Callouts & quotes from 101+ activist slides

"The entire optical system inside Lasertec’s EUV inspection tool needs to be replaced at least every year: “...it coats the source of the EUV light until it develops a few mono-layers of coating...and gradually you lose it...and have to replace it”: “I heard every year that they have to replace the optics...the refurbishing of those optics costs at least a million dollars or more...they need to replace mirror number two, mirror number four, and that could cost at least half a million dollars each.”"

"So there's no question HoLEP is the best because you remove more tissue and it's bloodless. There's temporary incontinence, but we can overcome that...So, what if somebody invents a robotic HoLEP? There is at this point a cocktail napkin design of [it]. So it's many, many years away. But that would replace ablation in five minutes because laser is better than waterjet. The waterjet is sloppy. It's imprecise. It doesn't go deep enough, but it's the best we have. Laser is just better."

"We believe the Street is structurally misunderstanding the magnitude of the cybersecurity-related costs that Mercury will face going forward, as well as the delays in revenue contract award opportunities it will face in its high-growth “command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence” (C4I) segment – expected to be a $100m business. Mercury does not even have a CISO at present, and only recently replaced its departed CIO."

"Zillow's former CFO, who served for ~6 years, resigned in May 2023 with no clear explanation for the transition. He was replaced by Jeremy Hofmann (37), who previously served as Zillow's SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy. Moreover, Mr. Hofmann has never held a public company CFO position, has no functional accounting or financial reporting experience, and is relatively young for the position based on a Korn Ferry analysis."

"We believe that if Quectel were added to the Covered List that it would not only be a headwind to government (and perhaps all sector) sales, but it would also necessitate a widespread replacement of existing hardware, which would be accompanied by a requisite write-off of capitalized connected device costs, thus further compressing Samsara gross margins."

"Assuming that on average, a new store costs $26mm to zone, develop and build or approximately $197/sq. ft. (1) and that each Distribution Facility costs $70mm or approximately $50/sq. ft. (1), the replacement cost of Target's owned real estate (excluding the value of its buildings on ground leased land and its existing leases) is approximately $39bn"

"Amy Satov, Nuvei’s Senior Legal Counsel, mysteriously disappeared from Nuvei’s website after March 2021 and no regulatory filing was made. She was replaced by Lindsay Matthews in May 2021 as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. The timing of her departure in relation to the departure of Allan Lacoste appears suspicious."

"BR recently struck an annually recurring statement that it processed approximately 80% of the outstanding shares in the U.S. in the performance of its proxy services. It has replaced this statement with a hard figure of 700 million equity proxy positions. BR’s change of language could suggest it has lost core market share."

"The “new” ACTIS A300, announced with fanfare in Nov 2023 as Lasertec’s next-generation EUV product and driver of growth, is a hoax – a cover story to conceal fatal flaws with the Ushio-supplied EUV light source in its flagship tool, the A150, and the resulting, costly recall and replacement effort."

"The dairy side before the merger was doing well, but now the cheese guys were getting excited because they were getting bonuses they hadn't in a while. If you are a dairy sales guy, you've been replaced by a cheese guy from the top, down. Is this for better or worse? To me, it seems for the worse."

"Although the buildings are not pledged as security, they will revert to the landowner upon a ground lease default. As such, illustratively, we define TIP REIT’s “Lease Security” as the value of the land and unencumbered buildings. Based on replacement cost, this “Lease Security” is valued at $39bn"

"The "new" ACTIS A300, announced with fanfare in Nov 2023 as Lasertec's next-generation EUV product and driver of growth, is a hoax – a cover story to conceal fatal flaws with the EUV light source in its flagship tool, the A150, and the resulting, costly replacement and recall crisis."

"Now that Darden's egregious corporate governance practices have directly resulted in a substantial and easily avoidable destruction of shareholder value, in clear defiance of a strong shareholder directive, it is apparent that the majority of Darden's current Board must be replaced."

"We have serious concerns with the Company's management of the formal review of strategic alternatives it announced on November 30, 2015, only a month after a consent solicitation was launched by a dissident seeking to remove and replace four of the incumbent directors on the Board"

"Assuming Target were to rent its owned real estate and using a 7.0x ’08E EBITDA multiple on the pro forma retail business, the 20-day trading average stock price of $40 implies only $13bn of value for Target’s owned real estate, a significant discount to book and replacement value"

"Spruce Point believes BR's real serviceable addressable market may actually be lower than the $5 billion that Broadridge promotes because it includes financial institutions' in-house solutions which are likely to be sticky, entrenched and difficult for BR to replace."

"Dexcom recently amended its licensing agreement with Google whereby royalty payments were replaced by an up-front payment of $250M in DXCM shares. We believe this reflects Verily's loss of confidence in Dexcom's ability to come to market in a timely manner."

"It is self-evident that the current management team is clearly incapable of doing so. If the “old guard” directors are similarly incapable, or unwilling to do the work necessary to rectify this dire situation for shareholders, then they must be replaced."

"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."

"We find it concerning that Rollins modified its Critical Audit Matter language in its recent 10-K, replaced its auditor, and is making defensive statements that its accruals are accurate and complete in response to recent questioning."

"Once DuPont replaced management and started to execute on Trian’s operating initiatives, including eliminating the matrix structure, standalone DuPont improved organic growth by ~400bps and eliminated ~$1.7bn of costs pre-merger"

"In stark contrast, the four incumbent directors we are seeking to replace, who have collectively reaped millions in Board fees, have only purchased 78,000 shares of Office Depot common stock in the market in the last ten years."

"Based on this description of the level of replacement activity, a material portion of capitalized device costs from contracts struck from 2018 to 2021 would need to be written off, yet Samsara's S-1 contains no such disclosure."

"The current environment has set the stage for tenants with value-focused concepts, which are performing well in today’s market, to expand and replace underperforming tenants. This mall “refresh” creates a virtuous cycle"

"The company's shareholder Ding Kunming has resolved: 2. Remove and replace Wu Yonghua as Executive Director and Legal Representative with Ding Kunming. 4. Remove and replace Yan Yongle as Company Supervisor with Li Dan."

"In January, we unwound more than 90% of the market value of our hedge, generating $1.25bn in proceeds, and have since replaced a substantial portion of the hedge with additional longer-dated, out-of-the-money swaptions"

"T. Rowe Price, Durable Capital, Delta Air Lines and General Atlantic were all material owners of CLEAR prior to the IPO. Today, they have all largely exited the stock and have been replaced by Vanguard and Blackrock."

"When we asked if the CEO was the one pushing to conceal device/safety events, the ex-employee stated “yeah, yeah, absolutely” and alleged “a lot of changes” to replace compliance-minded staff with more amenable ones."

"ADP has made progress with product migrations in the SMB and Mid-Market, but still has a lot of work to do in the Enterprise HCM market. Back-end infrastructure is in need of integration, upgrades and/or replacement"

"We would argue that QTT's business model is inherently reliant on fake user growth and fake traffic, as monetary incentives replace genuine engagement; how many real DAUs would QTT retain if it stopped paying them?"

"Our conversations with industry experts and former employees, however, suggest that hospitals continue to treat beds as a major capital expenditure which should generally be replaced as infrequently as possible."

"Ushio source had “degradation”; Lasertec/Intel did a premature victory lap and then had to rip out the light sources and replace with an Isteq source; new source also has problems and lacks performance data"

"DNMR's announcement that it intends to replace 30% of DNMR's PHA with Novomer's PHA seems to be providing false hope to customers and investors that there is a pathway to a more competitive offering."

"Muddy Waters caught DGW red handed (and hopefully red faced, but we doubt that Chairman Guo really cares). It replaced the genuine 2009 audit report in its SAIC file with a forged 2009 audit report."

"Subsequent filings, including the most recent 10K, retain this new language – but replace "and" with "as well as," signaling that R&D has become even more ancillary to what official R&D staff do."

"Looking carefully, we see that Vocera retracted claims of its system's “Potential Future” and replaced it with “Market Trends”. We view this as a weaker endorsement of its product's roadmap."

"Thus, we expect that one of the SDAX companies will officially replace HelloFresh in the MDAX in the next index review announcement on December 3, 2025 with effective date on December 22nd."

"We continue to view Fannie and Freddie as valuable perpetual options on their eventual exit from conservatorship due to their widely acknowledged irreplaceable role in U.S. housing finance"

"Twist’s offering is “no different from about 45 other companies,” and that newer “enzymatic DNA methods will replace the oligo pools produced” by Twist as “it’s going to be super cheap.”"

"For an inspection tool, replacement of components (e.g. electrodes) every week is not an option. Maintenance time of 5-10% represents a serious problem for the entire tool availability."

"If any of these deal participants chooses not to participate in these transactions and RUN is unable to replace them, then RUN's money to fund its business activity will be cut off."

"This implies that the Accelerate Pheno system, as tested in this study, will not be able to replace the standard of care. It will rather serve as an adjunct to the standard of care."

"Software like Forescout’s – increasingly a laggard in its own industry – could be a prime candidate for replacement or removal as companies look to cut expenses amidst the crisis."

"In previous instances at Canadian Pacific, CSX and Union Pacific, attempts to blend a non-PSR model with PSR led to separation with the COO and subsequent replacement of the CEO."

"I think it still needs further development. Many things could be improved. In the current stage, I definitely don't think it will replace the traditional hybridoma approach."

"To provide the real change Campbell shareholders deserve, Third Point seeks to replace the entire incumbent Board with an attractive new slate of highly qualified nominees"

"The spread between sell-in and sell-out prices increased $10 per tire, equating to ~$400 million on 40 million U.S. replacement units (~205 basis points on 2023E revenue)."

"PGNY's largest customer in 2018 accounted for 24% of revenue, meaning the Company would require over 30% revenue growth just to replace revenue from its hypothetical loss."

"MDC Partners reported frequent bank overdrafts before shares collapsed, and an SEC investigation commenced. Its CEO and Chief Accounting Officer were ultimately replaced."

"The expert believes that product replacement cycles are very long in machine vision, which may dampen investor optimism for a near term recovery in the Matrox business."

"Ballard's partner Broad Ocean had previously announced a similar investment plan in Wuhan and that has now been cancelled and replaced by Shenzhen Centre Power Tech Co"

"Off-gassing coats the collector and other key optics components; cost millions to replace; KLA executive witnessed Lasertec optics having to be “repeatedly replaced”"

"Other than Facebook, none of the largest IPOs were startups. There will not be sufficient private sector capital for new participants that seek to replace the GSEs"

"We believe drastic action is needed NOW because we fear that failing to replace Jeff Jacobson as CEO could inevitably result in the loss of our entire investment."

"Our slate's vision includes installing Alan Kestenbaum, a steel industry legend who executed a successful turnaround at Stelco, as a replacement for Mr. Burritt."

"One day, RCT_Khan’s number two top contributor suddenly changed to Fahmi NAGA! RCT_HYUN BIN was erased and replaced. Bigo swapped the profiles of a massive FU."

"The structure of both Carvana's initial loan sales and its recent refinancings is depicted below. Note that Ally is replaced as the lender to the trust."

"TIM governance has improved since independent directors replaced the Vivendi-controlled Board; meanwhile Vivendi’s own shareholder rights have collapsed"

"KLA will quickly replace Lasertec in the key inspection use cases in the mask shop at Intel, TSMC, and other customers; will also create price pressure"

"We believe we must replace the Board promptly to strengthen and secure the Community Proposal and to enhance investor understanding and confidence"