, "Baker Hughes is a marriage that is not working. The people are not happy. They can't sell the C3 product. It's a nightmare for them to sell it. The culture of C3 is so different that they can't work together.""

"Therefore, we find it curious and interesting that FND management is rewarded heavily on operating income and not evaluated on inventory turnover. Operating income is more heavily influenced by inventory and lease accounting and management than sales."

"Our observations of DV losing competitiveness in international markets appears to be mirrored by its loss of accreditation from the UK's ABC. This can't be beneficial for its opportunity to win business against IAS, which has maintained accreditation."

"Help Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) realize its potential for best-in-class operating performance and corporate governance by voting the GOLD card FOR Elliott’s highly qualified board nominees and its proposal to move to annual elections for all board seats."

"Every CFO in MTD's public history has worked at its auditor PwC. PwC has been its auditor since 1999 when KPMG was replaced. In addition, MTD has had the same Treasurer since 1998 and its current Head of Internal Audit worked at PwC for over 13 years."

"Given its claims of technology prowess and abnormally strong financial performance, Spruce Point is struck by the lack of institutional-caliber technology and growth specialist asset management companies that own Perion's shares or active hedge funds."

"Notice that PERI included Yandex with Microsoft Bing in early 2021 after commencement of the new Microsoft deal. The inclusion of Yandex coincides with PERI increasing its total revenue from Microsoft by $100m over the four-year term of the agreement."

"Constant uncertainty about the machine’s ability to function properly; reliability pales in comparison to competitors like 10X Genomics; lack of reliability makes the instrument basically unusable for antibody discovery – it’s main hoped-for use case."

"In the case of Vitek’s December 2023 purchase of Casa Canal, as little as 20% of the total price plus the 4% tax should have been paid, leaving the balance of 80% of the total contract price obligations to be paid by CPI PG until a buyer can be found."

"Spruce Point has identified inconsistent statements made by Rollins about its termite business. On the one hand, they said revenue from termite has tripled. However, a year later they said that they don't break out the termite from ancillary business."

"However, with recent acquisitions poised to contribute $115-125M in cloud revenue by our estimates, we believe that this leaves targeted cloud revenue growth at a three-year CAGR of just 13-27% excluding outstanding sources of inorganic cloud revenue."

"It seems to us that if one were to overstate revenue in a global business, one wouldn't want the margins to seem glaringly out of line with peers. Therefore, we would expect that a smart person (or people) would find a way to inflate expenses as well."