Callouts & quotes from 1,508+ activist slides

"Under “Client Goals”, BR stopped reporting a quantitative measure of revenue retention between the 2020 and 2021 Proxy Statement. In addition, for the first time it introduced a focus on its “Net Promoter Score”."

"Revenues are basically flat over the last 4 quarters – a striking fact for a “growth” stock; losses have doubled and are accelerating; gross and operating margins have tanked, falling sequentially in each period."

""Depressed"? That is quite an understatement given the $15 million decline represented 12% of reported revenue in 2019. And why does discussion of Tri-Heart reference its inclusion in different reported segments?"

"As important though, do the remaining six brands ALL fit Hasebe's 2021 criteria of JPY5bn revenue, 15% operating margin and growth? If not, would it not be better to pool resources into Biore and Jergens instead?"

"Limbach's removal of its key customer and customer count disclosures raises concerns about transparency, particularly as the Company has undergone a significant transformation to its revenue base in recent years."

"Limbach's removal of its key customer and customer count disclosures raises concerns about transparency, particularly as the Company has undergone a significant transformation to its revenue base in recent years."

"Despite pulling back from recent highs, D-Wave's share price remains up over 600% since last October – a staggering rally that has occurred alongside largely unchanged consensus revenue estimates, as shown below."

"Note that the trained and certified dealer network slowed in Q1 2022 to 4%. One of our concerns is that Generac does not break-out clean energy revenues or margins in SEC filings as a separate reporting segment."

"What is noteworthy about the case is that it involved round-trip of revenue which involved providing capital to partners that use the funds to purchase services that is recorded as revenue by the public company."

"When we evaluate TASK's reporting of its revenue tied to Facebook, we find anomalies. For example, the reporting of the 6 and 9 month revenue contribution should imply the Q3 revenue figure, which doesn't match."

"Given the nature of the SEC's allegations which relate to misleading core / organic sales and premature revenue recognition, we believe REZI shareholders should be concerned by who it acquired the business from."

"According to Mike Delprete, Flex now comprises more than 25% of Premier Agent revenue. We find this level highly concerning considering the very liberal revenue recognition policies that govern the Flex program."

"Absent an alternate explanation (e.g. ADP is overstating bookings by including client fund income at a 4.5% allocation) we believe that PEO pass-through revenue must be included in the reported bookings number."

"Spruce Point believes that C3 might look optically cheap relative to high growth data and AI peers, but that C3's revenue estimates are too high, and lie on a shaky foundation with a related-party Baker Hughes."

"Normally an agent will receive its share of revenue from Momo at the end of the month and then pass on the broadcasters share of revenue. We can see no good reason why an agent should receive an advance payment"

"While Nidec’s revenue recognition policy could suffice for more developed markets, in China there is a non-negligible possibility that employees would exploit the lack of necessary acceptance to stuff channels."

"Our range of estimates assumes that female utilization could decrease to 0.98% vs. the 1.02% female utilization we estimate for FY22. Each 0.01% of utilization decline equates to approximately $10M of revenues."

"Astra has never generated any revenue and has no track record of reliability – to date, just one of seven of Astra's attempted rocket launches has reached orbit, and that was after a series of notable failures."

"scil revenue declined at a -1% CAGR from 2014 to 2019 during its ownership by Henry Schein and Covetrus. Moreover, the business only grew 1% in 2020 despite the supposed trend toward Covid-driven pet ownership."

"Why was Lightspeed calling hardware sales “Merchant Services” at its IPO? Was it a way to deflect investor attention away from a lower quality revenue source? The fine print discloses these are hardware sales."

"This transaction could have had the effect of artificially boosting INS’s revenues, given that Flexopt is simply round-tripping INS’s investment into Flexopt back to INS in the subsequent processing agreement."

"Though the company asserts that EMS was a non-core asset, the results post divestiture have implied that it was the asset that generated an outsized amount of revenue, growth and profitability for the company."

"We believe Enfusion’s share price is wildly overvalued and misunderstood. There are many reasons why its rich 6x revenue multiple should contract which would justify 40% - 60% downside risk to its share price."

"Ancora agrees with RBA’s estimates that revenue synergy opportunities can yield $250 to $780 million of EBITDA – and sees additional opportunities for the combined company to gain market share and drive value"

"We believe Ambry Genetics was able to significantly grow its RNA testing volumes by leveraging CPT code 81479, as evidenced by the sharp increase in Medicare revenue and reimbursement rates from 2019 to 2022."

"Darden’s massive scale, high AUV, and 100% company-operated store base should make Darden the leader in all revenue per employee categories – we believe the only reason it is not is poor corporate discipline."

"The result has been extreme shareholder value destruction and sustained share price underperformance versus peers - despite Avantor having a higher mix of recurring revenue and defensive consumables exposure."

"Official AMR Brazil import records suggest $95 - $99 million of Brazilian revenue. The Company is claiming significantly more revenue, even inclusive of freight revenue which it does not break out by country."

"GCP has owned Verifi for almost a decade, but still describes it as a new technology with a ~$1 billion market opportunity. So far, GCP has not disclosed how much revenue or profit loss the business generates"

"Allonnia needs no further elaboration on its self-evident role as a front, given that it has almost no employees yet Ginkgo still reported a preposterous $38MM of deferred revenue and $5MM of revenue from it."

"The accounts receivable balance has been declining year-over-year for eight of the last nine quarters. In contrast, revenue has been increasing year-over-year in every quarter, but at a declining growth rate."

"Technology & Development expense growth (including stock-based compensation) has outpaced revenue growth over the last five years, as expenses have grown at a 16% CAGR, while revenue has grown at an 11% rate."

"We believe Genius Sports, an overhyped revenue growth story assumed to benefit from the broader sports betting market, is facing competitive pressure and is unlikely to achieve its stated 25%+ growth targets"

"Darden's massive scale, high AUV, and 100% company-operated store base should make Darden the leader in all revenue per employee categories – we believe the only reason it is not is poor corporate discipline"

"Unlike many businesses where investment spending works toward building a durable asset, a franchise value, and a recurring revenue stream, here the Capex goes toward reducing the assets one barrel at a time."

"Also Deloitte's final note at Dairy Crest (U.K.) warning about the greatest potential for fraud around revenue recognition and "topside journals" is a big departure from its prior Independent Auditor Report."

"Our concerns about Axon's revenue quality and cloud story is further supported by the fact that its quarterly revenues in 2018 sum to $92.4m, which does not reconcile to its annual reported result of $90.3m."

"The console game market is becoming inherently less cyclical, because new consoles have: (1) standardized PC-based architecture, (2) full backward compatibility, and (3) greater reliance on recurring revenue"

"We value the Company’s acquired, related-party, and core revenue separately. Our analysis yields an implied valuation range for the combined Company that is significantly below the current market valuation."

"As a crowning revenue inflation achievement for David Li's checkbook, Bigo continually hid the fact that one-third of its business at the time of acquisition came not from overseas, but from mainland China."

"We believe MSCI should provide this information since unbilled revenue is frequently manipulated by other public companies and can provide insights into potentially aggressive revenue recognition practices."

"We believe that BLI has now begun to stuff the channel to mask a sales decline, given a sudden, unexplained shift to distributor-based revenue over the last 2 quarters, from almost nothing to half of sales."

"Five percent growth onto just FY2017 Q2's revenue of $271.1 million is $13.56 million (Rmb 90.3 million), which is already 27% higher than Shunshun's full year revenue reported to SAIC of Rmb 76.47 million."

"Ginkgo charged it $19MM for foundry services in 2019 - $1.1MM per employee - with an eye-popping deferred revenue balance of $62.5MM on its books as of Dec 31, 2019, which works out to $3.7MM per Motif FTE."

"Since the beginning of 2013, HTA's same property revenues have grown on average by 1.9% y/y while same property expenses have decreased on average by 1.1% y/y, yet there is no commensurate margin expansion"

"Paychex is an ADP competitor that has reached its mature growth phase; yet, ADP trails Paychex significantly across all metrics: revenue productivity, gross margin, and operational profit margin (ex-float)"

"The effect of conforming DigitalGlobe’s accounting policy for payments received from customers that contain a financing element is to increase deferred revenue with an offsetting charge to finance expense."

"Even when the vehicle telematics industry was nascent with more robust growth potential, larger industry players were acquired between 4x - 8x revenue, significantly less than Samsara's hefty 16x multiple."

"If we illustratively assume TheFork is sold at 5x CY26E revenue, similar to peer transactions, it would imply Tripadvisor trades at just ~4.5x EBITDA on a pro forma basis, an even larger discount to peers"

"The market has historically valued software companies with a material hardware business at lower multiples because their revenue ramp is overstated and their gross margin profile is structurally inferior."

"If we illustratively assume TheFork is sold at 5x CY26E revenue, similar to peer transactions, it would imply Tripadvisor trades at just ~4.5x EBITDA on a pro forma basis, an even larger discount to peers"

"Spruce Point has significant concerns about Rollins’ mosquito revenue claims. For 2013, the former CFO claimed revenues were $20 million. Years later in 2018, a chart showed revenues at just $7.9 million."

"Not only is Zillow.com experiencing a decline in site visitors, its key KPI, revenue per visitor, is challenged. We believe this is strong evidence that the market should view Zillow as a mature business."

"We believe the counterintuitive DSO trend is likely indicative of Procept pushing systems on customers or relaxing payment terms, possibly as an attempt to boost sales to meet Street revenue expectations."

"Despite claiming to have high levels of visibility into revenue drivers and trends, Box failed to meet its commitments, but continued to claim that the business was on the right track and executing well."

"Based on our research we believe there is an opportunity for Tessera to deliver double-digit revenue growth, achieve best-in-class EBITDA margins of 60-70%, and create significant value for shareholders."

"Compared to the investor day guidance from less than 2 years ago, investors are now expecting UNP to grow volumes at only one-third of guided levels and grow revenue at half of guided incremental margins"

"The upper bound of management's 2019 revenue is not achieved through "share gains" or "above market growth" – you get to $14.3 billion just by taking the market growth forecasts provided by management..."

"Given the trend toward expensive, human-intensive service delivery, we question whether Intuit’s Consumer segment should be valued more like a company such as TaskUs, which trades at just 1x NTM revenue."

"Muddy Waters, LLC believes that CCME is engaging in a massive "pump and dump" scheme whereby it significantly inflates revenue and profits in order to enrich management through earn-outs and stock sales."