Callouts & quotes from 10,384+ activist slides

""This pattern suggests that Phillips 66's board is using these repeated proposals as a distraction tactic while failing to deliver tangible governance reform that shareholders seem to support." — Professor Mark DesJardine, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business; "Phillips objects to the Elliott proposal, weakly arguing that it 'contravenes well-settled principles of Delaware corporate law and would be highly unlikely to withstand scrutiny in Delaware courts... The problem with this argument is that it ignores the simple fact that directors are free to resign their board positions at any time, and nothing in the Phillips charter or bylaws possible can be construed as preventing directors from voluntarily offering to resign.." — Professor Jonathan Macey, Yale Law School and Yale SOM"

"“2 million? 5 million?” — John Tartol (current board member); “[T]his opportunity can provide persons with a career level / residual income of an average of $100,000 per year.” — Financial Success System publication (affiliated with Doran Andry); “Cash flow of “$10,000+ by month 6th [sic] is common.” — Freedom Team Presentation (affiliated with Kurt & Cindy O’Connell); “Just after six months in the business, our income was over $6,000 a month... And over the last nine years, we have made millions... And what I know, you could have the same opportunity as we had.” — Michael Burton (later went into personal bankruptcy); “[I]t was crazy, it was unbelievable, I mean, we were able to pay cash for a £80,000 Ferrari... It really is a life, it’s all you dream, really.” — David Bevan"

""We were like middle-aged people. We needed to slim down....This is long overdue at Time Inc...." — Ann Moore, Publishing's Chairman and CEO. "We are big, and we need big bets. I think that as we have become more layered, the culture here has become more risk averse." — Ann Moore. "No company can deliver on its commitments or adapt well to change unless its leaders practice the discipline of execution at all levels. Execution has to be a part of a company's strategy and its goals. It is the missing link between aspirations and results. As such, it is a major - indeed, the major - job of a business leader. If you don't know how to execute, the whole of your effort as a leader will always be less than the sum of its parts." — Larry Bossidy (former Chairman & CEO of Honeywell)."

""Tax transparency is important to engender the trust and understanding of the communities in which we operate." — Peter Beaven, CFO, March 14, 2016. "[I]n light of the tenacious endeavors of well-resourced multinationals to resist disclosing their tax arrangements, the committee is of the view that more should be done to place stronger disclosure obligations on them.... BHP exemplified this approach when Mr. Cudmore [BHP’s then-President of Corporate Affairs] refused to answer a question in a public forum about the profit made on the Singapore marketing hubs.... Such attitudes, particularly from Australian multinationals that see themselves as good corporate citizens and taxpayers, are particularly disappointing." — Senate Inquiry into Corporate Tax Avoidance, April 22, 2016"

""Doctors that implanted a lot of devices, they hated Nevro. I don't know doctors who were high volume Nevro implanters that liked it and continued with their device. The high volume Nevro implanters today who are involved with Nevro's studies – I saw the guys who went to jail for prescribing the Insys fentanyl drug. An Insys VP was saying how he hired hookers and strippers. You have to remember the doctor runs the show. And the only way I know to change that doctor's practice paradigm is bribing. It works. You give a doctor some money and they will say whatever you want. I would imagine Nevro probably doesn't give them money. They just hire them as consultants, pay them to give lectures and to teach classes. Doctors are whores" — Ex-Nevro consultant and high volume implanter"

"Plus I think they don't want to make the whole switch over all at once. That would be a financial blowback to them. Because to answer your question on the dynamics in the beginning with Flex, it was a big win-win for me. I stopped paying $50,000 a month out of my account in exchange for only closing four or five deals a month with them. And if you ran the numbers on that, I mean I was really winning on that in the beginning. Now it's pretty, even now I'm probably paying close to 50 grand a month of referral fees and it seems to be kind of on par with what they're looking for and they're getting opportunities sent to their lender and we were sending deals to their title company when they had that around as well. So they were getting the win multiple times. — Zillow Flex Agent"

""We will start with a solid-state vehicle, a show car for testing, going into homologation at the earliest in 2028 and maybe have the first press announced in 2026. Physically and as far as life cycle, it's not possible to talk about this technology earlier. It's connected with so many other things and long-term contracts...So, realistically speaking, there's nothing before 2030." — VW employee; "We don't expect to utilize solid-state batteries for the mass market before 2030. Maybe there are some small series in premium cars. We still have a roughly 5 to 8-year road ahead of us. So for the next five years, certainly not, because for the next five years, everything is basically already set with established suppliers and with current cells and cell technology." — VW employee"

"“Then they had an industrial group...that was literally trying to redesign the programmable logic controller to be a cloud-connected PLC of the future...the product quality on the hardware side on fleet is very different than industrial...We were taking some of our fleet products and putting it into industrial and the product quality just wasn’t quite there for that market...” — Third Bridge Interview with Former Samsara Director, Product Management, 9/29/21; “...there was an industrial kind of team for a while that focused on manufacturing and using cameras that were the second iteration really of the Samsara fleet product...It kind of stamped out. I think it probably would be considered a miss today.” — Tegus Interview with Former Samsara Senior Account Executive, 6/20/23"

""What went wrong is probably the $15 billion question. Who knows?...I'm surprised, and I'm disappointed myself that it just hasn't happened yet." — Former Ginkgo executive; "What successful products have come out of the back end? I have not seen anything that I would call a material success coming out the back end." — Former Ginkgo executive; "One of the things that I think has gone wrong is Ginkgo has way over-promised and way under-delivered, and they should never have made that many promises. I think Jason did that so he could raise the money." — Former Ginkgo executive; "Because not every product needs to be a billion-dollar product and succeed. But you need to have a reasonable conversion, and I don't think they have a reasonable conversion.." — Former Ginkgo executive"

""Sportradar is dependent on acquiring sports rights, which represents a high fixed cost of the business. Although the upfront commitment does not guarantee cash flow, and the investment can underperform leading to impairment (for example the recent €38 million impairment of sports rights licenses for the NBA and NFL due to slower than expected development of US sports betting)" — Moody's (October 30, 2020). "The two ratings opinions also provide a partial glimpse into Sportradar's financials. Among them, the company has experienced a $42 million "impairment" of its NBA contract, according to Fitch. That likely means Sportradar has had to write down a portion of its NBA deal to account for being unable to monetize basketball data as expected." — Sportico (October 14, 2020)."

""During a surgical procedure to implant the Inspire System, shortly after putting the stimulation cuff on, the patient coded and his heart rate went down to 28. An emergency team responded in the operating room and provided treatment. Immediately after treatment, the patient's blood pressure dropped and the emergency team again provided treatment. The physician decided to end the case. The patient is currently in the ICU and should make a full recovery." — FDA database report; "A lot of times patients are very reluctant to go for a surgical option. Their perception is that it's not a very high priority or concerning medical issue... So, the number of patients who agree, who even want to discuss surgical options, is fairly low." — Sleep Apnea expert interview, February 2020"

"In their own words, they do have a clearly defined strategic direction, and you can talk the talk, but you might not walk the walk...They are clearly not walking the walk. At all. — Phillips 66 Shareholder A; Looking at [Phillips 66's] strategic direction, significant divestment and cleaning up of operations would be certainly beneficial. Getting back into what they do best, which is integrated refining. — Phillips 66 Shareholder B; What can they do now that will help them longer-term? In terms of execution, I want them to have a much more independent board...I want them to continue divesting. I don't want them to have a conglomerate discount... They just have too many unrelated businesses, and I think that's just not good for them longer-term. — Phillips 66 Shareholder C"

""The amount of FCF should continue to rise in the next two years, in spite of rising capex. As a result, we expect share repurchases/cancellations to recur every year, in addition to rising cash dividends." — Macquarie, July 28, 2016; "One way of unlocking this value could be a holding and operating company separation..." — Morgan Stanley, July 2, 2016; "However, given very modest or even negative market expectations, we see significant rerating upside potential if the company implements better shareholder returns, either proactively or pushed by minority shareholders." — Citi, October 27, 2015; "We believe SEC's significant non-operating asset value should become clear through proactive shareholder returns and the group restructuring process." — Barclays, October 7, 2015"

"We ended the first quarter with cash and marketable securities of $4 billion and generated approximately $591 million of cash from operations in the quarter. This is ahead of our internal targets and significantly more than in Q1 2019. This reflects increased earnings and a reduction in working capital, primarily driven by accounts receivable during the quarter. As I noted in January, we did not repurchase any shares in Q1, nor do we plan to do so during the remainder of the year. In addition to the discretionary spending controls I previously outlined, we have also taken steps to conserve cash, including reductions in planned capital expenditures and project spending, focusing on opportunities and accounts payable and slowing M&A activities. — CEO Lobo, Q1 2020 Conf Call"

""Amcor’s financial profile will be enhanced, and our existing capital allocation framework, or shareholder value creation model, will be maintained and strengthened with this transaction." — CEO ACMR; "Sales to PepsiCo, and its subsidiaries, accounted for approximately 11.1%, 11.0% and 11.7% of our sales in fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively." — Amcor 10-K; "So the (specialty) cartons business is a little less than 10% of sales now. It’s a global business. It’s predominantly selling tobacco cartons." — Amcor CEO Citi Conf Dec 2019; "Sales to the Kraft Heinz Company, and its subsidiaries, accounted for approximately 11 percent in 2018 and 10 percent in 2017 and 2016. The Company primarily sells to Kraft Heinz Company in the U.S. Packaging segment." — Bemis 10-K"

"For garbage trucks, it will never work with the path they have to take and the payload they take... Refuse trucks are built for payload, because they want the truck to run as long as possible because of transfer station cost, mileage, etc. This means a truck with the same payload capacity has very different travel distances based on how long a route needs to be prior to full payload capacity... Refuse trucks have a lot more bells and whistles that will need electricity / power at all times, not just when the vehicle is moving. They include hydraulic systems, internal PLCs and controls, safety / camera equipment, etc. — Former XL Employee G; I think they’re probably trying to find a niche. School buses are done [by competitors]. Box trucks are done. — Former XL Employee A"

""I think on the kind of the commercial, when I say commercial, I mean the builder side, it's always price skinny, a lot of price competition there." — Former Executive Familiar With Resideo’s Security Business And First Alert Acquisition. "Yeah, they're getting volume discounts. It's a volume business. The product itself is pretty inexpensive and pretty basic and they just buy a crap ton of them." — Former Executive Familiar With Resideo’s Security Business And First Alert Acquisition. "Yeah, and also the product mix on the builder side is very limited." — Former Executive Familiar With Resideo’s Security Business And First Alert Acquisition. "I think they overpaid for First Alert." — Former Executive Familiar With Resideo’s Security Business And First Alert Acquisition."

""it has been slow...companies like TSMC were holding back...Intel was delaying their orders for more than a year." — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec's CEO; "TSMC is pushing out and delaying orders. The Arizona original plan is now on hold. That's what they are telling their suppliers." — One of Intel's most senior and longtime engineers with leadership responsibility for EUV; "There are just the three machines in San Jose. It didn't sound like they had plans of implementing any more in that location. Some of my ex-coworkers, they relocated some to Oregon... first, they moved some guys to Arizona, and then they moved the Arizona guys to Portland." — Former Lasertec field service engineer who worked in the Intel mask shop"

"Direct File is not free tax preparation, but rather a thinly veiled scheme where billions of dollars of taxpayer money will be unnecessarily used to pay for something already completely free of charge today—free to the taxpayer and actually free for the government. In addition to now paying for ‘free’ tax preparation, Direct File is asking Americans to file their taxes directly with the IRS after the organization publicly acknowledged systemic inequities that see low-income filers and Black taxpayers targeted for audit at a higher rate than non-Black taxpayers. The Direct File scheme is a solution in search of a problem, and that half-baked solution now has the potential to become a financial nightmare for tens of millions of taxpayers. — Intuit Statement on Direct File"

"“On the Olapic side, we are adjusting our expectations downward to account for the delay in revenue recognition from project deployments that was not previously considered in our guidance...So as a purchaser of SaaS technologies, when you deal with the sales forces as in a work days, once you sign, they are getting their revenue right away, even though as you are putting your development resources against integrating that product. If you look at the Olapic business, and with them being in startup mode, their contracts currently do not have the clause in there where their revenue starts clicking right away, so you're basically deferred up until when the client actually deploys usually on their e-commerce site and that can take 120 days.” — Scott Landers (July 28th, 2017)"

""Joseph Bonanno has had significant economic and transactional involvement over a substantial period of years with several Canadian cheese companies owned by the members of the Saputo family and by Lino Saputo in particular." — Investigative report. "Lino Saputo has attempted to conceal from the Department his and his company's involvement with Bonanno...and has made material statements that are false, misleading, and deceitful." — Investigative report. "We respected the law, kept our distance from criminal organizations and avoided crossing the wrong people." — Lino Saputo's autobiography. "I can guarantee that the mafia has never, in any way shape or form, been involved with Saputo, the Saputo family, nor anyone close to the Saputo's." — Lino Saputo (2007 interview)."

""It's odd positioning. Boot Barn has to pump a lot more money into their marketing to be super relevant. From a product assortment, they're trying to capitalize on the [current] trends, but from a marketing point of view, they're not. And so what you end up with is mostly very traditional Macho marketing. And then if you go on their social media, you see the opposite, like their website and their TV spots are created by one agency and their social media is a bunch of skinny wafer-thin models that are just the opposite. It is a very odd, and I guess there's a whole backstory on just how they have different people running different things, but there's no cohesiveness. So I would say that's the biggest challenge with 'em." — Western Marketing And Branding Expert Interview"

""We used empty legal entities as a kind of 'bad bank' for everything that couldn't be explained at the time. So there are many different ways to do things, but usually the interest to change or to manipulate is more on the corporate level... Once you decide you close this [physical] facility for whatever reason, usually when you are finished, they keep the legal entity. They will not close the entity, just the facility, and register the entity as a loss. And whenever you have something from a different legal entity that you need to move in terms of cost of losses, you will use this empty legal entity to move it, you don't have to explain it. Officially, you claim it as additional closing costs or whatever. So this is common within the Eurofins verticals..." — Source B"

"“The Court is constrained, therefore, to conclude that, although this case presented an occasion upon which it indeed made sense to inquire as to what the relevant market rate of interest might be, the totality of the evidence presented did not permit a sufficiently informed conclusion to be drawn. Put differently, this case demonstrates that the mere existence of an efficient market does not guarantee that the short-comings of the coerced loan approach to rate setting, as described in Till, will automatically be overcome. The Court will thus fall back upon Till, and the formula approach, as the preferred means for setting the interest rate herein.” — Opinion of Judge Raslavich, United States Bankruptcy Court, E.D. Pennsylvania, In re Prussia Associates, April 5, 2005"

"“Based on the information disclosed in the proxy statement, the performance-based RSU and performance-based cash will be subject to a simple performance hurdle (2012 corporate EBIT). If the hurdles is achieved, these awards will be subject two further years of time-vesting. We believe long-term incentives are best structured using performance metrics measured over at least three years. A period of one year does not measure performance in a sufficiently ‘long term’ manner, nor does it property incentive executives to focus on the long-term fiscal health of the Company.” — Glass Lewis. “ [the structure is]...far from ideal and leads us to question how committed the Compensation Committee truly is to linking equity pay to corporate performance.” — Glass Lewis Conclusion"

"So cost of the truck. So, one, our OEM and partners are going to decide that. But the way to think about it is there's minimal kind of new hardware components in there, right? And the driver parts, the things that you would think of as the expensive parts, are part of that Hardware as a Service. So, they're on the Aurora side of this, and our customers will pay us for that over time on a per mile basis. So, the base truck, we expect to be roughly in line with what it costs to buy a truck today. And I would expect that our partners, again over time, as this becomes more broadly adopted, there's an opportunity to depopulate some of the content in the truck and create an even better offering from our OEM partners to their customers. — Chris Urmson, Aurora Innovation CEO"

"“You can’t run large and complicated algorithms without a lot of qubits but having a lot of qubits isn’t useful if you don’t have really good gate fidelity... I think getting better qubits not just more qubits is really one of the outstanding challenges that’s going on right now.” — Former IonQ employee, physicist; “I can tell you the general consensus is that to start building these devices in a manner that’s useful, you have to have a total logical qubit rather than just a physical qubit... Even if you have those logical qubits, now you still have to build a lot of them and connect a lot of time. So, I don’t necessarily think it’s something that is technically unfeasible ever; it’s just very hard and will likely take a long time.” — Former IonQ employee, physicist"

""We are transitioning away from a program that existed for us in the past, and towards a program which concentrates on high-impact prospects. I think the areas of focus for us will still be the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, deepwater offshore West Africa, and deepwater Southeast Asia." — John O'Connor, Fmr President Worldwide E&P Hess, April 2003; "We were known as a very high-impact explorer. I think we can say that that strategy didn't work... So we have shifted our exploration strategy... [First] Our three primary focus areas are Gulf of Mexico, West Africa and Asia-Pacific... The second change ...Hess used to drill wells at high working interest, 80% to 100% working interest. We are not going to do that anymore." — Gregory Hill, EVP Worldwide E&P Hess, November 2012"

""I'm surprised there hasn't been regulatory pressure put on them. I'm surprised...listen, I've worked for a lot of pharma companies, okay? And I've never seen the goofiness that I've seen with this company...the pressure to produce...it was just terrible. It was awful. A lot of pressure on sales, a lot of pressure on getting referrals...it was just a lot of pressure...I mean, how many cataplexy patients are there? Oh my god. How many are there? Get in no matter how you need to get in; get the referrals...I mean, as far as entertaining and speaker's programs, like these guys do - I've never seen it." — Ex-field reimbursement manager working with Harmony, who stated most of his team and a large number of sales reps resigned due to pressure to support improper conduct."

"“No, I don't remember. $500 million—between $300 to 500 million and that basically translates to the POs that they had from Intel but the POs are at a significantly reduced price. They don't have a lot of margin on those tools, very low margins on those tools.” — Former KLA executive in a leadership role in their EUV mask inspection group. “I think that $300 to $500 million is a little high in my estimation. I'm sure they've invested some significant money in Lasertec, and they do have a significant say in the direction of Lasertec, and Lasertec views them as sort of their core customer or founding customer per se...they've also obviously ordered and prepaid for some stuff...” — Longtime semiconductor consultant recently working for Lasertec; close to KLA management"

"“Tesla is a great example. The model three has 3700 cells in it. Each of those cells are comprised of 50 to 100 layers. That's the scale at which the battery needs to be... you're looking at 200,000 layers of the separator to give the energy that you need to fuel a car. That's a lot.” — Former employee; “What they have shown is data for one. One layer. So, you can understand that the ability for them to scale that up is going to take some serious time and effort because to get from just having one cell cycling to having technically 200,000 layers cycling, that's a huge scaling issue. Before we can do that, we've got to start getting the cells together or start getting these layers together, and that's really the biggest issue that they're facing.” — Former employee"

""Forescout did a good job of winning contracts with government agencies and large civilian enterprises... But most of the runway with government customers and Fortune 500 companies is now saturated. Forescout has to figure out international to get its growth rate back up, and it is going to have to go down market for new customers. It has to simplify its sales pitch for smaller customers with less comprehensive needs." — Cybersecurity Expert, Former Forescout Employee (paraphrased); "There is a lot of reverse engineering going on among competitors and startups. They might not all offer as complete of a solution as Forescout, but they are cheaper and can be enough to meet down-market customers' needs." — Cybersecurity Expert, Former Forescout Employee (paraphrased)"

""Mr. Rasulo’s perspective is stale given he left Disney in 2015 and has not held any executive positions in the industry since." — Disney Letter to Shareholders, 02/01/24; "... Mr. Rasulo’s close relationship with Mr. Perlmutter, coupled with Mr. Rasulo’s having been passed over in the 2015 COO process despite Mr. Perlmutter’s sponsorship of him as a CEO successor, would likely inhibit Mr. Rasulo’s ability to work constructively with Mr. Iger and other executives at the Company with whom Mr. Perlmutter had clashed." — Disney 2024 Proxy Statement, 02/01/24; "[Jay] has been a valued colleague and friend, as well as a vital contributor to Disney’s success, particularly in his roles as chief financial officer and chairman of our Parks and Resorts division." — Bob Iger"

"Capital allocation is the most fundamental responsibility of a senior management team of a public corporation. Successful capital allocation means converting inputs, including money, things, ideas and people, into something more valuable than they would be otherwise... A company that is allocating its resources wisely will ultimately prevail over a competitor that is allocating its resources foolishly. — Credit Suisse, October 19, 2016; The lack of skill that many CEOs have at capital allocation is no small matter: After ten years on the job, a CEO whose company annually retains earnings equal to 10% of net worth will have been responsible for the deployment of more than 60% of all the capital at work in the business. — Warren Buffett, 1987 Letter to Shareholders"

"‘One of the CCTs…recalled that the ‘Zio AT has only a single lead, meaning you only get a very narrow view of the heart,’ whereas many fellow iRhythm CCTs with previous experience ‘found that… a regular Holter monitor [has] six leads and gives a much better read of cardiac activity.’ One of these former CCTs ‘found missed arrythmias that were not reported to cardiologists in 100% of final reports they analyzed, which they blamed on the technical limitations of the Zio AT and iRhythm’s processes for classifying arrhythmias.’… Thus, the ‘initial reports could be inaccurate and require massaging before being submitted to cardiologists.’ This CCT stated, ‘I found the reports to be inaccurate and alarming as a technician.’” — Glazing v iRhythm Second Amended Complaint"

"“the purity of each individual oligo in those pools isn’t as high as it is with IDT, which is why if you’re buying a smaller number of oligos, you’re better off going through to somebody like IDT. You’ll get much higher purity and much better performance.” — Major Twist customer, one of largest genomics centers in Europe; “In the case of next-generation sequencing [NGS], their hybridization capture panels have higher variability amongst a number of metrics, and they make many lots... Twist will have to deliver that in more lot numbers than their competitors, which creates a substantial headache for quality control teams because quality control for these kinds of applications is a substantial expense because of the regulated space.” — IDT ex-regional sales manager"

"At our 2017 annual Cowen Health Care Conference, most polled physicians (60%) indicated that ozanimod’s profile appears differentiated but not necessarily a ‘game changer’ in ulcerative colitis. — Cowen, February 2019; Ozanimod for MS was always a tough sell based on the entrenchment of Tecfidera and Gilenya. The high-profile delay at the FDA based on a poorly characterized metabolite won’t help … — BTIG, December 2018; …we expect most potential users of the drug will see this issue as a curious safety issue and another reason to ignore the drug. — BTIG, December 2018; Our point of contention for ozanimod has generally been the ‘lymphocytic rebound’ effect that has been an overhang for the entire S1P class within multiple sclerosis. — Raymond James, December 2018"

""Our analysis concluded that the majority of the observations in the report apply to older versions of the Merlin@home devices (i.e., those that have not been updated through the automated remote upgrade process)." — St. Jude Medical; "We are confident in the technology that we provide and in our process for continuously building upon our security protocols and processes." — St. Jude Medical; "We recognize the importance of providing physicians with up-to-date and accurate information in a timely and responsible manner so that they can make informed patient care decisions. Our analysis reinforces the need for researchers and manufactures to work together to discuss and resolve potential issues together to avoid unnecessarily alarming patients." — St. Jude Medical"

"We have edema, pulmonary hypertension, even the hair, to be honest. I can't tell you how many kids — for the hyperinsulinism CHOP is the Mecca. I can't tell you how many parents, just the hair is so bothersome. The alternative is your child might need to have your pancreas removed, but just the cosmetic. Maybe it'll be different in older people that already have hair and it's not a hairy baby. But I can't say there's great enthusiasm. And then the price tag. I think we're all going to say, okay, this is nice, but I think you're probably going to have some patients that respond, and maybe it's worth it or not. If you're having to lock the cabinets and things. — Pediatric endocrinologist at a Delaware academic center with eight endocrinologists and ~50 PWS patients"

""Yes, remember, we -- you could arguably say we had 10 to 15 key patents burn off at the last -- last part of last year and I call those CAD/CAM patents which means you could design something on a computer screen and then 3D print it and that's what choked most companies from getting into the marketplace because you really couldn't scale." — Joseph Hogan, CEO, Align Technology. "In the future, we are going to see a change where a company is going to develop software that is so easy to use where I will pay a monthly fee and then I will be able to print the aligners in my office. We are not that far away from that. It is coming." — Orthodontist, Diamond Plus Align Tier. "Better software and alternative workflows are what will take over Invisalign." — Orthodontist."

""Our accomplishments are also a result of building a management team over the past 10 years...we are a team that delivers extraordinary results year after year." — Hasson on FIGS Q4 2021 earnings call; "[While I was there] we started building out this VP level of the organization below Trina and Heather. A CFO. A VP of Customer Experience from Fashion Nova. A VP of Product, All of them totally normal and capable people. None of them lasted a year. I don't know how they're scaling this organization. You have these normal people come in with ideas and experience and just wanting to execute on their ideas. But they are threatening to Trina and Heather. I really don't understand it, but there is something weird there." — Former Executive Interviewed by Spruce Point"

"“For very long periods of time, I think that Fannie and Freddie have been well run without creating risk to the government, as well as they’ve played an important role... I believe these are very important entities to provide the necessary liquidity for housing finance and what I’ve committed to is that I will work with both of the Democrats and Republicans. What I’ve said and I believe, we need housing finance reform, so we shouldn’t just leave Fannie and Freddie as is for the next 4 or 8 years under government control, without a fix. I believe we can find a bipartisan fix for these so on the one hand we don’t end up with a giant bailout, on the other hand that we don’t run the risk of completely limiting housing finance.” — US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin"

""I hate flying their team all over the fucking country. I hate it. I hate paying for private jets to fly their surgeons all over. I don't know why we have to pay for all these ridiculous transportation invoices... it feels like I'm talking to a used car salesman." — Executive at a pre-eminent academic transplant center; "...TransMedics acted as this hard sell, push down your throat approach to the surgical community saying this is our way or the highway, there are a lot of people they pissed off" — Prominent surgeon; "Typically, this is not how companies behave with somebody who helped them get FDA approval... that's Waleed's method, he and Tamar Khayal, his COO....that's how they roll. They play hardball." — Transplant surgeon at a high-volume academic center."

""I have been publishing in this area for 20 or 30 years. The first study we did in the 1980's. I've been involved in providing second opinions to many people with Prader-Willi Syndrome over the years, and have seen many as part of the research projects. Our research projects have been focused on hyperphagia. And I've been an advisor to the [Prader-Willi association name redacted] and, at the present time, [title redacted] of the [Prader-Willi organization name redacted]. Through the PWS, associations, I'm asked to speak to parents, but quite often I speak to clinicians, and we work through the issues of what might be the most appropriate medication or the most appropriate course of action in any given situation." — Trial investigator, key opinion leader for PWS"

"We have historically realized income, rather than expense, from these plans. We generated aggregate income from our U.S. and U.K. plans of $44.4 million in 2017, $27.5 million in 2016 and $8.2 million in 2015. The plans have been generating income due to their funded status and since they do not allow for new plan participants or additional benefit accruals. The effects of the defined benefit pension plans on our operating results consist primarily of the net effect of the interest cost on plan obligations for the U.S. Plans and the U.K. Plan, and the expected return on plan assets. We estimate that the defined benefit pension plans will contribute annual pre-tax income in 2018 of $32.4 million for the U.S. Plans and $41.4 million for the U.K. Plan. — XPO 10-K"

""Our ending inventory balance was $205 million, in line with our expectations and up from $81 million a year ago. The difference is primarily a combination of 3 things. First, as we said last quarter, we continue to build back our inventory levels through fiscal '24 to support strong consumer demand. Second, approximately $28 million of the increase is the result of taking ownership of inventory from China when it ships versus when it enters our distribution center here in the U.S. Lastly, our consolidated results include Naturium for the first time, which added approximately $25 million of inventory. We believe we have the appropriate levels of inventory across the business to service our customers and support the demand we're seeing." — Mandy Fields, ELF CFO"

""The issue at Gen9 was the number of - it’s called fidelity of the oligonucleotide sequence. The control target was one base pair error per 200... The pharmaceutical industry doesn’t want a protein drug with lots of sequence errors in it because it’s going to give them issues and major problems." — Longtime oligo manufacturing expert; ex-Agilent executive and executive; ex-Agilent. "There’s a whole group of companies that are in what’s called the 'sequence-validated, one kilobase gene standard vector.' ...they’re at a very high-cost range now because they have to apply a lot of diagnostics like next-generation sequencing or mass spectrometry in order to validate the sequence of the oligonucleotide." — Longtime oligo manufacturing expert; ex-Agilent executive."

"I'm speechless. How can a "an industry leading provider of independent and professional consulting services to the mining and energy industries worldwide" produce such drivel? — Kerrin Allwood. Right, but then a lot of the 0.3% "Ni deposits" being touted are also far away from being economic. Seems like these days any analytically detectable level of an element of interest is being touted as an ore deposit. — Robert Brozdowski, Ph.D., P.Geo. Michael, I came to the same conclusions...this hype over coal deposits being viable sources of REE's is very frustrating and yet it seems to attract funding and investment! — John Ormerod. Agree completely... I flagged this up to a local Wyoming news group, trying to inform the locals of this .....hoax. — Keith Laskowski."

"“BlackRock’s clients depend on us to help them meet their long-term investment goals. Given that the business decisions that companies make have a direct impact on our clients’ long-term investment outcomes and financial well-being, we consider it one of our responsibilities to promote sound corporate governance as an informed, engaged shareholder on their behalf. At BlackRock, this is the responsibility of the BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) team, which serves as a link between BlackRock’s clients and the companies we invest in on their behalf. In BIS’ experience, sound governance is critical to the success of a company, the protection of investors’ interests, and long-term financial value creation” — BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) Fact Sheet"

""One of the challenges that Berkeley Lights are facing in the coming years will be a lot of other companies will be entering into the same area and creating a lot of competition for the company. There are already other alternatives in the market," — Former BLI engineer; "Nowadays especially, the field of single-cell analysis is expanding so much and making so much progress that I think we're getting to the point where most of the applications that are being developed on the platform can actually be replaced by applications with higher throughput on cheaper platforms like 10X Genomics and a couple of others." — Former BLI scientist; "I would probably go with a cheaper machine and maybe a different set of assays from multiple platforms." — Former BLI scientist"

""I think it means they don't have good multi-layer data. Let's just start with that. They don't have good multi-layer data; that's what I would assume if I was looking at putting money in this." — Solid-state expert; "I think the single transistor to integrated circuit comparison is somewhat relevant here... you get this stack under pressure, and you've got everything changing dimension, and if you don't have pressure, you'd probably get dendrites, you'd probably get nonuniform plating." — Solid-state expert; "If the pressure is not uniform, for example, you don't perfectly have the same thickness of electrolyte everywhere... Does that drive either cracking of this material? Does it drive dendrite formation in some area preferentially?" — Solid-state expert"

"But 11 qubits, you can run that on your laptop easily. It's nice that they got it to work, and it's a good milestone, but come on, this is not that hard. ... And people generally think around 20 qubits is where these frequencies are getting so close that it's going to be hard to make good gates out of it. ... Twenty will be hard. — Leading expert in quantum computing; In the latest results, I think it's 2.5% average error on the two-qubit gates, which are the hard gates. And so, with 2.5% error per gate means you can do about 40 gates before you start losing coherence and the quantum computer stops working right. ... That's nothing. You can't do an algorithm. So, even if they had 32 qubits at 2%, that's not good enough. — Leading expert in quantum computing"

""There have been some questions coming in regarding the audit findings regarding material weaknesses in our internal controls. I did want to mention those quickly. There's the technical accounting view and then there's my personal view. The technical accounting views says that -- what -- we had 3 particular items that were problematic from a controls perspective. I think all 3 of those from a personal view would qualify something of a foot fault, but technically they do qualify. We do have plans. In many instances, these have already been remediated, but in total they will be remediated by the end of the first quarter. And the important thing to note is it has nothing to do with the actual financial results." — CFO, March 18, 2020 (Q4 2019 Conference Call)"

""And in the specific case of HMA, we think that this is precisely the sort of action that could fix long-standing problems. In short, we think that Glenview is pursuing precisely the correct course and believe that it can be successful in building a consensus among HMA shareholders to nominate new directors and change the course of the company." — CRT Capital Group LLC, June 12, 2013; "We believe HMA shares will trade higher if the Board adopts any of a number of possible shareholder friendly actions... Given the recent poison pill adoption, it does not appear that the Board is currently amenable to such overtures, but the possibility remains that an activist could call a special meeting to introduce a replacement slate of directors." — Citi, June 12, 2013"

"We intentionally chose not to compete for that program [the SRR]. It is a different set of capabilities that we strategically decided a while back that that's not a market that we're going to go very strongly on initially. There are several factors on the reasons why. A) making money in that market and that business is not an easy thing. And if you look at the financials of some of these companies, it's very evident in that regard. B) we see that we can deliver a lot more value for our customers and our shareholders with focusing on much larger and more systemic areas of demand globally that we can deliver a lot more value to all of our customers as well as shareholders. So we did not compete in that opportunity. — Aerovironment, December 4th earnings call"

""I am a former BWW franchisee who sold my stores to the BWW corporation. I created many of the promotions BWW uses to this day and was awarded all of the BWW franchise awards possible. Immediately after corporate took over the operations, I started to get phone calls from most of my mangers complaining about the "forced" operation procedures which negatively impacted customer satisfaction. They all wanted out. My motto was to count smiles not wet naps. BWW corporate took a much different approach and tried to run the operations like their own stores. This lost all local identity and respect. I had customers call me and say "I'll never go back into the stores" because the culture had changed their experience" — Former Buffalo Wild Wings Franchisee, 4/13/17"

"“It’s a problem to be dependent on one supplier...we always want multiple choices...the timeline you heard from KLA is reasonable...I think KLA is serious...a year or eighteen months is reasonable.” — One of Intel’s most senior and longtime engineers with leadership responsibility for EUV. “Yes, of course, because Samsung is always trying to diversify their vendors, so they don’t have to pay, they don’t want to just rely on one company because it’s not good for negotiation power. If KLA is promising the same actinic inspection tool, then it would be very good for Samsung, so they keep pushing KLA to produce the same tool as Lasertec.” — Longtime Samsung executive in leadership role in EUV; worked closely with Lasertec; decision-maker for inspection tools."

""There seems to be a fairly large number of individuals who don't know what the company does beyond their own responsibilities and they are ok with that. There is little global awareness." — Glassdoor; "Politics, dysfunctional org structure, misalignment of systems, and the legacy of two strong financial institutions that have never 'really' merged." — Glassdoor; "Advice to Management: Focus on integrating, focus on the experienced employees, and consolidate the top three tiers of management." — Glassdoor; "Very large company that can't get out of its own way. Bureaucracies are overwhelming, overly risk averse; little opportunity to make a value added contribution to the business of one's own client group... Massive culture change is needed." — Glassdoor"

""The fermenters, they're buying all those from a well known manufacturer. What I think is proprietary at Ginkgo is the robotics and the software that runs the automation...They use a thing called a Hamilton liquid handler which is a big robot for moving around small amounts of liquid. Those you can buy off the shelf." — Senior employee at related-party “customer” Joyn Bio; "Zymergen was doing the same thing, and Sartorius is a major company that's one of the huge suppliers in the industry. When I was at Ginkgo, Jason's biggest fear was always Zymergen. And so, he would try to corner the market by buying all the equipment so Zymergen couldn't buy any. Just stuff like that. There are very few suppliers for this type of equipment." — Former Ginkgo executive"

""The drug channels, front of store performance has been declining for a long period of time. So they're running downhill, trying to catch up with this declining business and reduce inventory to keep up with lower sales. So that's hitting us." — Ronald Lombardi, Q2 2020 Call, October 31, 2019; "Our we haven't seen any meaningful changes in the factors that are causing the retailers to take these actions. So at this point, we would anticipate the level to be fairly similar next year to what we've realized this year." — Ronald Lombardi, Q3 2020 Call, February 6, 2020; "So far, in Q1, we've seen a pretty steady level of dollars of inventory for the retailers, so it's hard to predict what they'll do going forward." — Ronald Lombardi, Q4 2020 Call, May 7, 2020"