Callouts & quotes from 1,436+ activist slides

""Now last thing I would say is our expectations are very high for experts because this is now -- you're truly talking about service-as-a-software where they are the interface to customers and the standard in which we expect them to deliver for customers, the value that we expect them to create is very, very high." — Intuit CEO Goodarzi at 2021 Investor Day"

"“So a way to measure it, for us, it is we have put out there a list of 15 potential blockbusters that could come by the year -- in 5 years, so it is by 2022 when we put it out in '18. And I think my focus would be to make sure that we deliver more than our fair risk adjustment of this number, and that will be success.” — Albert Bourla, Pfizer Chair and CEO"

"“While most of these letters of intent are for Type C school buses, we are also seeing interest for the Type A school buses as well. Our factory representative agreement signed with ADOMANI late last year has continued to be an exceptional partnership, enabling us to rapidly pursue market opportunities in California,” — Phillip Oldridge, CEO of GreenPower."

""I've only come up with five meaningful ways we can use our cash. First, we can invest in our current businesses. Second, we can use our cash to pay down debt and we have. However, we intend to maintain our investment grade credit rating, which we're already good shape on, and our debt is in great shape as well." — Stephen Wetmore, CEO, 2014 Investor Day"

""We are excited to partner with such a well-known and storied brand," said Skillz CEO Andrew Paradise. Now, everyone around the world can compete for cash and glory with the Big Buck Hunter mobile app powered by Skillz. — Andrew Paradise; "a cultural icon for 20 years" — Andrew Paradise; "the most unprofessional CEO that I’ve ever met" — Former employee"

"“These are all high-margin specialty applications...You can see the margins for construction are best in class here running from 23%, to just under 26%. We maintain these margins because of the specialty nature of the product, the distribution network, and the fact that their specified for high-end applications.” — Greg Poling, President & CEO, May 2016"

""Chief Revenue Destroyer," — Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO). "When Blackwell starts shipping in volume, you couldn't give Hoppers away." — Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO). "A year ago or so, an H100 was $5-6 per hour. Now, it's around 75 cents, maybe less. Hardware typically depreciates in three to five years, but that's happening in a year now." — CEO of host.AI"

"We supported Mr. Pease’s appointment to the Board, in part because we were encouraged by his outlook on corporate governance. For example, during the interview process with us, Mr. Pease shared the very clear and widely held view that having a CEO also serve as Board Chair was detrimental to a company in need of change. — Elliott Investment Management"

"“...the only region in the world showing clear signs of increased E&P investments in 2017 is North America land...” — Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard; “...the market is a tale of two cycles. North America activity increased rapidly but not without growing pains, while activity in the rest of the world declined...” — Halliburton President Jeff Miller"

""And so, here's the new brand, keep it really simple, no mask, no hose, just sleep. We don't talk about implant, we don't talk about surgery, we talk about a therapy that will -- you'll use every night in your -- procedure, and... so, here's two commercials that we ran." — CEO Tim Herbert, SVB Leerlink Global Healthcare Conference, February 26, 2020"

""Where we've fallen short was on MCT, right, with the Zio AT product. In our long-range plan, when we put those expectations out, we actually expected to have the new MCT product in the market about 2 years ago. So we're almost 24 months delayed from where we thought we were going to be." — iRhythm CEO Blackford at Goldman Sachs Conference, 6/10/25"

"“Extremely Toxic Work Environment and Unprofessional Leadership. The management, particularly the CEO, fostered an extremely toxic work environment. Employees were often fired on the spot in front of their colleagues, which not only created a climate of fear but also caused significant mental anguish among staff.” — Former Employee – Sept. 1, 2024"

"「豊田自動織機の発表には、財務予測、割引率、税務上の前提の開示が一切ない[...]」 — ACGA、2025年7月; 「豊田自動織機には、土地やその他の保有資産に多大な隠れた資産価値が存在する。」 — 会社役員育成機構 CEO (Nick Benes)、2025年6月; 「トップマネジメントと投資家・株主との対話は企業価値向上プロセスのエンジンであり、私共はこれを少なくとも四半期に1回程度の頻度を確保して頂くことを希望します。」 — Dalton Investmentsによる豊田自動織機宛て書簡、2024年5月; 「(豊田自動織機の)歴史的に低迷してきた市場評価は、そのガバナンスと所有構造の直接的な結果であり、したがって取引評価の基準として用いるべきではない。」 — GMO、2025年5月"

"“Yes. And one is implementation takes longer than expected and the second one is the slow-down of the industry. So, the two factors work together to slow down the shipments. For example, TSMC Arizona is delayed by a year or two. So, equipment gets delayed.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec’s CEO"

"We grew the total number of customers generating more than $200,000 of revenue by 38% year-over-year on a trailing 12-month basis. — CEO, Aug 3, 2022; Our gross retention rate remains over 95%, and we have achieved 41% growth in the total number of customers generating more than $200,000 of revenue on a trailing 12-month basis. — CEO, Nov 8, 2022"

"Oh yeah. It is a dog fight. Absolute dog fight. I think between them two. Okay. And their CEOs do not like each other. — Former DV sales executive. No ad agency would ever buy them. Neither would a major platform. They have to stay independent to maintain that sort of perception of being, you know, a non-biased party. — Former DV sales executive."

""And finally, Broadridge's objectives to expand margins through scale and efficiency to strengthen by adding Itiviti. Itiviti's 30% plus operating margin business will increase our adjusted operating income margin by 50 basis points by fiscal '23 and positions us for higher adjusted earnings growth." — CEO Gokey, Itiviti M&A Call, March 29, 2021"

""In its first year, iHub contributes 40% of our year-over-year EBITDA growth and more importantly, our ability to capture signals from all channels to a central hub, as you can see it on your screen and analyze them is the main factor behind SORT superior performance over other conventional targeting methods." — CEO Gerstel, Q3 2022 Nov 9, 2022"

"If you can get $3,000 - $5,000 per account (or more),if you can get something like that, if you can find a product valuable enough for people to spend that kind of money, then you can actually be able hire people, build a team. You will be able to bootstrap and build your company to a point where investors will come to you. — CEO Interview 2016"

"“No offense, but we don’t really care what you think,” he says. “The people we care about are our customers. They’ve seen the data, they’ve run the tests in their own lab, they’ve seen it works, and as a result they’re putting in massive bets on this company. VW has gone all in.” — Jagdeep Singh, CEO of QuantumScape (via MIT Technology Review)"

""In the near term, I would expect less profitability at the bottom line than what was previously disclosed." — Stephen Croskrey, CEO Danimer Scientific. "As I noted earlier, the Phase II expansion is now expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022 compared to our initial assumption of late 2021" — John Dowdy, CFO Danimer Scientific."

""much less real estate" — James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley; "I don't think any company's going to go back to 100% of the workforce in the office." — Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock; "It allows us to look for new talent in locations where maybe we haven't before and tap into talent pools across the country." — BMO Chief Human Resources Officer"

"“...The entire episode has also revealed the limitations of ‘Disney nice.’ Avoiding face-to-face conflict, at least at the CEO and board level, fostered an environment where Iger and Chapek couldn’t hash out their differences. Executives who openly challenged others — Mayer, Rice, McCarthy — were ultimately dinged for their frankness.” — CNBC"

"“in addition to the significantly increased costs borne by transplant centers to utilize the device itself, TransMedics is pressuring hospitals to use their more expensive aircraft, not only for transportation of organs, but also for the convenient of their staff and equipment.” — Congressman Paul Gosar letter to TransMedics CEO, Feb 21, 2024"

""So we have a huge selling and service motion going on with Microsoft and -- our friends at Microsoft with their Azure Stack. And I think we've closed about -- in excess of a couple of hundred million dollars worth of business with them, and we have a very, very large pipeline that we're working.." — CEO Siebel, Wells Fargo Conf, Dec 2, 2021"

"“As we work to continually reinvent our category and lead a new era of intelligent finance for SMBs, we are also focused on becoming a more efficient, agile organization so that we can move faster on high-impact opportunities, drive durable revenue growth and deliver superior, sustainable value creation.” — René Lacerte, BILL CEO (10/16/25)"

""we said that we think it could be $10 billion product for us in a market that could be $90 billion. Clearly, we are going to be one of them." — Albert Bourla (PFE CEO), January 9, 2023. "And that's how we get to our $10 billion global opportunity for Pfizer oral GLP-1." — Andy Schmeltz (PFE Global President of Oncology), February 16, 2023."

""we said that we think it could be $10 billion product for us in a market that could be $90 billion. Clearly, we are going to be one of them." — Albert Bourla (PFE CEO), January 9, 2023; "And that's how we get to our $10 billion global opportunity for Pfizer oral GLP-1." — Andy Schmeltz (PFE Global President of Oncology), February 16, 2023"

"We’re going to have higher margins with the delivery of these cost synergies, and we haven’t quantified the benefits of any revenue synergies but we would clearly expect to be able to grow at higher rates over the longer term than we would independently.... And we see some very specific opportunities — CEO on Revenue Synergies, Aug 7, 2018"

"Jenna is run by a former organized crime conspirer: NY State records show Jenna Concrete Corporation's CEO is Carmine Valente (source) Valente Industries was a ready-mix concrete company in NYC. The company was shut down in 1993 after a mafia defector claimed that it was conspiring with two mafia families in exchange for union protection."

"“[ADP is] very focused on per share value – short-term oriented. [They] didn’t have a 5 year vision, no strategic focus on ‘where we want to lead in 5 years,’ ‘where we need to invest.’ More about consistent results. Top management is very incentivized by share value, stock option packages.” — Former CEO and COO of [Redacted] ADP Country"

"So, we’ve said most of the $10 million is around COGS synergies. So, we would expect gross margin to expand 200 basis points to 300 basis points over the next few years.... we’ve always – we’ve never been disappointed, and we’ve always overachieved our synergy number. And I’ll probably leave it at that — CEO Waterpik Deal Call, July 2017"

"“...I feel great about where we are with the studio. Let's not lose sight of the fact that in the last year, the studio had some real success, not to suggest that we didn't have some films that were not successful that we were really disappointed in, but we also had some great success too.” — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, January 2024"

"[...] the Board regularly reviews its leadership structure and considers this to be a key component of fulfilling its fiduciary duties to our shareholders. Importantly, the Board has chosen to maintain flexibility in its leadership structure and has not mandated the separation of the Chairman and CEO roles — BlackRock Proxy Filing 2024"

"[...] the Board regularly reviews its leadership structure and considers this to be a key component of fulfilling its fiduciary duties to our shareholders. Importantly, the Board has chosen to maintain flexibility in its leadership structure and has not mandated the separation of the Chairman and CEO roles — BlackRock Proxy Filing 2024"

"In addition, our Trustpilot scores are the highest among money transfer service companies in the U.S. and among the best in other regions. We are committed to simply being the best provider in every corridor we serve and continuously improving in every aspect so we can deliver on promises, win trust and grow. — CEO on Trustpilot Q3'23"

"“…I feel great about where we are with the studio. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that in the last year, the studio had some real success, not to suggest that we didn’t have some films that were not successful that we were really disappointed in, but we also had some great success too.” — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, January 2024"

""Now the team at Bemis and Amcor have worked together to identify and evaluate the cost synergies related to this combination and on slide 14 we've laid out some of the details related to those synergies. Based on this work together we're confident in being able to generate $180 million in cost synergies." — CEO Ron Delia, Aug 6, 2018"

"We’re honored to be selected for Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. With commercial deployments of IonQ quantum systems worldwide – and availability on all three of the major cloud platforms – IonQ is uniquely positioned to contribute practical insights and technical advancements to this initiative. — IonQ CEO de Masi"

""In the last [few] years, we have really been aligning the whole company very strongly behind our agenda, which is nutrition, health and wellness..." — Paul Bulcke, CEO, Sept 2012; "Big trend, health and wellness – this is no longer a trend or a fad. This is here to stay. Profound changes are underway..." — Indra Nooyi, CEO, Feb 2011"

"“Overstock sells lots of products today where installation and assembly make complete sense from a customer perspective that they should be included,” said Matt Ehrlichman, CEO of Porch.com. Customers expect installation services for everything from furniture to light fixtures, all of which are sold on Overstock’s online marketplace."

""For the long term, we expect the company to grow sales at 7% and earnings at 12% compounded annually. These performance goals reflect the diversity of our portfolio, attractive returns on growth investments, such as research and development and capital expenditures, plus benefits from ongoing productivity." — DuPont's CEO (12/13/11)"

"And just finally, wrapping up, what makes Boot Barn unique? We are truly a lifestyle brand. I think sometimes we're kind of grouped in with just specialty retail in general, but we are truly a lifestyle brand. We have an extremely loyal customer. The vast majority of our sales go through our B Rewarded loyalty program. — CEO Conroy"

""TurboTax and H&R Block now use AI for tax advice. It’s awful." — Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post. "We have always believed our customers can benefit most from the power of AI, bringing professional grade resources to individuals that need it most around the world, tipping the odds in their favor." — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO."

""We are pleased to welcome Ferebee Corporation to the Construction Partners family of companies, expanding our geographic footprint into western North Carolina. As a platform acquisition, Ferebee creates another engine for growth driven by a talented and experienced team under the leadership of Chris and David Ferebee." — CEO Smith"

"Peter joined Marvell at a critical time for the Company and drove crucial changes that were needed to get the company back on track. His insights and influence as a director have catalyzed the changes that have transformed Marvell into a healthy, well-functioning company with strong financial results. — Matt Murphy, CEO of Marvell"

"In Turkey - as in Germany - we are a clear market leader with our outside advertising with an over 50% market share. In 2015, we earned an operating EBITDA result of €14,000,000 with a cash flow of over €80,000,000 in sales in an admittedly relatively difficult market environment from a geopolitical perspective. — Udo Müller (CEO)"

"“The lead independent director facilitates discussion among independent directors on key issues and concerns outside of full board meetings, including contributing to the oversight of CEO and management succession planning” — BlackRock Investment Stewardship, Proxy voting guidelines for U.S. securities Effective as of January 2024"

""As you’ll be aware, 2025 Brent strip is at around $75 per barrel, and other commodities and prices, including refining margins, are under pressure. Were these prices to play out, the rule of thumb impact in 2025 would be around $4 billion – but that’s a price call that we don’t know at this stage" — BP CEO at the Q2 2024 results."

""Dr. Ignarro has basically started the world on the track of nitric oxide, has made the world understand that a healthy blood flow is a healthy body. And we are the first company to come out with a nitric oxide product in the marketplace, it was laughed at initially and now it is copied." — Michael Johnson, Herbalife CEO, 11-28-07"

""The lead independent director facilitates discussion among independent directors on key issues and concerns outside of full board meetings, including contributing to the oversight of CEO and management succession planning" — BlackRock Investment Stewardship, Proxy voting guidelines for U.S. securities Effective as of January 2024"

"“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"

""Reading the NTSB report makes it clear that meaningful safety improvements require a comprehensive industry effort that brings together railcar and tank car manufacturers, railcar owners and lessors, and the railroad companies," said Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan H. Shaw. — Norfolk Southern Press Release (Mar. 6, 2023)"

"“We’re going to have higher margins with the delivery of these cost synergies, and we haven’t quantified the benefits of any revenue synergies but we would clearly expect to be able to grow at higher rates over the longer term than we would independently”.... “And we see some very specific opportunities” — Amcor CEO, Aug 7, 2018"

""If you look at our TSR performance since July of 2022, when I moved into the CEO position, TSR has been something like 66%, 65%, again, higher than the basket of our refining peers, higher than the S&P Energy Index as well. And so all of those metrics are firm and indisputable." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, March 18, 2025"

"“If you look at our TSR performance since July of 2022, when I moved into the CEO position, TSR has been something like 66%, 65%, again, higher than the basket of our refining peers, higher than the S&P Energy Index as well. And so all of those metrics are firm and indisputable.” — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, March 18, 2025"

""If you look at our TSR performance since July of 2022, when I moved into the CEO position, TSR has been something like 66%, 65%, again, higher than the basket of our refining peers, higher than the S&P Energy Index as well. And so all of those metrics are firm and indisputable." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, March 18, 2025"

"We're making great progress on integration planning for our announced combination with Viterra. The teams are working well together, confirming our confidence that we will be a more complete, one combined company. Their commitment will ensure that we can effectively serve our customers from day 1. — CEO, Q3'24 Conference Call"

"“Yes...on #OTC. Uplisting soon.” — Director Batstone; “We are planning on uplisting in the next three months. We have a lot of people circling the wagons, I should say, to give us money. We are looking for the right money now, at this point in time. We already have the money to uplist. We want to get bigger.” — CEO Doug Cole"

"“Japan is a massive opportunity for us. Today, Holters are reimbursed at a higher rate in Japan than what they are reimbursed in the U.S. I think that bodes very well for the reimbursement rate we're likely to see get established in the Japanese market for long-term patching.” — CEO Blackford, J.P. Morgan Conference, 1/13/25"