Callouts & quotes from 10,384+ activist slides

"“We are not looking at assigning seats right now. We are not talking about assigning seats now, and we’re not talking about looking at it at some time in the future.” — Southwest Management; “I think things like curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from [who] Southwest Airlines is.” — Southwest Management; “You’re not going to see basic economy from Southwest. That’s not what we do.” — Southwest Management; “Absolutely never” — Southwest Management; “Exiting of competitive hub airports drives questions of long-term competitiveness of Southwest’s dated commercial strategy... [We] are concerned Southwest may need a strategic overhaul...” — Barclays, April 2024; “They put out all this schlock about ‘our passengers are our guests, and you wouldn’t want to charge your guests for their bags,’ but why do you charge for the seats if that’s the case? Give it all away for free.” — Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, March 2024"

""You have Genius, Sportradar, Stats Perform, IMG and they all kind of play in a similar space in terms of data and streaming. Currently if I look at Genius in terms of what is their big differentiation to us is they are the exclusive provider of Championship soccer in the UK." — Sportsbook Customer; "We have a few strategic work streams because as price has been going up with these data providers, it has been more of a strategy to go directly and we have been having success in certain areas." — Sportsbook Customer; "This is definitely a possibility. Another guy and I within the company have already been tasked to go direct, to approach the actual source of the data and see if we can do direct deals. We are approaching them to see if we can try to break the model. You can get more from us and our competitors and we can pay less because there is no middleman to be paid. Its kind of a win-win situation." — Sportsbook Customer"

"“You're saying their using optical means that they're not getting the results from the Lasertec machine by itself. They have to use a second tool?” ... “Correct. Before Lasertec came out with their actinic tool, they needed to establish some way of inspecting the EUV masks. They used an optical tool from KLA... they need a combination of optical DUV and electron beam inspection to inspect the mask.” ... “TSMC was the first one to adopt the Holon tool, and I think Samsung, Intel, and most of the other customers in the EUV space are also adopting the Holon tool.” ... “I'm not quite sure to what degree they have succeeded in Lasertec tools to the production cycle, but from what I hear from this company, Holon said that hasn't been very successful so far. So, they are still ordering considerable quantities of Holon inspection machines.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec's CEO"

"“Nevro was categorically against what we called Quantity Purchases for the first 3 years the product was on the market. Then as they started to fall short and needed to meet quarterly numbers – we say it’s like a drug where you try it and then you’re hooked. Nevro began utilizing QP’s in Q2 2018 and by Q1 2019, within 3 quarters, they were completely hooked. Once you do one, you can’t hop off that ride. You’ve now provided the account a new price point. You’re demonstrated you’ll sell at that price, and they’re shown willingness to buy at that volume. The company can’t say no because they know the volume they can move. As a director, I was the one negotiating those. I’d joke I’d write it as a one-time offer, every time I did it. For my region, on a quarterly basis, as much as 16-17% of my sales were driven by channel stuffing. I’ve heard it still takes place but more scrutiny of it.” — Former Nevro regional sales director"

"“you’re talking about something that’s definitely much larger when you have to consider all of the control electronics, all of that stuff; you’re talking about room-sized, like garage size basically, maybe a one-car garage.” — Ex-IonQ employee, physicist; “It’s the size of a car plus a table with a desktop where it’s like a classical computer that is plugged in to control all of the quantum hardware. So, it’s like a car plus a separate chair and a computer desk with a classical computer on it.” — Leading quantum computing researcher who has published papers with IonQ’s founders; “They definitely need a medium-sized room to operate because it has to host the system. It has to host the electronics; it has to host the computers that are connecting to that; it has to have a lot of moving parts, like a laptop. It has to have a keyboard; it has to have a monitor.” — Physicist at Google working on their quantum computing effort"

"“What has become more and more normal, and even more dramatic than what I predicted - once surgeons and teams and anesthesiologists get a taste of a liver that is placed on machine perfusion and you can do that case at your leisure and you can stack cases - we’ve had situations where we’ve had three livers on OCS at the same time and you can just kind of do them one after the other after the other and even take a break for dinner in between, that has really changed the way we approach it. Whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, you can find a reason to put it on the machine so that you don’t have to do it in the middle of the night...I would say the biggest thing is that you can schedule cases when you want them, and if you have a busy program, it’s easier for everybody if you can do that case when you want to do it. And that has become an increasing indication for putting a liver on the device.” — Transplant surgeon"

"“We believe the time has come for material changes in leadership here as BOX remains in a “no-man’s land” for investors – not enough growth and not enough margin. We have covered tech/software for 18 years and have never come across a company that is a leader in a $40B TAM and continues to mis-execute so badly. The commentary every quarter of “strong demand”, “sales productivity/enablement improvements” and “solid momentum” in the business have not correlated with decelerating growth across all metrics for a number of quarters. It is also amazing to us the Board of Directors has done nothing to push the issue. We believe this is potentially an activist investor’s dream but with five of the nine board members being founders/VCs we see a bit of a roadblock...Management is now two years into a go-to-market transformation with no indicators pointing to any sign of success. Something must change.” — Craig-Hallum, August 2019"

""One of the challenges in managing localized prostate cancer is determining the risk posed to an individual patient," said the study's senior author Dr. Michael Leapman, the clinical program leader of the prostate and urologic cancers program at Yale Cancer Center and an associate professor of urology at Yale School of Medicine. "We know that many prostate cancers will not spread or cause symptoms if untreated. There have been major changes over the past decade with much more use of initial monitoring for cancers determined to be 'low risk.' We wanted to determine whether conservative management, including active surveillance or watchful waiting, has also increased for cancers with 'intermediate risk' features as well." — Dr. Michael Leapman, Yale School of Medicine; "I have a hard time kind of understanding exactly where they're going to position themselves in the world of prostate cancer." — Private Practice Urologist"

"Number one is the state of accuracy of the information that Oatly provides. I would make emphasis on division by division. EMEA, Europe, including Sweden. The U.S. is right now number one contributor to sales. The marketing channel and expectations from China from the Company; that's from a sector perspective. If I were to invest, want to make sure the financials are accurate and telling the right story. Coming back to your question about net sales. What is included in the net sales? I think the operating expenses make sense. In the balance sheet, I would like to see the composition of the fixed asset, to see plant by plant, and what is the depreciation are they taking. I would like to see the accounts receivables because normally Oatly is in the 30 day process, but with some customers we have to pay immediately. The cycle of the cash is not in the favor of the Company. — Former Oatly Accounting And Control Professional"

""If we have too many people, let's right-size fast; let's get it done by the end of the third quarter.' I explained that what I meant by right-size is straightforward: 'We have to benchmark our costs versus our competitors and then achieve best-in-class status'. I also remarked that we had to stop saying that IBM didn't lay off people" — Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM (1993 – 2002). "I've had a lot of experience turning around troubled companies, and one of the first things I learned was that whatever hard or painful things you have to do, do them quickly and make sure everyone knows what you are doing and why. Whether dwelling on a problem, hiding a problem or dribbling out partial solutions to a problem while you wait for a high tide to raise your boat - dithering and delay almost always compound a negative situation. I believe in getting the problem behind me quickly and moving on" — Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM (1993 – 2002)."

"“We notice the SD&A revenues are down a lot. Do you think they bought the business at the wrong time because of COVID-19 and the slow down in travel?” — Spruce Point Capital Management. “I can’t imagine how hard that business has been hit. One of the reasons we wanted the L3 business is because they had a lot more products with TSA in all the airports. I’m sure now the new products aren’t being bought, and less maintenance services on existing products because they’re not being used. I’m certain this has had a big impact on their business. I don’t know this for certain, but hopefully, they’re making a shift to do more security at buildings and events, as opposed to airports.” — Former Senior Leidos Executive. “Do you think a preponderance of the business came from the TSA airport and border security?” — Spruce Point Capital Management. “Oh yeah, I’m sure a majority of it came from TSA.” — Former Senior Leidos Executive."

"It's different issues, but the same results happen on their inspections. They get a dark frame or they get a false defect...it's light source fluctuation. In these light sources, the brightness is just going to fluctuate just as a function of the physics of the plasma. In the Ushio source there's a discharge between two electrodes. That means the plasma has a lot of freedom to move. And so, that causes fluctuation and brightness. That's a difficult thing to control. The other light source is laser-produced plasma. There's no discharge between two electrodes. It's just the laser creates the plasma. That tends to be much more stable, but it's hard to get enough power into that to get the brightness up. As a result, the plasma is usually smaller. That can create problems with not getting enough illumination into the tool. — Ushio field engineer who maintains light sources on Lasertec ACTIS A150 machines at Intel Oregon fab"

""We view nearly all aspects of the Red Lobster transaction as not particularly compelling..." — UBS, May 20, 2014; "Who Knew Lobsters Had Middle Fingers?" — Janney Capital Markets, May 16, 2014; "Destroying a business and giving it away for free is a familiar practice for CEO Clarence Otis." — Hedgeye, May 16, 2014; "Management's decision to ignore shareholder concerns and go forth with an undervalued sale of Red Lobster..." — Buckingham, May 16, 2014; "In short, in our eyes, "the taxman stole the show" by taking 25% of the gross proceeds." — Stifel, May 16, 2014; "Count us among the many who believe DRI is destroying shareholder value with this deal to sell Red Lobster for $1.6 billion post tax and transaction costs" — New Albion Partners, May 19, 2014; "It is unconscionable that the Darden Board would allow the Company to sell its Red Lobster business for what amounts to a 'fire sale' price" — Barington, May 19, 2014"

"“some clean rooms have been installed.” — Lasertec management prepared comments Oct 31, 2023. “As you mentioned, we acquired property including land and buildings called InnoPa, which has about five times the space of our current headquarters building. The first phase of construction was completed last June, and production began in July. In addition, the second phase of construction started last October, and when completed, it too will contribute to production. In this sense, we are working to increase production capacity [...] We are also expanding our production space and workforce. As for the new InnoPa facility, as I explained earlier, the first phase of construction has already been completed and the equipment is now being assembled and adjusted, and the second phase of construction has started. As such, we are steadily working to increase production capacity.” — Okabayashi [A], Lasertec analyst Q&A Jan 31, 2024."

"a lot of the data that is being stored in the world is actually non-performant data. It doesn't actually require a lot of the performance that the SSD vendors generally like to talk about...the 10% use case where you really need performance, that almost becomes a corner case...when I say 10%, it's actually very generous; it's actually even lower than that...hyperscalers look at this and say, for my 90% use case, I'm gonna be using HDDs, and for the 10%, I'm gonna be using analytics and AI to be able to determine which pieces of data I need to pre-cache or pre-warm and store on SSDs. Even for AI [workloads], you don't need to have a shotgun to kill a fly because a lot of these hot types of data are very, very predictable. A simple analytics algorithm would be enough for you to identify which videos or which photographs are gonna be accessed, and at which timeframe. — Data storage product manager at leading hyperscaler"

"“Yeah, I interacted with Waleed...they often invite us and all transplant programs that they work with to these meetings near their headquarters or whatever. Or they’ll have meetings at transplant conferences, and they’ll even offer to pay for us to go. I have to always turn it down because [our center] will not allow me to accept anything from a vendor but they do pay for other people to go. And so, I think I probably would interact with him more if I attended those meetings. But I don’t...I told them I’m not going to be at that meeting because I can’t travel right now. And they offered to reimburse me or pay for my commercial flight and registration for the meeting but I declined that. And then, they had the in-person meeting at their headquarters, and I declined the invitation because of the travel, and they offered again to pay for the cost of my travel ticket. It never got past that.” — Transplant administrator"

"“...the situation that we have right now, and we foresee into the future, which is strong, strong demand for our Parks products...we keep an eye out on those macroeconomic trends on recession, but we are not seeing any indication right now that it’s going to be impacting us...” — Bob Chapek, Former CEO, Disney. “...if you came down from Mars and looked at theme park numbers, you would not think there's a challenging macro environment. It is astounding.” — Jeff Shell, CEO NBC Universal Media. “...what drives our optimism for 2023 is solid momentum...we've always seen that good momentum leads to better next year's performance...I think it's a really good sign.” — Richard Zimmerman, CEO, Cedar Fair. “At the end of October 2022, our pass base was at a record level for October, up approximately 26% compared to October of 2019, a very healthy indicator of consumer demand for our parks...” — Michelle Adams, CFO, SeaWorld."

"“I also want to reiterate what our fiscal '23 targets are; 16% to 18% revenue CAGR, $2.4 billion in free cash flow, roughly a 40% operating margin, and again a sum of revenue growth in free cash flow that stays between 55% and 65%. We are confident in these targets at this point, and I want to make sure that you understand that it is our goal to achieve these to the same degree that we achieved our FY '20 targets that we set over three years ago.” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, 2020 Digital Investor Day; “We continue to manage our business using a Rule of Forty framework with a goal of reaching 45% or more over time. We are taking significant steps towards our goal this year and next. We think this balance between compounding revenue growth and strong free cash flow margins captured in the Rule of Forty framework is the hallmark of the most valuable companies in the world…” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call"

"“I also want to reiterate what our fiscal '23 targets are; 16% to 18% revenue CAGR, $2.4 billion in free cash flow, roughly a 40% operating margin, and again a sum of revenue growth in free cash flow that stays between 55% and 65%. We are confident in these targets at this point, and I want to make sure that you understand that it is our goal to achieve these to the same degree that we achieved our FY '20 targets that we set over three years ago.” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, 2020 Digital Investor Day; “We continue to manage our business using a Rule of Forty framework with a goal of reaching 45% or more over time. We are taking significant steps towards our goal this year and next. We think this balance between compounding revenue growth and strong free cash flow margins captured in the Rule of Forty framework is the hallmark of the most valuable companies in the world…” — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call"

""Advances in security related technology have made it a viable option for reducing labor costs while improving the level of protection and service provided. Cameras, optical recognition, portable hardware, AI-driven applications, management software, and connectivity have all become integral parts of the typical protection solution." — Jamie Ridenhour, National Training & Compliance Manager, DSI Security Services; "The HVAC industry seems likely to be dominated by technology. From eco-friendly heating and cooling options to field service management (FSM) software that can increase operational efficiency (AI), virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT), technology will impact virtually every aspect of the HVAC business. HVAC companies need to determine how they can best leverage tech innovations to remain competitive in the face of heightened demands and a tightening economy." — Garrett Wilson, CEO, FieldBin"

"“In 2020, we incurred significant operating and capital expenditures in launching our biosecurity offering, which includes COVID-19 testing products…” — SPAC prospectus; “Covid testing was also just a ploy to get into pharma because for years they've tried to get into pharma and nobody wanted to work with them. It's still just like a commodity business that they're in, sort of NGS of viral samples; it's like the Quest Diagnostics and all these other labs, it's a race to the bottom for pricing and things like that. They've got some inflated revenues or short-term revenues but I don't see that as building long-term value.” — Former director-level employee; “I don't even know why Ginkgo is doing Covid-19 testing. PCR testing, you can do that at any university lab, really at any company. It just requires a couple of DNA sequencers, I mean, Illumina instruments, nothing special.” — Former employee in a managerial role"

"Your letter asserted that TransMedics prohibited transplant centers from training their personnel on the OCS procedure. This statement is not correct. To-date, we have trained more than 400 transplant retrieval surgeons for heart, lung, and liver transplants across the U.S. — TransMedics CEO Waleed Hassanein. "Originally, you could do operate the device yourself or use their service. I’ve heard this now, that more recently, they don’t allow you to do it...they won’t train you to do it...it is a little disconcerting. I don’t know why they would do it that way." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world. "Yeah, I think it is gimmicky...I don’t like the way they keep ratcheting down the screws, and as I’ve heard, if they’re not training programs to operate the machine and they’re forcing everybody to use the NOP program, that’s really unethical." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world."

""We are skeptical that TXN can achieve their revenue targets given its growth rate of mid-single digits. Given elevated capex and depreciation, we believe TI’s margins will remain under pressure through 2026 unless capex is cut." — Citi; "Texas Instruments (TXN): We wish we could all have a 15-year investment horizon...downgrading to Underperform" — AB; "We are initiating coverage of TXN with an Underweight (UW) rating and $150 price tgt. Our rating reflects a concern TXN can’t achieve rev tgts & related utilization; i.e., 300mm capacity expansion plans intended to reach $30B FY26 rev. 19% CAGR." — Wells Fargo; "We still believe investing in mature node capacity is the right strategic decision long-term. That said, with a 20% CAGR off 2024 Street estimates needed to reach 2030's $45B capacity target, we think the magnitude of the development is difficult for investors to underwrite, even with subsidies." — Cowen"

"In the case of SandRidge Energy, Carl Icahn may be just the treatment the company needs.....If one takes a close look at the performance of SandRidge in the cold, hard light of reality, it is difficult to make a case for management or to argue that their performance is serving shareholders well.....Between Oct. 1, 2016 and May 1, 2018, shares in SandRidge fell from $21.27 to $14.35. This means the management and directors at SandRidge have produced a return of -32.5 percent for investors.....When a company is performing as far below industry averages as SandRidge, a shakeup is warranted.....If negative 32 percent is what this board and management can produce after a bankruptcy eliminated most of their legacy issues, it may well be time to let someone else try. — Stuart T. MacDonald, Professor of Finance, University of Central Oklahoma, What is good for you isn’t always pleasant, The Journal Record (May 8, 2018)."

""L'Oréal is proud to announce the development of the very first paper-based cosmetic tube... We plan to improve the environmental or social impact of 100% of our new products by 2020." — L'Oréal (Bioplastics News, October 18, 2019); "PepsiCo, Inc. today announced a new target to reduce 35% of virgin plastic content across its beverage portfolio by 2025" — PepsiCo (September 13, 2019); "Halve its use of virgin plastic, by reducing its absolute use of plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tonnes and accelerating its use of recycled plastic" — Unilever (July 10, 2019); "Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, two major sellers of plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments. Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying group." — CNN (August 5, 2019); "Company Aims to Make 100% of its Packaging Recyclable, Reusable or Compostable by 2025; Increase Usage of Recycled Materials." — Kraft Heinz (July 31, 2018)"

""Two dynamics around Carvana which are less understood...one is, you have to think of them as just a dealership. Can they grow? Yeah, if they want to grow responsibly they have to grow like a dealership...they confused people for a while by [talking about their tech and website] but 98% of what they do is dealership stuff so don't get confused. The other dynamic is they're a subprime dealership...by serving that audience, it's actually a much more volatile boom/bust cycle than the rest of the car market." — Former Carvana senior executive; "And I think, we want to be careful to not be overconfident in our precise reads of what's going on, because I do think the environment is incredibly unique and therefore, like your certainty around assessing exactly what's happening should just be a little lower than it otherwise would be." — Ernest Garcia III, CEO Carvana at Wells Fargo TMT Virtual Summit, December 1, 2021"

"“We have viewed our relationship with Philidor and our other specialty pharmacies as proprietary and as one of our competitive advantages” — Valeant Q3 2015 earnings presentation. “Philidor was not specifically mentioned in our disclosures because it had not been material to the consolidated financial statements.” — Valeant investor conference call. “Ultimately we determined that the structured option acquisition with the oversight rights we negotiated provided the security we were looking for and preserved the flexibility to acquire in the future a new growth platform.” — Valeant investor conference call. “The rationale to acquire the option was to keep Philidor focused on Valeant's business and to ensure continued strong customer service. The option also gave Valeant a level of contractual influence to benefit our business while providing an option on long-term ownership.” — Valeant investor conference call."

"“One thing that I think worries people is that, okay, aerospace is going to be a growing market, but is Precision losing share? We all know that because of Precision’s arrogance in the way it treats its customers — raising prices and making demands on them — they would like to cut Precision down to size. So is there a case of customers taking market share away from Precision and giving it to Alcoa and others? I have looked under as many rocks as I can think of to try to get to the bottom of this and I am not finding the evidence. Maybe I am looking under the wrong rocks, but the fact that I have not turned anything up and the fact that the customers buy under long term contracts which they are locked into, and the fact that competitors are not giving me any examples of how they have taken share from Precision make me think we are okay on the market share question.” — Greg Steinmetz, Sequoia Fund, May 15, 2015"

""Based on the preliminary report of Inspector of Elections, stockholders voted to adopt the merger agreement and voted to approve the compensation that will or may become payable to Forescout -- by Forescout to its named executive officers. The Inspector of Elections will execute a certificate as to the results of the voting, and that certificate will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. As we have sufficient votes to approve the adoption of the merger agreement, the proposal of the proxy to adjourn this meeting to a later date to solicit additional proxies is rendered moot, and will not be presented for a vote. The final tabulation of these votes will appear in the Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We currently expect the merger to be consummated on or around May 18, 2020, after buyer's remarketing period ends." — Darren Milliken, General Counsel – Forescout Technologies"

"“There is some hype coming out of their company, and I’m a little bit worried about that...some of the things that they say they’re going to do in the future, that seems a big stretch... And there’s no evidence at all that they can ever get to 10-5. In fact, they’ve been hovering around a few percent for years and years, for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. It’s getting a little bit better from, let’s say, a few percent to 1% and may a fraction of a percent in some cases. But to get to 10-5 is not at all obvious.” — Leading expert in quantum computing; “This is what people do all the time. They announce that they built a system, but that doesn’t mean that they actually ran it. Once a company does that, then do I trust any data at all that they say? I think the latest one is maybe 11 qubits...and then, even at 11, the numbers I get on the performance side are not that good.” — Leading expert in quantum computing"

""If we look at our business without our existing TiO2 division, we would be looking at 2016 as a record year for...EBITDA margins, a materially different and stronger company than we what we have today. Obviously, the conclusion of this separation is a very high priority for this company." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "And if we were a business today that we're separated from our TiO2, we would be going into 2016 saying...2016 will be a record EBITDA margin year in the history of this company." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "I've said this many times before, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the TiO2 industry as much as this is a business that when you start looking at the core performance, if you look at Huntsman without TiO2, we would be going into 2016 here...with some of the highest margins we've ever had in our history and with better than GDP growth." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO"

"Based on the preliminary report of Inspector of Elections, stockholders voted to adopt the merger agreement and voted to approve the compensation that will or may become payable to Forescout -- by Forescout to its named executive officers. The Inspector of Elections will execute a certificate as to the results of the voting, and that certificate will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. As we have sufficient votes to approve the adoption of the merger agreement, the proposal of the proxy to adjourn this meeting to a later date to solicit additional proxies is rendered moot, and will not be presented for a vote. The final tabulation of these votes will appear in the Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We currently expect the merger to be consummated on or around May 18, 2020, after buyer's remarketing period ends. — Darren Milliken, General Counsel – Forescout Technologies"

"“Within two, then into three years, BLI will be relegated to a more stagnate position. They're not going to get better, and there's no breakthrough that's coming. We've seen what they've got.” — Board member at a key competitor; “They're not selling many instruments, but their instruments are expensive... If Mission Bio were to sell as many units as Berkeley Lights has placed in total, it'd be a bloody disaster.” — Board member at a key competitor; “There is a small company called Scribe Biosciences... I'm aware of another one, Bioelectronica in Nevada, which is trying to create effectively a low-cost, high-throughput version of the Berkeley Lights platform.” — Former BLI scientist; “For some of the assays that we developed in terms of T cell analysis, there is IsoPlexis that has a system that performs single-cell analysis of cytokines produced by T cells... I think it's also $100k.” — Former BLI scientist"

""Ushio's source has been taken out everywhere." — Expert; "it didn't use to work well before...so, I'm wondering what happened that all of a sudden this thing is working...this was an LPP source that nobody cared about...what happened in the last couple of years that all of a sudden they have improved their source?...Isteq's source is a rotating tin target...you're doing to drip the tin off it easily...it's not a good situation." — Expert; "Isteq source will not be done in a professional way and it cannot work...you need to understand Isteq was done for research...research is done in bursts, not continuously...for inspection, you need something to work 24/7...it's really hard...it's totally different." — Ex-KLA executive; "secured by 2,000 Zeiss patents." — Zeiss; "manufactured to atomic precision and consisting of more than a hundred layers...the mirrors are at the heart of High-NA-EUV technology" — Zeiss"

"It’s sort of the dredges of advertising. [EHTH] buy very cheap inventory on cable TV... that tend to just attract an older demographic and demographic that tends to be watching like 10 hours of TV a day, makes less than $25,000 a year. That’s where they get their enormous, through that channel. — EHTH Former Executive B. Yeah, I would say the way to answer that question [about whether customer lives are trending down], you are what you eat and that meaning whatever their marketing channels are there will give you an indication of the LTV. — EHTH Former Executive B. And then whenever you had DR TV and things like that you could drive that mix up like fifty percent of under sixty-five which is not good, desirable mix that the carriers wanted. They usually wanted something under thirty percent or something like that... We started TV probably the last couple of years I was there. — EHTH Former Executive A."

""With respect to ADT, that's a critically important relationship to us. They've said the same about the relationship from their side." — CFO, Investor Day March 2021; "Security was clearly the strongest. ADT is a terrific and significant customer of that business." — CFO, May 6, 2021; "Additionally, we have reached an agreement in principle at ADT to amend our current agreement to provide ADT with products through 2023" — CEO, Aug 4, 2022; "Based on this agreement, we expect our 2024 security hardware sales to ADT to decline by approximately $100 million compared with 2023 levels with a similar additional reduction in 2025." — CFO, Feb 13, 2024; "We saw better results than expected from ADT in 2024, and we also expect a better than previously communicated impact in 2025." — CFO, Feb 20, 2025; "This includes ADT with whom we recently signed a new multiyear commercial agreement." — President P&S, Nov 5, 2025"

"“As the prescriber, I don’t think that the benefit will be to the tune of the amount of money the drug costs. As I’ve been describing the drug to families, I’m trying to undersell the expectations. The unique thing about this patient population is just the desperation from the families to try something, and to have something that’s available, and to have me say I’m not willing to try — that is not really acceptable. If there’s something that’s been FDA-approved for families to hear there may be a benefit, but we’re not going to try to prescribe it. I guess, from the insurance company’s perspective, I don’t disagree with their denials. But if they’re going to approve it, then I’ll take advantage of that for the patients and see if we get benefit that was described in the —” — Pediatric endocrinologist, leads one of the largest PWS clinics in US with 30-40 patients; 11 endocrinologists, major academic center"

"I wouldn't call it ethical, I would call it, it's a culture that understands the legal constraints very well. So it's ultimately all the work is done within some kind of legal ramifications, constraints, frameworks that are acceptable. But the ethical part is it's more personal. So what you consider ethical may not be ethical to somebody else. So my personal view is too aggressive, it's just my personal view. MSCI is too aggressive for my liking in terms of the treatment of customers... And let's say you decide on MSCI index and then three years down the line or five years down the line, they come back to you and they just jerk up the fee by 50% and you are just, you are stuck, but can you change your benchmark at this time? Obviously not because you have a track record. Again, why change this benchmark? It's costly. It may cause you some reputation damage of changing the benchmark. — Former MSCI Employee"

"[H]istorically our mix has been 50/50 -- about 50% of bookings roughly towards new client counts and new logos, and 50% of upsell. And but obviously, at the elevated levels of ACA selling, the mix has shifted a little bit because most of the ACA has been really selling to our existing client base. So in the current year, that mix is a little shifted [more than 50% sell-in]. — Jan Siegmund (Q2’2016); [W]e've kind of tilted our focus now more towards new logo growth and new share from kind of the traditional approach... But this is a fairly significant change from a sales force mentality standpoint where we were for several years, focused on upgrades and on incremental sales of other modules to the existing client base as we upgraded them, combined with selling something called ACA, which to some extent, was a significant tailwind. So we're moving into a different environment. — Carlos Rodriguez (Q3’2017)"

""The U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted to approve the transaction on November 3, 2020, and the UK Competition and Markets Authority approved the transaction earlier today. In connection with obtaining the required regulatory approvals for the transaction, as previously announced, Stryker has agreed to divest its STAR ankle replacement product and related assets and finger joint replacement products." — Stryker Press Release, Nov 4, 2020. "Page 12 introduces one of the acquisitions that we completed in the fourth quarter. We acquired the STAR ankle business from Stryker" — Colfax JPM Conf, Jan 14, 2021. "(FDA) is advising patients, caregivers, and health care providers about the higher than expected risk of the polyethylene (plastic) component of the device breaking (fracture), as early as three to four years after implantation in all Scandinavian Total Ankle Replacement devices" — FDA, March 15, 2021."

""Wow, it's like Zymergen too here. All the same stuff is happening, except it's happening even faster at Ginkgo. The decline in the culture. There was a very fast decline when it got really close to IPO; the culture became terrible, I would say, in a matter of a few months." — Former Ginkgo employee; "As I understand it I think Zymergen actually has products, I mean, they're in partnerships, but I think that they actually have some products that they're working on either themselves or in collaboration with somebody. That's one difference. I can't assess under the hood because when we talked to Zymergen a couple of years ago, they were in the same thing. Zach Serber, the CSO, was the same kind of thing as Jason. They each have their little magical thing that they spin to get deals. You could never really get to what was the secret sauce. I can't tell what's different about them." — Current Joyn executive"

""Nevro's always played a lot of games. Rami, their previous CEO, was a notorious [redacted]. He just wasn't very on the up-and-up....It's just a lot of smoke and mirrors. There's not a lot there. There's a joke going around that we're one annual NANS meeting away from proving that Nevro's high frequency cures Covid. No matter what it is, Nevro says their device treats that, They put this data out that people don't even read anymore. It always shows these ridiculous numbers. They'll come up with numbers to show that high frequency treats cancer. No one buys their data." — KOL and high volume implanter; "Nevro has one size fits all. I don't believe anything they say and I doubt that their PDN claims are going to be any better. Every Nevro study is the same. It's a bunch of shit and you might get some initial improvement and then the same problems a year later." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter"

"Now going back to your earlier question about market shares, currently, our company don't make independent assessment of our market share. In fact, we never disclosed a single report that's coming from the company on our market share. — Gavin Kim; Next, I'll return my attention to black hat search engine optimization. NQ unequivocally refutes the allegations filed in the report that NQ owns the domain addresses referenced in the report. NQ will share our complete list of domain addresses that NQ owns and uses in our business globally to those who would like to conduct their own due diligence on our business. The natural question that may be asked then is what is for owners of these domain names to redirect traffic to NQ? It is our hypothesis that individuals or companies are interested in selling these domain names to NQ after demonstrating that they are successfully delivering page views. — Gavin Kim"

""We agree with Elliott's assessment that there is more upside potential in the refining business...and we think Elliott's presence itself could refocus management towards this business." — J.P. Morgan, April 2025; "We agree that PSX's midstream does not reflect full value. We reinstated coverage of PSX in October and can attest that few midstream investors follow it, as it trades predominantly like a refining stock...selling some midstream assets could unlock value." — Bank of America, February 2025; "Refining performance certainly has significant room for improvement and is key to improving [Phillips 66's valuation] as well as to addressing investor concerns." — Citi, February 2025; "A spin/sale of the Midstream business is by far the single largest source of potential value creation, but is also the strategy to which the management has been the most strongly opposed." — Piper Sandler, February 2025"

"I will say the Boston trip was one of the nicest trips I’ve ever been invited to: first-class tickets, Boston Hotel Intercontinental. I was allowed to invite numerous members of my team, so I brought three additional members of my team, so there were four of us. That was the most generous that I’ve ever. I get invited with other companies, but this was very much a nicer experience. It was more like first-class tickets and whatnot. But doctors are not really accustomed to that in this day and age.. I fly economy all the time. I’m not accustomed - we’re not accustomed to that level of attention. ... it’s a little eyebrow raising, because devices are not as regulated as pharma now is. ... it was a really big group - I think there were about 200 surgeons from across the country. ... Yeah, they paid for Intercontinental Hotel. — Chief of transplant at a major West Cost center; high volume TransMedics user"

"“There was fear that Ginkgo would not be able to go public, or it would be slammed by regulators for having too many of these little companies.” — Former employee; “I was always confused. I've never done accounting, but some of the ways they count revenue, I was like, okay, if you say so. I don't know if money actually passed hands because we now own another part of a company, and then they just get platform services for free, is that revenue?” — Former Ginkgo engineer; “There are probably three different divisions of people. The first is the people that completely got it [the circularity] and were open about it and were getting in trouble and getting fired... the second group is aware of it but trying to be more careful... And then the last group were people that were just completely buying into the hype... I think they were psychologically brainwashed by their huge equity grant.” — Former employee"

"“If I’m TransMedics, I’m hitting up the surgeons because they’re going to surgery in the middle of the night. These poor surgeons are stuck, like okay, do I either continue to not sleep like I have in the last decade? Or do I have this solution where I can have somewhat of a lifestyle. It sounds to me like he’s probably preying on the transplant surgeons. That’s what I think. I don’t think it’s the administration. I think it’s going to the surgeon and then using the surgeon to bully the administration; “we’re going to do this.” ... “Well, it’s going to improve the outcomes, and we’re going to be able to do more of it, and we’re going to have less turnover, etc., etc., etc. In my experience, the administrators, they don’t know what’s going on half the time. So, I think they’re probably getting bullied by the surgeons.” — CEO of a major OPO (Organ Procurement Organization), longtime industry executive"

"As at 31 December 2015, the Company reported loans provided to third parties in the total amount of CZK 800,632 thousand. These loans bore interest at rates ranging from 6% to 10% p.a. In 2016, the Company under an agreement with MARC GILBERT INTERNATIONAL LTD. assigned this company a loan provided to a third party and unpaid interest reported in the line Other short-term receivables in the total amount of 501,095 thousand. Kc. The assignment of the loan is reported in the line Other operating income and expenses. This receivable was subsequently partially offset by the liability for the reduction of the company's share capital, which is described in section 4.9. As at 31 December 2016, the loan amounted to 404,405 thousand CZK, which is due in 2017, is reported in the line Other short-term receivables. This loan is determined at a rate of 9% p.a. — CPI Hotels a.s., 2016 Financial Statements Pg. 12"

"When you start to divert from an even distribution of those letters to what call a GC-rich sequence, those become much more difficult to synthesize. So, at about 70% GC content, they will say we're not even going to try making this sequence. There are also other complexities involved in the way that sequences interact with each other. One of the fundamental properties of DNA is this thing called base pairing, where A's pair with T's and G's pair with C's, and so if you have stretches of sequences that are inverses of each other, they will base-pair with each other. I would just call that sequence complexity. So, they screen for high GC or low GC content sequences and high complexity sequences, and then they tell a customer we're not even going to try these. We know that our process can't make these. — Former Twist manager in a manufacturing role, previously and currently employed by key competitor"

""We believe the “nimbleness” of Sika’s organization is a feature of its unique culture that has been enhanced under the tenure of CEO Jan Jenisch, who decentralized the organizational structure, introduced P&L responsibility at the country level one step away from the customer, and implemented a new incentive scheme and performance management system. We think Sika’s new freedom will only serve to improve the company’s reactiveness, making it even less sensitive to cycles." — Bernstein Research, April 2019; "In this section...we highlight the new geographical based structure...The Group’s previous structure relied on a matrix-based system with three sectors of activity (Innovative Materials, Construction Products and Building Distribution) while the new structure aims to facilitate more rapid decision-making while eliminating several approval levels for most decisions." — J.P. Morgan, November 2019"

"I wouldn't say a change in the competitive landscape, but I started to worry more about Epic as a competitor. They we starting to pull together their offerings in a more cohesive fashion to compete holistically with us. As far as the sales cycle, for enterprise deals, the cycle can be really long. More than two years and up to five years. If you're lucky eighteen months. It's not a simple sale process. We did see an affect on our business from COVID-19. A few enterprise deals come through due to COVID-19. — Former Vocera Sales Employee; "I would say it's stabilized. It's longer than it was before, but now that we've sort of transitioned the business where the bulk of the deals are on that same cadence, it's just a matter of building pipeline. So whether it's a 12-month or 18-month sales cycle doesn't matter in as long as you've made the transition to the new cadence." — CEO Lang, Q3 2021 Conf Call"

"We sold our holding in Kao as the company continues to underperform its peers — AVA Investment Managers. Killer Strengths, Just Needs a Killer Growth Strategy — SMBC. We believe Kao can do much more to raise the profile of its successful brands outside of Japan and expand overseas consumer product sales, especially given population demographics in Japan provide a headwind to future domestic growth. Historically Kao’s dominant position in its domestic market may have given it a ready source of stable cashflows, but the company needs to look abroad for its growth in the future. — LINDSELL TRAIN. Kao has great technology and many interesting products, but management has yet to translate this expertise into strong revenue-generating products — CLSA. the operating margin now looks likely to stop falling. However, we see no signs of next-generation growth businesses or other growth drivers — J.P.Morgan."

""So you mentioned integration. I think, you know, when I talk to investors, that's a topic that comes up a lot. We've done quite a few acquisitions here in the last year. And so there's always the concern of, have we done too much? How do we integrate them? Just before you touch on that topic, I've noticed that the companies that we have acquired, like ShopKeep and Upserve, they all have the same technology approach as we do. So they're all cloud based. They all have the same go-to-market strategy as we do. You know, it's all centralized sales and marketing with inbound and they all measure the same things that we measure, like CAC, LTV, monthly retention rates, churn, ARPU. So it seems to me that the integration of these companies has been pretty seamless because we're all, everybody, seems to be on the same page. Would you not agree?" — LSPD Head of IR, Inside Lightspeed podcast, August 30, 2021"

""Elanco stands at an inflection point, positioned for accelerated long-term value creation for shareholders and society." — 12/15/2020, 2020 Investor Day; "So again, I think we're at an inflection point...of value creation." — 12/1/2020, Evercore ISI 3rd Annual HealthCONx Conference; "We're now at an inflection point for growth." — 5/19/2021, 2021 Annual Meeting; "...we stand as a strategic global leader with a robust, diverse and durable portfolio, more access to the world's animals and at an inflection point to grow, innovate and deliver the next era of value." — 1/12/2021, 39th Annual JPMorgan Virtual Healthcare Conference; "I think the headline is we are at an inflection point as a company, second-largest independent animal health company." — 9/11/2023, Morgan Stanley 21st Annual Global Healthcare Conference; "...we expect to see an inflection point in 2024." — 5/9/2023, Q1 2023 Earnings Call"

"“Please turn to Slide 11. We are continuing aggressive investments that support organic growth, which could be JPY 110 billion in fiscal year 2016.” — Q2 2016 call; “Touching on the organic growth outlook of automotive on Slide 22, the business is expanding at a faster pace than originally expected.” — FY 2015 call; “M&A is a very critical for us to grow. So organic growth and M&A to drive us of our high-growth.” — Q1 2014 call; “There are no acquisitions taken into consideration at all. This is completely due to organic growth.” — Q1 2013; “Looking toward FY 3/21 Nidec expressed confidence that it can increase automotive sales to JPY 600 billion solely through organic growth.” — October 25, 2016; “Q1 in line; rising organic growth prospects.” — July 23, 2016; “We do not think the medium and long-term growth in automotive household, commercial and industrial product is priced in.” — July 22, 2016"

""I agree with doctors who are saying the reimbursement environment is getting more difficult... The payers are getting more educated in this market and pushing back more... we've been noticing a lot more, I felt like this year, more than ever, people not getting through the insurance process." — Medtronic territory manager; "There are insurance companies now that are getting much more stringent with the way they approve these..." — Former Nevro territory manager, now at Abbott; "CMS is watching. They will cut reimbursement like they did with the stimulator leads." — Medtronic territory manager; "There's huge amounts of pressure from a worker's comp perspective in California..." — Former Nevro executive; "The payors say keep the prices down... The payors don't care about the bells and whistles. They care about low infection rates. They care about low explant rates..." — Medtronic territory manager"

"“When [redacted - major organ procurement organization] hired me, they needed my license, my credentialing, the number of cases that I did, all of that. I actually contract with multiple OPO’s and all of them request a medical license to issue an ACIN for you. Apparently, the OPO in New England, they did not request their license...UNOS has the contract from the government to give authorization for transplant surgeons to recover organs. But surgeons don’t apply directly to UNOS. We apply to the OPO, and the OPO’s obligation is to make sure that this person is certified, licensed, and has the minimum training and this and that. To my understanding, if they’re not licensed to practice medicine in the United States - this is a form of practicing medicine. But no, they practice, like the top person on the liver side at TransMedics.” — Transplant procurement surgeon previously working with TransMedics"

""In 2012, we added the guest experience captain to help our guests in the restaurant with all the aspects of their visit that were nonfood related" — Sally Smith, CEO, 5/18/16; "Many of us (home office employees) completely agree with your assessment...The GEC (Guest Experience Captain) role has shown negligible positive impact on store performance" — BWLD Corporate employee, 8/17/16; "We never have implemented [the Guest Captain program]. I think we tested it in a couple of stores loosely, not officially. But no, we don't use it, we don't do it at all anymore" — CEO of BWLD's largest franchisee, 3/10/17; "The Guest Captain position has always perplexed me as a customer. From my vantage point, the only function the Guest Captain ever performed was hovering in the dining area introducing him/herself as the Guest Captain...Seemed like a very frivolous/wasteful FTE in my opinion" — Customer, 3/8/17"

""Nevro tried to innovate, and I give them credit for that, but they're struggling and trying to survive. So they're trying to come up with these studies demonstrating superiority. The flawed design of their studies defines them as a company and they're failing." — KOL and high volume implanter; "There's no Rosetta Stone in medicine. There's no one thing that can treat everything but Nevro will have you believe that one therapy can treat every type of pain and all you have to do is put it in the same spot... It goes against everything in science and medicine." — KOL and high volume implanter; "The Hawthorne effect is well documented in science... Every patient in Nevro's study knew which device they got. Doctors believe the Hawthorne effect completely skewed Nevro's results. It happens in all their studies. Everybody knows which device they're getting. Nevro's always played a lot of games." — KOL"

""APA's stock performance has significantly lagged its peer average and the S&P 500 since the Egyptian revolution. We are more pessimistic about Egypt's future than in any time in the last two years and are reducing our PT to $95 from $105. We think APA would be better off exiting Egypt by selling its operations and using the proceeds to buy back shares, reduce debt and boost investments elsewhere." — Oppenheimer (February 28, 2013); "Since early-2011, Egypt has been a persistent overhang for APA. While in simple terms the region accounts for...23% of our NAV, this understates the importance of the asset for the portfolio.... While a complete lifting of the Egypt overhang is unlikely, the market is discounting a very bearish outcome for an asset that has suffered no visible economic impact from the deteriorating political & fiscal situation over the past 2 years." — Deutsche Bank (March 7, 2013)"