Callouts & quotes from 26,677+ activist slides

"To better understand the materiality of this issue, PGNY completed 28,413 ART cycles in 2021. Assuming they all involved PGT at $5,000 per cycle, that represents $142 million of revenue, or about 40% of PGNY’s medical revenue that year."

"Our long idea is AerCap Holdings N.V., ticker AER. AerCap is the largest and, in our view, the best managed independent lessor. In a market with few bargains, we believe that the stock is cheap and offers a good risk-reward opportunity."

"Nevro had given him talking points to convince me to come back. So they admitted, yes, you’re getting explants, but they wanted to convince me I wasn’t getting that many. I’ve heard they’ve done this with a lot of other doctors as well."

"Spruce Point believes investors should carefully consider that in the past three years, related-party distributions have exceeded the total investment made in the Company through capex, R&D and acquisitions by approximately $44 million."

"If management becomes more bearish about a recovery, it can reduce capacity further and shrink the cost base. We believe that if the business were right-sized to the current sales base of ~$3.3bn, EBIT margins could be approximately 10%"

"CPI Hotels, following its transfer to CPI PG, assigned its receivable from MGI of €16.1 million to Vitek, seemingly extinguishing it. However, as discussed infra, Vitek appears to have then sold this receivable for money back to CPI PG!"

"We have identified three major property transactions with parties related to Vivion's principal controlling shareholder Amir Dayan. While it is not clear that wrongdoing occurred in these transactions, the facts strongly suggest it did."

"4% capital would require ~$270 billion to support the single-family guarantee business alone, >2x the capital held by both entities today. This would tie up ~$100bn+ of wasted capital that could be better deployed in other US businesses"

"Our checks on TransMedics procurement surgeons confirm the concerns raised by ex-employees, surgeons, OPO executives, and hospital staff – that a reasonable person may view them as generally unemployable by reputable transplant centers."

"The problem, compared to what you can do with NRP or other technologies, is that the heart on the TransMedics device is beating but it's empty...it's not doing any work...it's not supporting circulation...it's not generating a pressure."

"The foreign clinical trials that led to the approval of pitolisant are a poster child for the weaknesses and loopholes in the FDA's fast-track approval process, where a far lower standard of evidence is acceptable for a rare indication."

"We find it morbidly humorous at best, but highly concerning otherwise, that Longson was designated VP of Real Estate at PetIQ just several years after abusing a real estate financing entity to engage in fraudulent "inventory financing.""

"In our opinion, the paper exemplifies what we believe to be a 20+ year pattern of scientific and clinical dishonesty by the inner circle that pop ups repeatedly in Bioprojet’s key papers and trials, all of whom are authors on the paper."

"CEO Dominik Richter's private company borrowed massively against his HelloFresh’s shares to fund highly leveraged real estate investments by his brother Benedikt Richter, apparently triggering margin calls amid a steep share price drop."

"AS OF THE PUBLICATION DATE OF THIS REPORT, GRIZZLY RESEARCH... HAS A DIRECT OR INDIRECT SHORT POSITION IN THE STOCK (AND/OR OPTIONS, SWAPS, AND OTHER DERIVATIVES RELATED TO ONE OR MORE OF THESE SECURITIES) OF THE COMPANY COVERED HEREIN."

"Southwest's Executive Chairman and its CEO, who have spent a combined 74 years at the Company, have presided over a period of severe underperformance, and they have demonstrated that they are not up to the task of modernizing Southwest."

"Southwest's Executive Chairman and its CEO, who have spent a combined 74 years at the Company, have presided over a period of severe underperformance, and they have demonstrated that they are not up to the task of modernizing Southwest."

"When an investigator visited the office building listed for Metaverse Horizon, he discovered that there has never been a lease associated with the specific address listed, and that the office space had never been developed or decorated."

"Our Analysis of Historical Compensation Indicates CTO Never Would Have Hit Its Threshold for Bonuses If It Had Included Recurring Capex in Its AFFO. Management Has Inflated Its $8 Million Performance Bonuses With Its Made-Up AFFO Metric"

"While most companies have been able to raise prices to offset inflationary forces, Enfusion has indicated that price changes did not impact its results. This outcome is despite the former CFO claiming that the Company had pricing power."

"Rather than admitting that the Urashima light source is simply an old, re-packaged Russian EUV source no one else wanted, Lasertec appears to be misleading investors with a new name and claims that it is a Japanese-developed technology."

"10/28/15: Q3'15 earnings miss on SSS, EPS headwinds due to higher D&A & margin dilution from franchisee acquisitions (labor, low sales, training). Guided to "single digit" net earnings growth in FY'15 and 20% in FY'16. Shares fell ~17%"

"Rate base growth potential is a key investor marketing pitch used by WTRG to show upside in its business. We find that Peoples is falling behind expectations for rate base growth and projections have quietly been cut by $100m per year."

"Generac's multiple is still elevated from its Pre-COVID expansion. Based on aggressive consensus estimates, clean energy will comprise just 7% of 2022E total revenues, not material enough to cause a wholesale re-rating of its multiple."

"New Board members with substantial retail, operating, and turnaround experience are desperately needed to transform Office Depot and set it on the right path for future success regardless of whether the OfficeMax Merger is consummated."

"New Board members with substantial retail, operating, and turnaround experience are desperately needed to transform Office Depot and put it on the right path for future success regardless of whether the OfficeMax Merger is consummated."

"With ABML promoting its ability to become a leader in battery recycling within the state of Nevada, we find it curious that its Chief Resource Officer Scott Jolcover is also a consultant to Comstock Mining in "commercial transactions"."

"We question how AMT’s towers can be positioned to capture incremental growth when, according to their President, CEO, and Chairman, the vast majority of their towers are not located where the people generating the increased demand are."

"Kuo Wei (Herbert) Chang was Monolithic's largest shareholder at IPO and continues today to serve on the Board. His involvement with prior public companies Oplink, BCD Semiconductor and Marvell Technology all merit significant scrutiny."

"The contrived phrasing suggests that Quantumscape is trying to mislead investors into thinking that this is the first time they’ve made multi-layer cells, when all they’re saying is that this is the first time they’re talking about it."

"NQ Yu Lin: We have responded many times to similar questions before. To put it simply, NQ and many cell phone companies, such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Coolpad, Gionee and oppo, have long-term collaborations on software pre-installation."

"Legacy MDA missed its own revenue and EBITDA estimate by a staggering $115m and $19m, respectively. MAXR also made an accounting change to boost DigitalGlobe’s sales and EBITDA, so the disappointment was even worse than we illustrated."

"We believe that lingering stigma around entering such environments could slow dental office activity for months into the future, given that the disease itself is not expected to disappear until later this year at the absolute earliest."

"Notice that in Alpha Natural’s two largest acquisitions of Massey Energy and Foundation Coal there were virtually no adjustments in the value of the acquired coal inventories. This was under CEO Kevin Crutchfield’s leadership of Alpha."

"Vitasoy is a globally recognized player in plant-based drinks, with a strong presence in Asia and China. It has nearly a billion dollars of sales and strong profitability. The Company recently announced it would launch a new Oat drink."

"We believe that although third-party ownership will not disappear as the market continues to shift towards loans, companies such as Sunnova that rely heavily on volume and economics of third-party ownership will be negatively affected."

"GTT obfuscated its negative organic growth rates of -8.7% and -7.7% in 2017 and 2018, respectively, by not providing financials for what it characterizes as “immaterial acquisitions” and “asset purchases of certain customer contracts.”"

"Twist explicitly states that the facility is for “DNA Data Storage,” not manufacturing, which it lists as the use case only for its South San Francisco HQ – contradicting numerous statements the CEO has made about its intended purpose."

"Investors are likely extrapolating past performance incorrectly. The MBA tuition levels at three colleges launched between March 2016 and January 2018 are at price points that are ~40% ($38,500) lower than 2U's original three programs."

"We believe the HIMS platform is designed and optimized to generate prescriptions for low-risk drugs. We believe these issues present a serious obstacle to expanding into more treatment-intensive and higher stakes health practice areas."

"We are concerned that Amdocs is not only capitalizing expenses, but parking them in an unamortized account, thus avoiding any expenses which it would otherwise incur through either direct expensing or amortization of capitalized costs."

"By baking gains from disposals of fixed assets into its “Purchase of property and equipment” line, management is presenting a superficially deflated capex figure, and hiding it by failing to disclose that they are presenting net capex."

"Disney fails to set challenging financial performance targets (70% of annual bonus), including negative free cash flow targets in FY 2021 & 2022 and targets well below consensus estimates when comp plans for the year are made ('20-'23)"

"Elliott believes Phillips 66 is deeply undervalued. We see $19bn of trapped value relative to sum-of-the-parts value of its assets and another $7bn of value from improved operations and additional value from the sale of non-core assets"

"How does Mettler attract and retain the most talented employees when its stock compensation expense per employee is the lowest in its industry by a significant margin, and it appears to avoid granting equity to rank and file employees?"

"Mettler claims that it has a diversified customer base, with no single end-customer accounting for 1% of sales. However, we believe Pitney Bowes is s meaningful customer that accounts for about 6% of Mettler's annual imports by weight."

"PERI made a suspicious change to its disclosures of rented servers. In the recently filed 20-F, it changed its historical disclosure from "approximately 1,000" to "thousands" which indicates a multiplicative increase of server rentals."

"We believe the merits of the plaintiffs' lawsuit are strong and believe there is a high degree of probability that the Court will rule in their favor requiring Forward Air to hold a pre-closing shareholder vote on the Omni acquisition."

"The role of the CEO is to run the company. The role of the Board is to provide independent oversight of the CEO. Therefore, in general terms, there is an inherent conflict of interest for a CEO to act as her/his own oversight as Chair."

"This view appears to completely contravene U.S. GAAP, which provides that “if a business is expected to lose money for a sustained period, the inventory shall not be written down to offset a loss inherent in the subsequent operations.”"

"The field is 'very skeptical and rightfully so'; can't get BLI data through peer view; software bugs; contamination issues; doesn't recommend the tool and not suited for commercial pharma/biotech customers; unusable by most scientists."

"Spruce Point believes all of Rubicon Project's growth opportunities have petered out or failed to materialize. This explains why we believe it needed to seek a merger partner in Telaria, which had at least one revenue driver being CTV."

"Regardless, it does strike us as an interesting coincidence that Kanovich and Singer funded these payments at the same time DLO sent $38.7 million to purchase the assets of PrimeiroPay – and the $38.7 million was actually a prepayment."

"APP claims to be able to deliver performance targeting without PII. However, its code collects and structures IDs and other information from across many major platforms including Shopify, Google, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, TikTok, etc."

"It is self-evident that Huue could only “leverage Ginkgo’s platform” if it’s plied with cash that will be recycled back as fictitious revenue, and we question whether it’s even an active startup or a carcass being exploited as a front."

"How convenient that management writes down contingent consideration liabilities as though it overestimated the performance of its acquisitions, while at the same time demonstrably underrepresenting their likely revenue contributions..."

"The recent fall in many commodities has surprised me. It has turned out that over several years, sharply rising commodity prices and low interest rates created a boom in investment, and excess supply in everything from iron ore to oil."

"Disney fails to set challenging financial performance targets (70% of annual bonus), including negative free cash flow targets in FY 2021 & 2022 and targets well below consensus estimates when comp plans for the year are made ('20-'23)"

"Rather than writing down the recovery from the case, BUR reported the loss as a “net loss on equity securities”, making it highly likely that few – if any – investors ever became aware that the reported ROIC and IRR of Napo was a sham."

"On the surface, and taking management's headline numbers, everything looks great. But, cash flow is stalling out, while USCR's dependency on "adjustments" to engineer earnings growth rise. Q1'2018 results are showing significant strain"