Callouts & quotes from 1,436+ activist slides

"“And so we make investments based on the company themselves and how it fits with the knowledge that we want to continue to earn. Whether we do business, that's a separate decision. That's at armed length, whether we have a commercial relationship depending on the products and services that that company does. And so some of our Bunge Ventures portfolio companies, we do business because it makes sense, and some are pure investments. We do a little bit of business with Benson Hill.” — CEO On Bunge Ventures, Oct 2021"

"We believe $1 of revenue from small cells is as valuable as $1 of revenue from the tower business. It has all the same characteristics, long-term committed contract, annual escalation, the same components of we don’t have the incremental cost as we add additional tenants, high returns ultimately as the asset is leased up...So over time, we need to prove out that small cells has the same characteristics and sustains itself in the same way that towers has for the last couple of decades. — CEO Jay Brown, April 2017"

""We have developed a culture of continuous improvement in Refining and are targeting $5.50 per barrel adjusted controllable cost, excluding turnarounds, over the next two years." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Q4 2024 Earnings Call; "We continue to lower our costs, and we talked about how sustainable those cost improvements are. And that's what gives us the confidence that we will that see Refining able to contribute to that $14 billion of mid-cycle EBITDA." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Q2 2024 Earnings Call"

""We have developed a culture of continuous improvement in Refining and are targeting $5.50 per barrel adjusted controllable cost, excluding turnarounds, over the next two years." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Q4 2024 Earnings Call; "We continue to lower our costs, and we talked about how sustainable those cost improvements are. And that's what gives us the confidence that we will that see Refining able to contribute to that $14 billion of mid-cycle EBITDA." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Q2 2024 Earnings Call"

""[O]ur performance was strengthened by our guiding principle to always attack waste... This included an effort to begin rationalizing our facilities and organizational assignments to drive unnecessary expense out of the business and to improve our customer intimacy by delayering the organization. We remain focused on executing our global pipeline of opportunities to improve our efficiency and reduce our waste. This will remain a major focus in fiscal year '08 and beyond." — Tony Aquila, CEO, President, Chairman"

""[Advisory positions] are not held accountable to shareholders as they do not serve on the board. Still, they can apply pressure on the board and are often referred to as 'ghosts in the boardroom' or 'corporate backseat drivers'. In cases where the former CEO remains as a senior adviser, they may exercise unreasonable influential power over incumbent management members, which could be detrimental to the board's functioning and dynamic." — L&G (2024 - Japan corporate governance and responsible investment policy)"

"I see if we have change, we have something -- a killer product, which what we're bringing this year. I think we released already. And so that's our growth strategy. And other things worth to mention about, since we're now focused on the mega market and also we're now focusing -- we're now doing things chasing the revenue next 12 months. We have really a long consistency, see where our values, where things ought to be. And that's where we've put our resources into. — CEO Hsing, William Blair June and July 2016"

""[Bob] Iger had personally selected every member of the board, which is surprisingly lacking in media and entertainment experience. Iger is personally close with several of them, including Nike Executive Chairman Mark Parker and General Motors CEO Mary Barra [who is on Disney's Compensation Committee]. In addition, the wife of another director, Michael Froman, then vice chairman of Mastercard and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had been housemates with Iger's wife..." — CNBC, September 2023"

"“On Slide 25, you can see the evolution of our ion trap and the vacuum chamber. In 2016, this is a vacuum chamber found today in many academic settings. The 2020 device is our new 32 qubit system, and about the size of a deck of cards...But by 2023, we expect that much of the optics, the ion trap, and the vacuum can all be blown onto a single chip, and then we network them together with an optical cable; another area where IonQ’s founders have already shown in working in their labs.” — IonQ CEO Peter Chapman"

""To that point on Slide 13, we are moving toward a bioplastic world even faster than we projected 6 months ago... Upon completion, we will be in a much better position to serve our growing order commitments from customers." — Stephen Croskrey, CEO Danimer Scientific; "Yes. It's -- in the early years, I would say it's roughly 10% under contract... And so we -- while we don't have offtake agreements yet with those customers, we have forecasts and plans are in place." — Stephen Croskrey, CEO Danimer Scientific"

""One of the reasons I left, and I think is probably the biggest risk to the business is companies like Microsoft and Amazon doing more and more business direct with the government... I doubt Microsoft or Amazon are going to be subcontractors if they can do it directly." — Former Leidos C-Suite Business Executive. "The decision by the Department of Defense to go with Microsoft Azure versus AWS is really immaterial to us. We won't be affected by that decision in any way." — CEO Krone, Q3'2019 Conference Call."

"In late 2011, fraud researcher Jon Carnes, who has among the best track records in the industry in identifying irregularities with China-based companies, issued a report on Silvercorp that alleged, among other things: The company’s technical reports were based on a 2-man team that used resource estimates provided by Silvercorp and who hadn’t visited the site in years. The quality and resource estimates of its mines were overstated. That a related-party transaction had enriched a relative of CEO Rui Feng."

"The Company paid: MORE compensation to its top officers than the median compensation for 28 similarly sized companies with a median enterprise value of $1 billion; MORE than a sector group of 23 large consumer discretionary companies with a median enterprise value of $1.2 billion; and MORE than a sub-industry group of 9 specialty stores companies. The CEO was paid above the median CEO in these peer groups. Overall, the Company PAID MORE than its peers, BUT PERFORMED WORSE than its peers. — Glass Lewis"

""We're realists about the business and about the impact technology has had on how product is distributed, marketed, and consumed... All of this has and will continue to put pressure on the multi-channel ecosystem, which has seen a decline in overall households as well as growth in so-called skinny or cable-light packages. ESPN has experienced some modest sub losses, although those have been less than reported by one of the prominent research firms." — Robert A. Iger, Disney CEO & Director, August 2015"

"“The Boot Barn customer is younger, makes more money and SKUs more female than most people realize. So the average age of the customers is 44 years old, the median income is $75,000, and while men's product out sales ladies product about 2:1, half of our customer foot traffic is female.” — CEO Conroy, ICR Conference, Jan 12, 2015; “Our median income is about $75,000” — CEO Conroy, CNBC Interview, June 6, 2023; “Our consumer is still pretty solid I would say” — CEO Conroy, CNBC Interview, June 6, 2023"

"“...we announced the acquisition of Ciba's textile effects business. This was an acquisition of roughly $255 million with an $88 million LTM EBITDA. It is our objective over the course of the next two years to invest about $100 million into that textile effects business, and we believe we can get that EBITDA up to about 15%, 16% of sales; increase that EBITDA from its present rate of about $90 million run rate, upwards of about $150 million run rate.” — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, September 2006"

"“BlackRock clearly stated that climate risk is an investment risk, but actions speak louder than words. The appointment of the CEO of the world’s largest oil producer to BlackRock’s board undermines its own stated climate commitments. At a time when financial institutions need to take a collective approach to addressing the financial risks from climate change, BlackRock shareholders expect climate-competent, not climate-conflicted, directors” — Brad Lander, the New York City Comptroller, 19 July 2023"

""The new governance is a concern to us, the risk of dismantling and governance that would not take into account the shareholders' interest may cause Vivendi to consider as permitted by law, to request the convening of a Shareholders' Meeting to propose to reorganize the board of directors." — Arnaud de Puyfontaine, Vivendi CEO, May 17, 2018; "A Board with any single party in control faces the likely prospect of continued proxy challenges by the other party." — Vivendi Presentation, February 25, 2019"

"We're realists about the business and about the impact technology has had on how product is distributed, marketed, and consumed... All of this has and will continue to put pressure on the multi-channel ecosystem, which has seen a decline in overall households as well as growth in so-called skinny or cable-light packages. ESPN has experienced some modest sub losses, although those have been less than reported by one of the prominent research firms. — Robert A. Iger, Disney CEO & Director, August 2015"

""The goal is to set up the policies and incentive systems so that increasing number of quality agencies professional performers can feel motivated and driven enough to offer higher quality and more differentiated content through our platform." — Momo Earnings Call; "On the product side, one of the key hurdles that we had in improving the long-term user retention was the fact that our core use case, which was pretty much based on nearby people and instant messaging was kind of limited" — CEO Tang Yan"

""Shareholder returns continue to underperform peers similar in size and industry (as well as the broad industry and market index) over the last 1- and 3-fiscal year periods, while CEO compensation outranked most peers." — ISS Proxy Advisory Services, 2012 Hess Core Report. "The Company has been deficient in linking executive pay to corporate performance, as indicated by the "D" grade received by the Company in Glass Lewis' pay-for-performance model." — Glass Lewis 2012 Hess Corporation Proxy Paper."

"BlackRock clearly stated that climate risk is an investment risk, but actions speak louder than words. The appointment of the CEO of the world’s largest oil producer to BlackRock’s board undermines its own stated climate commitments. At a time when financial institutions need to take a collective approach to addressing the financial risks from climate change, BlackRock shareholders expect climate-competent, not climate-conflicted, directors — Brad Lander, the New York City Comptroller, 19 July 2023"

""2018 was the best year in TaskUs history," said CEO Bryce Maddock. "Jaspar and I started this company with $20,000 and a one room office in the Philippines; so, I am a bit awestruck by the accomplishments of our team this year, which include the Blackstone investment, being named one of the world's 100 best places to work by Glassdoor and growing to over 15,000 people worldwide. I am so proud of what the team has accomplished." — TaskUs Announces Meteoric Growth in 2018, Jan 24, 2019, Businesswire"

""We got to put all that together when we put our 2022 guidance together formally, but I would say the initial receptivity (related to the Chilicon Power acquisition) continues to be strong. Our project remains online and on target and the internal excitement here around what we can do with that product line is -- if you talk to Ross Minick (Chief Marketing Officer) and his team, he's incredibly bullish on what we're going to be able to do with that longer-term" — CEO, Generac Q3 2021 Earnings Call"

"“I have zero confidence this team can get this right and certainly not in the timeframe that is needed. I rarely call for wholesale change at a company, but that is what is needed here.” — Top 10 Active Shareholder; “Having the current CEO drive the process for a new strategy is not a good idea... This is a good time for the change.” — Top 10 Active Shareholder; “We have years of disdain from leadership, and that’s how labor has been treated... And here we are with an activist” — SWAPA leadership"

"CSIM believes that the board is typically best positioned to determine its leadership structure. Therefore, CSIM will typically not support proposals requiring the separation of these roles unless certain circumstances are in place. — Charles Schwab; We will generally vote for proposals looking to separate the CEO and Chairman roles unless the company has governance structures in place that can satisfactorily counterbalance a combined chairman and CEO/ president post. — JP Morgan Asset Management"

""Allegion was spun-off from Ingersoll Rand in December 2013. As an Ingersoll Rand board member, Nelson worked with us to craft a shareholder friendly governance structure that is an important element in keeping our leadership accountable for performance as a standalone entity. Nelson Peltz, the Trian team and Allegion believe that good corporate governance and good operational results go hand in hand. The results speak for themselves." — David Petratis, Chairman, President and CEO, Allegion, plc"

""I was at a [CFM International] lessor conference with my CEO and we actually asked for a show of hands. This was two years ago. Has anybody in this room bought a standalone module? And no one raised their hand. So, I just don't believe that there's 82 standalone modules being sold. And if you tell me that that comprises, they sold 20 standalone modules in the quarter and the rest are three times the engines they sold, okay, I don't, that's not bad." — Source E, former CFM & GE senior engineer."

""I started my programming career at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at 16. My first programing project was working on Logo (with 8K of memory) for Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert." — Peter Chapman (LinkedIn profile). "I'm super duper excited to have Peter Chapman CEO of IonQ on the show today...Peter, going into your background, you're programming computers 16 years of age at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, a super smart genius type character." — Aug 2021 interview with Peter Chapman."

"Allegion was spun-off from Ingersoll Rand in December 2013. As an Ingersoll Rand board member, Nelson worked with us to craft a shareholder friendly governance structure that is an important element in keeping our leadership accountable for performance as a standalone entity. Nelson Peltz, the Trian team and Allegion believe that good corporate governance and good operational results go hand in hand. The results speak for themselves. — David Petratis, Chairman, President and CEO, Allegion, plc"

"Allegion was spun-off from Ingersoll Rand in December 2013. As an Ingersoll Rand board member, Nelson worked with us to craft a shareholder friendly governance structure that is an important element in keeping our leadership accountable for performance as a standalone entity. Nelson Peltz, the Trian team and Allegion believe that good corporate governance and good operational results go hand in hand. The results speak for themselves. — David Petratis, Chairman, President and CEO, Allegion, plc"

"So, if they get 90% of the target, then 90% of the target would be paid out. — CFO on Deal Conf Call; We wouldn't disclose the terms of the service agreement other than to say that it's multi-year — CEO on Deal Call; During this period, operating results will be recorded in the company's net sales line, impacting many of our metrics as we detailed in the earnings release. For the remaining four months, FLAWLESS results will be consolidated within specific P&L line items — CFO Q1 2019 Conf Call"

"And we should like to mention that although the amount for the structural reforms and other adjustments is JPY 40 billion, the actual cash out would be, in other words, the actual expenditures would be 10% of that. And what we will be doing is the cash out itself will be in the amount of JPY 4 billion. And so therefore, for the remaining JPY 36 billion, it will be on a noncash basis. And in other words, what will be carried out are impairments, or we'll be taking out reserves. — Nagamori (CEO)"

"So you'll see us roll that out over 17,000 associates and employees across the UBS universe over the next coming weeks. So we feel pretty good about that. — CFO Reese, Evercore Conf March 3, 2022; It has been really exciting, this past quarter as we've seen the workstation go live, and it's been in beta the last year, but go live with 15,000 advisers, client service associates, home office associates and others and the feedback on that has been great. — CEO Gokey, Q3 2022 Conf Call May 3, 2022"

"July 2012: “Yahoo has 18,000 employees, and on paper it should have closer to 6,000 to 8,000, [Silicon Valley tech investor legend Marc] Andreessen argues. Every analyst has noted pretty much the same thing, and to date no CEO has had the guts to cut that deeply, even as each of them have been vilified for making cuts. Will Mayer be able to do what most outside observers say is necessary?” — Marc Andreessen; December 2015: “My view is that [Yahoo is] dramatically overstaffed” — Marc Andreessen"

""And I’m not sure another studio will ever achieve some of the numbers that we achieved. I mean, we got to the point where if a film didn’t do a billion dollars in global box office, we were disappointed…That’s an unbelievably high standard and I think we have to get more realistic." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, November 2023; "I think the bar is now raised in terms of quality about what gets people out of their homes, into movie theaters." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, November 2023"

""[Over] the last 10 years, our [Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)] has been higher than our refining or midstream peer sets. And we absolutely believe and are committed to ROCE as a key metric because we believe that we can accrete ROCE through disciplined investments, through disciplined asset dispositions and asset acquisitions. And we believe that ROCE is the leading indicator for increasing total shareholder return." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Wolfe Refining Conference, March 6, 2025"

""We can't see selling, for example, our current hardware configuration of the starter kit, at an ASP of $850 to a broad population of patients who aren't going to wear it each and every single day. So the configuration needs to be easy to use, it needs to be small, it needs to be disposable and it needs to be inexpensive. We are not going to go in and charge people $200, $300 for a two week sensor session, so we have to develop economics around that." — Kevin Sayer – President & CEO, Dexcom"

"As a result of this external evaluation, we now believe that our total addressable market has doubled from $20 billion to $40 billion. When you couple this analysis with the success of our new stores, both in building out new markets and adding to existing markets, we now feel confident that our U.S. store count can successfully reach 900 stores over time. This is quite exciting news for us, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future. — CEO James Conroy, May 10, 2022"

""We're very excited, and I feel more confident today than I ever have about the future. I know that's something that everybody always says. But why do I feel that, I feel that because we have more control of these issues...there are going to be headwinds here and there. But what we can control, what we're focused on as a company, and what we're able to do, I think, puts us in a unique opportunity to further transform this business." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, November 2021"

""as an important step towards its aim of having developed 50GW of renewable power by 2030" — BP Press Release; "exactly the right person at exactly the right time, a globally respected and deeply experienced leader in renewable energy with a proven track record of transforming and growing businesses" — former CEO Looney; "be available to address shareholders' concerns which have failed to be resolved by the chair, CEO or CFO or for which such contact is inappropriate" — BP governance (2024)"

"We’ll also continue to improve gross margins. The Company’s current gross margin is about 52%. We can earn a higher total company margin by achieving best-in-class margins in more categories and business units. Based on industry benchmarking, we believe that only about half of P&G businesses have gross margins better than their competitive peer set. As we get more of our businesses to best-in-class levels, we’ll increase our total company margin. — A.G. Lafley, Former CEO 2007 Annual Report"

""We're very excited, and I feel more confident today than I ever have about the future. I know that's something that everybody always says. But why do I feel that, I feel that because we have more control of these issues...there are going to be headwinds here and there. But what we can control, what we're focused on as a company, and what we're able to do, I think, puts us in a unique opportunity to further transform this business." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, November 2021"

"[Over] the last 10 years, our [Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)] has been higher than our refining or midstream peer sets. And we absolutely believe and are committed to ROCE as a key metric because we believe that we can accrete ROCE through disciplined investments, through disciplined asset dispositions and asset acquisitions. And we believe that ROCE is the leading indicator for increasing total shareholder return. — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Wolfe Refining Conference, March 6, 2025"

""I guess my first question, Eli, you had a comment where you said that you have a number of projects moving to production from development phase... what's the pipeline for new projects to replace the ones that are moving into production?" — Ashwin Shirvaikar, Citigroup; "...usually a successful project leads to other successful projects, and as we are expanding our offering.... And projects, usually when they come to fruition, they don't go to zero." — Eli Gelman, President and CEO, Amdocs"

""The million dollar question is what’s this retail business worth? ... When UAP was trading, they were trading at about 9x. If you look at Tractor Supply ... they are trading at a multiple of 11x ... I’ll just keep hammering at you until we get [the multiple] up to what we feel is a reasonable number" — Agrium CEO Michael Wilson, 2011 Investor Day; "Agrium's Board has not been able (or willing) to quantify, explain, or defend the current company structure" — Credit Agricole / CLSA, 11/5/12"

"Gandler: "Okay, great. And last question. Bemis' working capital to sales is twice Amcor's, roughly twice Amcor's. Is there something structural there or is that an opportunity you guys have identified as well?" CEO Delia: "I would say it's an opportunity we've identified as well.... Look, is it going to get to our level? I don't know. But what we see without question, without hesitation there is the cash synergy opportunity from optimising working capital." — Analyst Gandler and CEO Delia"

"“actinic is not going to be sufficient for mask inspection because sub-resolution assist features will become necessary...those features you cannot detect with actinic light...ultimately an electron beam solution is required...they need features on a mask that are smaller than 13.5nm...higher resolution than EUV is required...and people are working on an electron beam solution...KLA is one of them.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec’s CEO"

"“It's hard to quantify it succinctly. So I think maybe a longer off-line conversation. I would tell you that the Engage opportunity is quite large. Those deals tend to be very large software deals, because they're typically going house-wide or hospital-wide. And once they make the decision to do these kind of clinical integration, they want to standardize it across the health system. And so those end up being very, very large software opportunities.” — CEO Lang Response, Q3 2021 Conf Call"

"So, it's a great question. So I'll take it in the order that you asked it. So there are two things with sample size... And that's why just a raw sample size matters, and so compared to the competition in the devices out there, broadly, we think we look at more samples. We know we look at more sample size, there's just more urine, there's just more fecal material prepared to look at. So I think that's good. The second part of your question. And I'm sorry, I just forgot. — Kevin Wilson, CEO"

"“And apologies if you said this already I'm kind of multi-tasking a couple calls here, but can you comment on what Matrox did specifically in a quarter on growth and maybe where they're at year-to-date?” — Analyst Giordano. “So I think that I said earlier in the call that, we're happy with the machine vision progress we've made with the Matrox acquisition... So we're pretty happy with the progress overall, I think that we're excited about the machine vision business overall.” — CEO Burns"

""Nelson was quick to recognize that removing Snapple from a bureaucratic Quaker Oats culture would enable entrepreneurialism and innovation. The result was a dramatic sales turnaround and more than quadrupling of company value in just 3 years. And I experienced first-hand at Heinz [as a Director] how Nelson emerged from a hotly contested proxy battle to become an incredibly respected and valued Board member." — Mike Weinstein (CEO of Snapple from 1997-2000; Heinz Director from 2006-2013)"

""I know because of the NVIDIA connection. I have to tell you, they have flat revenues for the last three years – sounds a little like SoundHound. I'm going to take a pass on that one." — Jim Cramer. "While we appreciate the opportunity to be featured on Mad Money and understand the fast-paced nature of the program, ZJK has achieved more than 33% average annual growth over the past three years which is far from ‘flat’ by any financial metric, as Mr. Cramer suggested," — ZJK CEO Ning Ding."

""We are definitely being stretched.... demand is definitely stretching our ability to supply. And we've not quite caught up with that demand curve yet." — Larry Blanford, GMCR CEO; "As we have continued to add portion pack production capacity in Q3, we were able to fulfill customer demand that had pent-up in the system over the prior two quarters." — Larry Blanford, GMCR CEO; "We continued to also experience spot outages of portion packs with our customers." — Larry Blanford, GMCR CEO"

""Under CEO Mike Hennigan, MPC has shown the most visible improvement among their peers over the past three years in both reliability, unit cost and profitability." — Scotiabank, June 30, 2023; "Marathon has been our top refining pick since initiating on the group in June 2022. Shares have led peers, driven by cost/commercial improvements and peer (and energy sector) leading capital returns, funded by strong refining margins and Speedway divestiture proceeds." — BMO, November 30, 2023"

"Volkswagen has become the largest shareholder of QuantumScape. Our US$100 million investment is a key building block in the Group’s battery strategy. One of the long-term targets is to establish a production line for solid-state batteries by 2025. — Herbert Diess, Volkswagen AG CEO; The Volkswagen Group has established a joint venture with QuantumScape, a manufacturer of solid-state batteries. The shared goal of the companies is large-scale production... — Oliver Blume, Porsche CEO"

"“I arrived at Siemens at a very difficult moment... Siemens needed to execute more rapidly, and to do that we had to take a hard look at both our organizational structure and whether we had the right people in the right jobs. Within months of my taking over, we replaced about 80% of the top level of executives, 70% of the next level down, and 40% of the level below that.” — Peter Löscher, The CEO of Siemens on Using a Scandal to Drive Change, Harvard Business Review, November 2012"

""[O]ne of the things about Alcoa Corp. that is fundamentally different than Alcoa Inc. is that we were given the opportunity to come out with a much better governance structure. So as a new company, we separated the Chairman and the CEO role. I personally believe that's the right way to have the business set up.... In addition to that, we've decided to incorporate in Delaware.... Delaware is much more shareholder-friendly." — William F. Oplinger, CFO Alcoa Corp., November 16, 2016"

"“Nelson Peltz and Trian have played an important role in Wendy’s brand transformation and financial improvement. I greatly value the thought leadership and strategic insight that Nelson and the Trian team provide. Nelson and Trian are passionate advocates for the brand’s growth and success. We work collaboratively on key strategic decisions and our company benefits from Trian’s insight on financial and global opportunities.” —Emil J. Brolick, President and CEO, The Wendy’s Company"

"Nelson Peltz and Trian have played an important role in Wendy’s brand transformation and financial improvement. I greatly value the thought leadership and strategic insight that Nelson and the Trian team provide. Nelson and Trian are passionate advocates for the brand’s growth and success. We work collaboratively on key strategic decisions and our company benefits from Trian’s insight on financial and global opportunities. — Emil J. Brolick, President and CEO, The Wendy’s Company"