Callouts & quotes from 10,384+ activist slides

"So there's obviously, even within our base, right, customers grow and change. And their complexities change, and therefore, their requirements change. So we have a big opportunity within our portfolio already to make sure we graduate customers even from our free product, right, to an assisted product. And we see that happening today. And so there is a big opportunity for us there. It drives a lot of retention. — Mark Notarainni, Intuit Executive VP & GM of Consumer Group at Citi Global Technology Conference, 9/6/23; For us, serving free tax customers remains an important strategic priority for us...The growth in free is key to our strategy of bringing in more customers to the platform, especially as we move towards solving a broader set of consumer problems. — Michelle Clatterbuck, Intuit Executive VP & CFO at Morgan Stanley Tech Conference, 3/2/21; Bringing customers onto our platform via our free offering remains a key element of our long-term strategy, as we seek to solve a broader set of customers' financial needs and disrupt consumer finance with Turbo, Mint and, upon closing, Credit Karma. — Greg Johnson, Intuit Executive VP & GM of Consumer Group at Investor Day, 9/30/20; I think the second thing that I would say is we -- because of our Credit Karma and TurboTax platform, we actually see the customers that are just really looking for a free tax software and are bouncing between platforms, and we are not interested in those customers. — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO on FQ3 2024 Earnings Call, 5/23/24"

"CHAIR—I understand that. We heard evidence yesterday in Kalgoorlie about investment schemes that we know have failed, such as Servcom, Oracle and Satcom. Not only have the investors got into a situation where they are confronted with tax debt but they are also being issued notices from one particular company, Servcom, with regard to that company seeking repayment of the loans or other payments associated with the scheme. I think it is a very serious issue; it is one that people such as you ought to give a lot of thought to. Mr Atkinson—I think in fairness—and I think this is what Kevin was saying—at the same time you have to look at the successes in the managed investment industry. Timbercorp was one of the top three most successful listed companies, if not the most successful, on the Stock Exchange in the latter half of the nineties. You have to look at the wine industry in the south-west of Western Australia. You have to look at Barkworth Olives and the absolute growth in the olive industry, which was almost non-existent six or seven years ago. I think it is very important to note that, without discriminating on a project-by-project basis, you cannot be seen to be giving a fair treatment of the industry. There are projects that have failed but, equally, there are projects that have been very successful and there are projects whose commercial viability is imperilled by only one thing, and that is the tax office's treatment of investors in that project in the last two years. — Senate Hearing Transcript"

"“One machine per $50B of market cap sounds like about a good bellwether. Typically, the customers that you'll see coming through first, big pharma that have $2 billion-plus research budgets a year, they buy one of everything, and they validate it. I'm pretty sure Berkeley Lights is in almost all of the big pharma's now. Big pharma's with a budget that size, there are 30-odd of them globally. Of course, the MAB space is a lot bigger than that, But that said, 30 of them have the budget to be buying pieces of equipment like that in that price range.” — Former BLI executive; “While I believe the company has announced deals with smaller biopharma's now, it's still a stretch for the people with smaller research budgets. It's just a matter of what sort of assumption can you make on the penetration into medium biopharma's and CROs. If I had to rank the segments, I'd say large biopharma—yes—and they're in most of them.” — Former BLI executive; “In 2016 we found a pretty good fit with cell line development. Over a year or so, through the process, I realized that there aren't enough pharma companies to keep doing this forever. You start off with cell line development, you have in the high tens of companies, maybe 60, 70. And then, you do about 10-20 campaigns a year and then have a 50 to 100 installed base... They've seen enough penetration, and it's kind of obvious that there's a certain ceiling to the growth. You can have some flow through, but the growth turns out to be not much” — Former BLI senior scientist"

"“Okay. Where are you at - and where would Bemis be at in terms of its CAPEX cycle? ... And that would cause a drain on sales.” — David Errington, Analyst, Aug 2018; “David, we have been spending at just a tad above D&A. And this year in 2018, we've brought it down significantly below D&A.” — Bemis CEO, Aug 2018; “David, I just want to come back to the point about capital because I just wanted to mention the comment that I made... the math would suggest $350 million to $400 million of CAPEX.” — Amcor CEO Delia, Aug 2018; “Hi, guys. So, firstly, I wanted to ask a little bit about the CapEx, it seems it was a little bit lighter than expected this year...” — Analyst, Bemis Q4'18 Call; “Yeah. Salvator, we were right on target with where we've expected to be with our CapEx plans in 2018... we're talking somewhere between the $150 million to $180 million level of CapEx as you go forward.” — Bemis CEO, Jan 2019; “And we invest at about depreciation level in terms of CapEx or, call it, 4% of sales.” — CEO Delia, Dec 2019; “I think previously, you talked about D&A being similar to CapEx in the kind of $450 million range. It looks like after stripping out the amortization from deals, it was only $96 million in 2Q and kind of ran just a little bit north of $200 million in the first half.” — Analyst, Feb 2020; “Look, yes, typically, we would spend CapEx kind of in line with depreciation, so around that $450 million mark. We're a little behind that in the first half, just slightly behind.” — CEO Delia, Feb 2020."

""They try to call Omnia a high-frequency tonic [low frequency stimulation] which is bullshit. It's the same thing. They try to claim that they have burst which is also like a high-frequency burst. Bullshit. There's no data. They never did a study. Omnia is what everyone else's device can already do, just packaged in a little Nevro box. If a doctor already left Nevro because their device sucks, there's nothing Omnia does that's brand new or innovative that you can't do with whatever company you already use." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter; "I haven't implanted the Omnia. It's an incremental benefit. It will be better than Senza. I don't think it'll be a game changer. It won't bump my Nevro share any more. Every stim company comes up with a new device every couple of years. It's an incremental, evolutionary advancement. Not revolutionary." — High volume implanter; "The impact of Omnia is incremental. I think it's incremental for the Nevro users that were concerned about Nevro's limitations and therefore gave some cases to other companies. I don't know how much it gains new doctors. By now you've either used Nevro or you haven't. They're not really converting people from other companies all of a sudden because of the Omnia. They've almost exclusively converted over the previous Senza and Senza 2 users to Omnia but at the same time, I don't think it's a as big of a leap as the first time around with HF10 versus paraesthesia-based stim." — KOL and high volume Nevro implanter and consultant"

"“So the question is, why do they have to pulse? People can show pulse data, no problem, but we really want to see the continuous data. When you're continuously moving across 30-microns of lithium, what happens? That's what Prof. Sakamoto's point is as well [in the Levine article]. They might be doing some trick, reversing something and then pulsing again and then doing something else. That is not how batteries are operated in the field. Pulsing helps to solve the dendrite problem because as temperature goes up during the resting period, lithium metal will even out because it melts at a very low temperature. When you pulse, the resistance increases and the temperature increases. As the cells rests, the lithium smooths out. I don't know what other tricks they played during the resting period. We're curious.” — Solid state expert; “We conducted a similar pulse experiment in our lab. But the problem is the voltage profile, which has no spike. All the lines look very flat. Typically, when we go with very high current density like 100mA, there will be some kind of voltage spike. But we don't see it [in their slide]. I conducted a similar pulse experiment and we always see the voltage spike, even in a liquid cell. I don't understand why they have no voltage spike at all. There is a certain shape in the voltage should be seeing, but we don't see it. The x-axis says 30-micron lithium, so they moved across 30-micron lithium, but with pulses, not continuously but using a resting period.” — Solid-state expert"

"“They're going to have to get their act together to make sure that they understand what the customer needs and what they need to deliver...Honestly, I don't see how—they might get lucky, but in my experience right now, if you don't have, from the customer side of things, if they don't have someone that understands synthetic biology and understands the process and can really review the data, review the project, the advancement of the project is going to be difficult to be successful, unless Ginkgo hires really amazing program directors.” — Current Motif executive; “A lot of them are pretty much fresh out of Ph.D. So, this is their first job...at the speed they're growing right now, it's difficult for them to recruit senior people.” — Current Motif executive; “I think it just really comes back to having a very young, inexperienced team. We would give them a statement of work and a proposal for what we wanted to have done, and they would just seem to not be able to execute on it. Or we had them try to develop an assay for us, and we kept getting no results back from it. The assay just wasn't done; it wasn't developed. They kept dragging on, or would give us something that we thought should be done, and we would test it and find that it didn't work the way it was supposed or they hadn't used the proper controls...the mindset around customer service didn't seem to be there. It was very casual about, oh well, we can just keep fiddling around with this and charging you for it.” — Senior employee at Joyn"

""This was certainly hallway conversations at ATC. The discussion that people had in the hallways was, first of all, we’re glad there’s going to be competition, so TransMedics can’t be the only game in town. Almost everybody was saying that. Again, I’ll leave it to you whether this would devastate their earnings reports or not…this is not going to stay exclusive much longer." — Cardiothoracic transplant surgeon, director of a leading academic transplant center; "If there is not much of an advantage of having this incredibly expensive setup versus a $30k different technology, then I think they’re going to have a very hard time selling it." — Transplant hepatologist and director of the liver program at a Midwest academic center; "There’s going to be a point where the cost is going to go down. Right now, TransMedics doesn’t have big competition. The only competition is called OrganOX. That is the same type of machine perfusion. There are other new companies that are going through the FDA to get approved. Those are different types of pump like hyperthermic machine perfusion. So, I can guarantee you that these companies, they are going to get approved by the FDA. I think that in the next year or two years at the most, you are going to have other competitors with TransMedics. Because of the cost, people are going to start shifting gears, and they’re going to be changing to a different pump because it’s not sustainable for a transplant center..." — Transplant surgeon in a leadership role at Vanderbilt"

""The company did find interesting opportunities to invest within its own portfolio by providing senior and subordinated capital to existing portfolio companies. The availability of senior debt capital from traditional sources, such as banks, continues to be scarce, and the company had several opportunities to purchase senior or subordinated notes at a discount from lending institutions looking to liquidate or reduce middle market portfolios." — Allied Capital April 23, 2002 earnings press release. "There’s been a couple of portfolios where people have chosen to go out of the business and as we’ve said repeatedly, our business is that of mezzanine investments with a long term illiquid asset class and when people need to engage in a fire sale of assets, those are typically traded at a discount and last quarter we purchased some sub-debt at a discount. And that was simply because of the fire sale phenomenon. It had nothing to do with the credit quality of the companies whose debt we were buying. In fact, it was a huge opportunity for us and very good for the shareholders. Now in cases where we were buying down senior debt where we have a subordinated debt investment, we recapitalize the business and write down the subordinated debt appropriately to reflect the overall value of the business. So it’s not a question of us buying down senior debt at a discount and leaving the sub-debt in place at its previous structure and value. That simply does not happen." — Mr. Walton, May 16th conference call."

"You know, MPS carries a certain buyout premium. It's already baked into the price. Pick a number, 20%, 25%, assuming it's going to be bought. I think that's in there. Otherwise I can't figure out the P/E ratio. Uh, so, so the biggest issue is Michael not interested in selling the company. I mean, it's not the money. He does it because he likes to run it and the executives are with him I would say are not necessarily executives who would succeed at another company. I don't know how to put it in any other way that's just based on their culture and style. They would not necessarily show up at Intel and get a job. Right? So, so they all, I'm just being straight forward with you. Well, there's, as you said, the numbers. I think the thing that kept people from buying it, it's like, what happens if all these guys leave. And then what do we got? So that's always the biggest thing is the magic sauce leaves then really getting anything from the deal, right? The whole different culture, I think that's the biggest thing that keeps anybody from even trying to buy it. And so they're not, they're not sure. Uh, you know, and particularly since all the engineering now is mostly done in China and if you're not Chinese, you're not exactly sure if you're not speaking the language, if that's true or what's going on or who your key people are, all those kinds of things. So I think, uh, I think that's the strength of MPS, but also something that would keep a buyer away. — Former Senior Executive (Post IPO era)"

"“That would describe Jean-Charles. It was really fundamental research that he published. But then, after a while, it’s like, well, what? It was a great discovery, but it doesn’t make you a pharmaceutical company, right? When I showed up, the first talk I gave was in the Netherlands on what we were doing…and at the end of the talk, he shouted from the audience. He said how can I have the nerve to come to Europe and not acknowledge all the work that they did? And I was just stealing all their science. He did that in a public forum. And he did it to somebody from Novo Nordisk, who was talking in the lecture before and then two years later, he attacked a guy from GSK. It’s just insane. And I’d never had this at a scientific meeting…there was a degree of arrogance there.. It was bizarre. I’ve never come across that before…he was always very dismissive of other pharmaceutical companies, and I had a couple of shouting matches with him over some of the science because he felt he was the owner of H3. He had actually—he characterized the receptor. He got two nice papers in Nature, I believe. But he was a—I don’t want to be pejorative about—he had this arrogance about him… When pitolisant came out—I remember going to international meetings and getting into screaming matches with these guys because they felt they had everything and all the big pharma companies would rip them off, which was not the case” — Ex-longtime senior scientist at Johnson & Johnson, with global leadership roles in neuroscience"

"Q4 2011 call: "We anticipate BoneTone's business will generate modest revenues starting in 2012." — DSP Group Management; Q1 2012 call: "We're happy to update you about our first design wins for our HDMobile Audio products with a leading Korean OEM customer for Bluetooth headset product with revenues that are expected in early 2013...Now, we did not want to talk about any specific names because we cannot, but these discussions are ongoing and will continue...we have very high expectations of a commercial success." — DSP Group Management; Q2 2012 call: "Now because of certain confidentiality agreements and certain NDAs, we are not able today to disclose anything, but I'm sure that once these products are going to be designed in, and also will be launched into the market, it will be pretty much apparent to where we are and where we are not." — DSP Group Management; Q4 2012 call: "We expect to deliver engineering samples in the second quarter of 2013...And we are going to start delivering engineering samples, basically begin the design-in process in a significant way during the second half of the year with a target to achieving design wins during the second half and converting that to mass production in late 2013, early 2014." — DSP Group Management; Q1 2013 call: "And so we believe that we will see this year the evaluation, the designing process – the design-win process, and revenues as early as fourth quarter 2013 into first, second, third, fourth quarter of 2014." — DSP Group Management"

"“CEOs or other top executives who serve on each other’s boards create an interlock that poses conflicts that should be avoided to ensure the promotion of shareholder interests above all else” — Glass Lewis 2017 Proxy Paper Guidelines; “While many companies have an independent lead or presiding director who performs many of the same functions of an independent chair (e.g., setting the board meeting agenda), we do not believe this alternate form of independent board leadership provides as robust protection for shareholders as an independent chair.” — Glass Lewis 2017 Proxy Paper Guidelines; “If the person [Lead Director] is not independent or lacks substantive duties, the position is simply cosmetic.” — ISS 2016 U.S. Proxy Voting Manual; “One particular relationship that should raise a red flag is when the CEO of company A sits on the compensation committee of company B whose CEO is a director of company A or the converse. ISS typically categorizes such directors as affiliated outsiders.” — ISS 2016 U.S. Proxy Voting Manual; “The nominee [Russo] is an incumbent member of the nominating committee and the chair of the board is not independent. The nominee is an incumbent member of the compensation committee and the ratio of CEO compensation to compensation of the average named executive officer is inequitable. The nominee sits together on more than one board with another director. The nominee sits on five or more public company boards..” — NEI Investments 2015 Proxy Voting Report"

"In fact, Dynetics' technical capabilities address 5 of the 7 technology priorities laid out by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, specifically, hypersonics, space, directed energy, artificial intelligence and machine learning and microelectronics. — CEO Krone, Deal Announcement Conf, Dec 17, 2019; Dynetics, it's an industry-leading Applied Research and National Solutions company. The high-growth areas that we're engaged in, you see over on the right-hand side of this chart, the development and manufacture of components for hypersonics and space solutions. — Leidos CFO Reagan, Goldman Conf, May 12, 2020; That said, if you look back at Joe Biden's history in the Senate, he's been typically, historically a strong supporter of the DoD. And what you're hearing out of the transition team is that they're going to continue to support modernization initiatives at the DoD, a lot of emphasis on space, a lot of emphasis on things like hypersonics, that would help us realize the promise of our investment Dynetics, for example. — Leidos CFO Reagan, Credit Suisse Conf, Dec 2, 2020; The Missile Defense Agency has selected Northrop Grumman to join L3Harris Technologies for the next phase of the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Senor project, a move that bumps Raytheon and Leidos from a contest to develop a next-generation, orbiting, infrared system to track ultrafast and maneuvering threats from launch to impact. — Missile Defense Cuts Leidos, Jan 22, 2021"

""Checkmate-026 failure highly surprising represents setback in largest segment of the I/O market...We are disappointed and highly surprised by the outcome and see the failure as largely driven by the study's broad design..." — JP Morgan, August 2016; "This is a MAJOR SURPRISE - possibly the biggest clinical surprise of my career...our only lead is the much-broader patient population in BMY's trial: their high-expresser cutoff was 5% PD-L1 expression, a much lower bar than MRK's 50%." — Evercore ISI, August 2016; "Not surprised CM-026 failed given the 5% PD-L1 threshold...unlikely that other factors played a role. PD-L1 expression level I was the key difference. Opdivo and Keytruda are therapeutically equivalent." — Cowen, August 2016; "...completely puzzled by Bristol's decision to evaluate...at a threshold this low, particularly given that the trial description indicated patients would be strongly expressing PD-L1...and probably most of the market, thought the threshold was at least 10%, and therefore expected that the trial had a reasonably high probability of success...suspect that the reason the trial failed is that the PD-1 threshold of at least 5% was too low." — BMO Capital Markets, August 2016; "Bristol-Myers Squibb has suffered a $21 billion self-inflicted wound." — New York Times, August 2016; "Bristol-Myers went for a broader patient population, potentially winning a bigger market but increasing its risk of failure." — Investor's Business Daily, August 2016"

"“..all these DTC companies are set up like that. And it just blows my mind.” — Spruce Point Interview with Former HIMS Executive; “So there's kind of this figurehead, uh, physician who's the owner of the PC and that person is technically the one who might make decisions, but the data's being analyzed by people within HIMS. There is zero quality analysis happening outside of HIMS, put it that way.” — Spruce Point Interview with Former HIMS Executive; “There's a lot of tracking of the statistics of how long these visits take and what they cost. Different doctor visits are offered different promotions...I do know it was tracked pretty heavily to have a good understanding of the total cost makeup of [the consultations].” — Spruce Point Interview with Former HIMS Executive; “You are right that they're not really a separate entity. HIMS owns that doctor network...Like, those doctors don't work for anybody else.” — Spruce Point Interview with Former HIMS Executive; “Basically the doctor was just asked to sign off on stuff when they needed to... kind of quote unquote signing off on hiring physicians and things like that.” — Spruce Point Interview with Former HIMS Physician; “It's really HIMS that does it. It's just strange to me. But anyways, HIMS is effectively making those decisions. The owner of the PC is the one that would ultimately fire or not fire, but the conversation inside of HIMS is we had to fire this provider.” — Spruce Point Interview with Former HIMS Executive"

""I bought 3 Trios wireless scanners.... I am very angry with Align that they will fight a legal battle over the backs of their customers. I have invested more than $150K in Trios scanners and then from one day to the next they may say to me, ‘I am sorry, you can not use your scanner to submit cases that way.’” — Orthodontist (Ex-US); "I hate Invisalign. I think they are the worst company in the world to deal with. I philosophically hate what Invisalign has turned my practice into.... I am sick and tired of Invisalign taking my information and using it against me. You don’t see 3M or Ormco doing that... Invisalign is not a company that I am partnered with. They are not going to help me. It is simply a product that I am going to buy and eventually I will move to a competitor. I have no loyalty to Invisalign.... It is just a matter of time that I move as much of my case volume as possible away from Invisalign." — Orthodontist, Diamond Plus Align Tier; "There is a 50% chance that we move away from Invisalign when our contract comes up in 2020 and for me to say that is a big deal. It’s a really big deal. I personally have not been happy with the service for the last year and half." — Dentist, Top 10 DSO; "Clear aligners cases will go up in my practice, but Invisalign will not.... Invisalign is the evil empire." — Orthodontist, Diamond Plus Align Tier; "It would be the best thing to come out of this [pandemic]. Invisalign getting f*cked." — Orthodontist, Platinum Tier"

"“I think they’re losing money partially because of pricing, obviously, and partially because their system isn’t as efficient as they expected. The people who are making money in this space are doing the volume that Twist is, and they’re not doing it at 10 cents a base. They have much, much higher pricing, but they will make any sequence you want. Some sequences are really complex to make, and pharma customers will put a value of $1.50 or $2 a base or more on those, depending on how hard they’ve tried to make them before they look for someone who can do it for them. There is money to be had there, but you can’t go after the entire commodity market. I don’t think Twist has the capability to make that harder stuff yet. I know they’ve talked about building it. They even talked about doing it when I was there, but it’s a different kind of manufacturing to make that work. It requires a different approach to what you’re doing, and I don’t think they’ve established that ability.” — Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles; “They charge a lot higher prices for their work. Almost double. No, they don’t lose money. Thermo wouldn’t tolerate that. They also have a better algorithm for scoring them so that you can say the average gene is going to cost you 18 cents a base. This’re really complex and long. It’s going to cost you 45 cents a base. They’re right most of the time.” -Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles"

"As the company matures, we believe management needs to offer a more sophisticated capital allocation strategy to reflect its size (both revenue and market capitalization) and stage of development. — Goldman Sachs, Sept. 2016; As Cognizant matures and its topline growth slows, the company’s overall capital return profile is increasingly important to investors. — Bernstein, Aug. 2016; Cognizant’s investors increasingly expect the company to return cash in the form of dividends and buybacks, specifically as its growth rates slow down and the stock transitions from being a growth story to a GARP/value stock — J.P. Morgan, Sept. 2016; …We believe the introduction of a regular dividend could broaden the appeal of the stock to new investors, while enhancing total shareholder return. In our view, gone are the days when investors look at the initiation of a dividend by a growth company as a negative. — Jefferies, Oct. 2016; In the recent past (last six to nine months), our positive bias of the company was largely driven by our belief that Cognizant would take on a more Accenture-like model, prioritizing capital returns to shareholders, especially in the form of a consistent dividend. On that front, we are disappointed with the company and have not seen any signs of the company moving in that direction. Given that this aspect of the story was a big driver of our Outperform rating, our diminished confidence has contributed to the downgrade. — William Blair, Nov. 2016"

"“All of their clinical data that they first gained market share with - they have now said through their actions of launching Omnia that it was all hogwash, because they now offer a product that does lower frequency.” — Longtime C-level executive in the SCS space; “Omnia is not going to do it for Nevro. The issue is that they’ve now lost their identity. They’re now the same as everyone else. The only product in the space that’s differentiated is the Abbot IPG. Nevro, Boston Scientific, others are all saying exactly the same thing. They’re all saying burst, different, waveforms, etc. Omnia is not differentiated. It has nothing specific that will hit the nail on the head for doctors. Omnia’s burst waveform isn’t actually a burst. They’re claiming it’s something it’s not. I just don’t see it being an effective strategy. Medtronic and Boston Scientific already went to market saying we can do other waveforms and things and it hasn’t worked for them.” — Former sales executive now at a key competitor; “The Omnia launch was an acknowledgement that they needed to change course because the novelty and newness of high frequency has worn off.” — Former regional sales manager in charge of one of Nevro’s largest territories; “Nevro has lost their identity. Going toward they’re positioning around Omnia which can do everything. They’re no longer differentiated which creates a big problem. Being different is one of the key things in the SCS market.” — Former sales executive"

""The large variability in capex versus original guidance (just set six months ago) demonstrates some lack of capital discipline within the company." — Citigroup (July 25, 2012); "Our view is that exploration spending should at least come down by 50%." — Citigroup (July 20, 2012); "The key issue for HES in our mind is capital intensity and the inability of management in recent years to live within the limits of its cash flows." — Citigroup (July 20, 2012); "Our valuation includes a ~$6 per share penalty for uneconomic exploration activity." — Citigroup (November 2, 2012); "We then discount that number [Hess value] by 20% to account for Hess's high exploration spending." — Deutsche Bank (November 6, 2012); "To summarize, the key growth assets underperform, expectations are lowered, and a key investor fear – Hess's propensity to outspend cash flow – is stoked by an early upward revision to the 2012 budget." — Deutsche Bank (April 25, 2012); "We believe Hess should consider further reducing its exploration program beyond what has already been announced." — Deutsche Bank (November 6, 2012); "A significant reduction in its global exploration program we also think is needed, as we do not believe Hess has a competitive advantage in all the areas it is currently exploring." — Goldman Sachs (June 11, 2012); "The company's high-risk/high-potential exploration and acreage strategy since 2009 is thus far not yielding favorable results." — Goldman Sachs (June 11, 2012)"

""10kHz is not a magic number. The PROCO study by Simon Thompson shows that. It was a crossover study design that evaluated 1,4,7, and 10kHz stimulator frequencies. Each patient received each frequency for 2 to 4 weeks at a time and then rated their pain. Patients had no preference, suggesting there was no difference in pain relief by frequency. Nevro has tried to bash the study. Simon has consulted with Boston Scientific, so there's some of that. Boston didn't fund the trial and I believe the PROCO study. Nothing has convinced me to date that 10kHz is better than 1kHz." — KOL and key player in Nevro's pivotal SENZA-RCT trial; "The Boston Scientific data throws a monkey wrench in Nevro's data. It creates reasonable doubt even for someone like me who likes Nevro." — High volume implanter and significant Nevro customer; "There was a revolution with Nevro's HF10. It was very attractive initially. Then Boston Scientific showed there's nothing magical with 10kHz. Nevro was the first kid on block with their paresthesia-free, kind of like Tesla with the first electric vehicle. Now everyone has electric vehicles. The advance Nevro had is now outweighed by the compromises of it. It's the biggest device by far. It requires way, way more recharging. It needs a lot more reprogramming than any other device. If reps spend a lot of time reprogramming in your office, they need a lot more reps to support docs. It's a business model issue." — KOL and high volume implanter"

""The problem with AST SpaceMobile is the structural dynamics of their spacecraft – the way they intend to build a giant phased array antenna is really poorly thought out...their knowledge of structural dynamics is so positively infantile; I don't know how they got as far as they did. I think their approach to making a giant antenna just won't work. I think even if you could talk directly to a handset from space, they wouldn't be able to do it." — Physicist and Former Senior Engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; "The size of the antenna is terrifying...there’s only a handful of entities that have deployed a foldable thing in space that big and they’re NASA and intelligence entities...it’s an extremely difficult thing to do and it’s also more or less impossible to accurately test on the ground." — Former Director of Engineering at SpaceX, led team of 150 engineers across multiple disciplines; "Some of the preliminary engineering that I’ve seen did not have the same tolerances I would expect in a zero gravity deployment space environment and the number of single point failures in the articulation on deployment; all of those factors...talking about risk to the company, you’re betting everything on that one demonstration...all of that is riding on a hundred different opportunities for the phased array to not deploy." — Former Director of Supply Chain for leading defense prime who reviewed engineering designs for the phased arrays of BW3 and BlueBird-1"

""The Elliott plan makes perfect sense for Hess shareholders. In fact, it is state-of-the-art and ought to be more broadly adopted. Tying director compensation directly to outperformance against peers perfectly aligns the directors with the interests of shareholders. The payments are legal obligations, not discretionary, and they bear no relationship whatsoever with any recommendations put forward by Elliott. I think it is a great plan that serves Hess shareholders well." — Yair Listoken, Professor, Yale Law School; "Hess shareholders should not find this approach objectionable, but should in fact be happy that Elliott is willing to pay its own money to compensate director nominees based directly on Hess's stock price performance relative to its peer group. This approach is transparent and clear, and it aligns the interests of independent nominees with those of Hess shareholders." — M. Todd Henderson, Professor, University of Chicago Law School; "The Elliott nominee compensation plan closely aligns the interests of those nominees with the medium and long term interests of Hess shareholders and has no impact on a director's independence or ability to fulfill his duties to stockholders. The payout criteria are objective, not discretionary, and they tie only to market price performance over a fairly long period, regardless of whether the Board adopts Elliott's proposals." — Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Professor, Widener Institute of Delaware Corporate Law"

""To tell you the truth, I was always relatively pessimistic on Nevro. In fact, I had to write an article in one of the journals a few years ago saying that Nevro will not last unless they provide other waveforms and the company wrote nasty letters back to me because I believed even at that time that it's not a one-size-fits-all. What they're doing with Omnia - what they're doing is nothing special, that's the bottom line. They're coming around to every other company which says that you need to offer everything. I don't consider this a gamechanger at all. Omnia is nothing dramatic. That Nevro has come out with this is not earth-shattering." — High volume implanter; "Omni's not a game-changer. The rest of the world moved on from Nevro so Omnia is just using the low-frequency therapy Nevro claimed they were better than, to salvage the company. But you could do low frequency with Abbott, Medtronic, or Boston Scientific, and you have a device that's MRI compatible and one you don't have to recharge." — KOL and former high volume Nevro user; "Abbott came out with a device you don't ever have to recharge for 10 years, or you implant Medtronic and it's MRI compatible. If the high frequency doesn't work, why would you use their low frequency device over someone else's? Nevro's entire campaign at launch was about how much better they were than low frequency, but now they're using low frequency to salvage themselves." — KOL and former high volume Nevro user"

""We think point-of-care fecal combined with urine product is unique, its innovative. It's something that we've done internally. We haven't partnered with outside people because we don't think it exists out there on the human side, just veterinary eyes it. So we designed a kind of a purpose fit product for that." — CEO Kevin Wilson (Stifel Conference June 2021); "And then the big innovation that investors who have followed us for a while, we worked on this product for the last three or four years, is an in-house innovation. We think we've invented some very unique things here to tackle what we consider to be one of the largest problems of veterinary healthcare, which of course, would be analyzing urine, but more importantly, analyzing fecal. And so, we've invented the Element AIM. It is in the process of being launched this quarter after several years of research and development. We're manufacturing this product in the United States, up in New England and that's underway." — CEO Kevin Wilson (Jefferies Conference June 2021); "We did experience some supply chain disruption and delays for things like advanced computer chips...I'm sure my R&D and operations teams are thrilled that you ask, because they live it every day...I think, we've secured the major components." — CEO Kevin Wilson (Q2 2021 Earnings Call); "Collaborating with third-parties for the development and manufacturing of the Element UF urine and fecal analyzers." — Heska 2019 10-K"

""They've got these ideas around cell therapy - I laughed when I took a peek at their S-1. That's so far out. Not only do you have to get a pharma to buy this thing and use it, you have to get somebody to take it through the FDA, a novel device. Is Berkeley Lights going to pay for that? Are they going to do their own first to get it approved in some application? A pharma company who's building the therapeutic has to take the risk of using something new at the FDA. The FDA could be like, 'Nah, no. We don't know about that. That sounds complicated.' It's just a risk. In cell therapy to introduce new modes of testing or production are likely going to take a very long time and I think it's going to be hard to get the incentives appropriately. Who are the companies who are going to build knowing that's a risk? That's a platform risk. They will crawl up the rear end as a class 1 device. It's a heavy lift." — Former executive; "A lot of work was focused on generating datasets that could confirm that the Beacon platform could generate data that would support an IND filing with the FDA, comparable to traditional methods that are employed right now. They got to a point where they really needed to prove that you could replace completely the standard cell line development workflows with the Beacon workflow and have the same likelihood of success with the FDA or, in general, with a pharma company. That was mostly the focus." — Former employee/scientist"

"“Right now we just can’t [get behind the Company] because we’re again disdained and there’s very little concern right now at the C-suite, you know, outside of their jobs. There’s not a concern for the employees. And that’s something we can never forget and really won’t.” — SWAPA Leadership, The SWAPA Number Podcast (July 1); “I’m a retired Southwest Captain and I couldn’t agree with you more on the next steps for Southwest... When I started at Southwest in 1997, it was ‘us against the world!’ Now it’s every man for himself as our famous culture is dying a slow, painful death. I believe it can be fixed, and I’m hoping you and your group can make it happen.” — Former Employee; “Not only do I have a vested interest in the success of the company (my SWA stock has lost over half of its value) but I have spent 50% of my life flying and working for a company that was once the envy of every other airline operating in the world. Without any doubt I agree that a new leadership team is needed.” — Current Employee; “As a SWA employee of more than 23 years, I am in complete agreement with your analysis. I have been screaming this for 15 years.” — Current Employee; “I am a former 21 year employee retiree and stock holder of SWA who completely agrees with your perspective of current senior management at SWA. [Bob Jordan] has driven the airline into the ground. Thank you for taking a bold stance and insisting on making some changes.” — Former Employee"

""Right now we just can’t [get behind the Company] because we’re again disdained and there’s very little concern right now at the C-suite, you know, outside of their jobs. There’s not a concern for the employees. And that’s something we can never forget and really won’t." — SWAPA Leadership, The SWAPA Number Podcast (July 1); "I’m a retired Southwest Captain and I couldn’t agree with you more on the next steps for Southwest... When I started at Southwest in 1997, it was ‘us against the world!’ Now it’s every man for himself as our famous culture is dying a slow, painful death. I believe it can be fixed, and I’m hoping you and your group can make it happen." — Former Employee; "Not only do I have a vested interest in the success of the company (my SWA stock has lost over half of its value) but I have spent 50% of my life flying and working for a company that was once the envy of every other airline operating in the world. Without any doubt I agree that a new leadership team is needed." — Current Employee; "As a SWA employee of more than 23 years, I am in complete agreement with your analysis. I have been screaming this for 15 years." — Current Employee; "I am a former 21 year employee retiree and stock holder of SWA who completely agrees with your perspective of current senior management at SWA. [Bob Jordan] has driven the airline into the ground. Thank you for taking a bold stance and insisting on making some changes." — Former Employee"

"We view nearly all aspects of the Red Lobster transaction as not particularly compelling. — UBS, May 20, 2014; $2.1billion represents a seemingly compelling 9.0x EBITDA multiple, but it's on artificially depressed F14 ests and offers no premium to a conservative DCF. — Credit Suisse, May 20, 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 after shareholders clearly indicated that they did not want the Company to enter into a transaction unless it was subject to their approval. — Barington, May 19, 2014; In short, in our eyes, “the taxman stole the show” by taking 25% of the gross proceeds. — Stifel, May 16, 2014; Today, Darden announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Red Lobster business and related assets to Golden Gate Capital for $2.1 billion in cash. Destroying a business and giving it away for free is a familiar practice for CEO Clarence Otis. He first did it with Smokey Bones and has done it again with Red Lobster. — Hedgeye, May 16, 2014; Management's decision to ignore shareholder concerns and go forth with an undervalued sale of Red Lobster as opposed to waiting for operations to improve or entertain monetization without fully disposing the brand during a depressed earning's period will likely result in meaningful changes at the board level and among senior management. — Buckingham, May 16, 2014"

"“There are also a couple of companies that have gone in the other direction. Instead of adding functionality, they reduced down the assays to make them a little bit more manageable. Sphere Fluidics is one example of that. They're almost like a FACS instrument. You encapsulate your individual cells into these bubbles, along with reagents and whatever antibody you're trying to evaluate. Obviously, the readout is a fluorescent signal, just the same you do in Beacon.” — Leading academic institution/ex-BLI scientist. “The last company which is not a direct competitor, but you could certainly use the instrumentation to do antibody screening is IsoPlexis. Right now, they're well-known for cytokine panels, where they're looking at the secretion of different cytokines in different immune contexts. The idea is that you have single T cells; for example, you're looking at what they're secreting. Obviously, you could do the same thing with B cells to look at antibodies. And you basically use their panels to figure out which single cells are secreting what. They're still a little bit early, but it looks to me, based on some of my evaluation of the instrument, that they could take it in that direction. Again, it's a much less expensive instrument. It retains just enough of the functionality of Beacon to make it useful in similar applications. It's on the order of $250,000 as well or $350,000.” — Leading academic institution/ex-BLI scientist."

""Leslie is an inspiring and highly engaged board member with vast leadership experience. [...] Her deep insights into Governance and the public and investor debate regarding Social and Environmental Impacts will be valuable to any organization. Combined, this makes Leslie an ideal candidate for a seat on the board of any organization." — Diederik Timmer, Chair of the Board of Directors of US SIF and Managing Director of Morningstar Sustainalytics; "[I] can attest to her ability to deftly navigate the needs of shareholders and the critical calls for improved environmental, social, and governance performance. She has a deep understanding of emerging material ESG issues combined with a diplomatic but direct manner to effectuate change within organizations. In my view, Leslie would make vital contributions to the board that would help place McDonald’s at the forefront of ESG leadership." — Matt Patsky, CFA, Chief Executive Officer of Trillium Asset Management; "She's a key thought leader in shareholder advocacy, responsible for engagement strategies that have had tremendous impact and which many other investors have emulated to great effect. Her credibility as an integrator of public interest advocacy and responsible corporate governance is unmatched." — Dr. Chris Geczy, Wharton School of Business professor, member of Intel’s US Retirement Plans’ Investment Policy Committee and former member of NASDAQ’s Economic Advisory Board"

""The biggest risk is pricing pressure. I would say big pricing pressure from the retailers. Also, supply chain distribution is another risk. I would say price pressure will eat up their margin because they are over exposed to big box retailers." — Former PBH Employee; "As far as the big box stores, the pricing for the past 10 years has been very flat. There has been some growth in certain segments, such as C stores where they have seen some growth on the pricing side. But for the big box stores, the price changes were very flat because of reason like allowances, they would give a lot of concessions." — Former PBH Employee; "I am worried about the supply chain disruption because sometimes they can absorb the price increase from the suppliers. but sometimes retailers cannot pass on the consumer. I would think that for the big box retailers, they'll have a lot of price pressure. They will have to come up with some creative strategy to pass it on to other channel that are not as price elastic." — Former PBH Employee; "I don't think they will have a lot of price increase they can pass on to the big box retailers because they will come up with private brands. They will grow and put intense pressure. The only way is to go after the smaller players." — Former PBH Employee; "The challenge comes when its more than 50% savings. When a product comes in a 50% savings, that's when you lose much more." — Senior Manager Large PBH Customer"

"Part of the commodity here is that...it's hard to have IP around a plastic tube. Especially if you argue that you can put any suction on it. Just to give you a bit of context, there have been some companies engaging in a somewhat nefarious game of trying to sell supply chain departments that their aspiration catheters can only be used with their aspiration pump or their aspiration tubing, because that's the way that it is approved by the FDA. I mean - that's great, right? But obviously that is also a hollow argument because I could hook these things up to a wall suction and they would work just the same way. And everyone knows that. So, it is things like - some things they've been trying to do by essentially putting fear of human destruction into the hands of people who are not clinical, and they don't know how to respond to that. — Neurosurgeon; Penumbra went around to, and made a very big deal about, physicians using Medtronic, Terumo and Stryker aspiration catheters that previously did not have the stroke label indication. They freaked out a lot of doctors. This annoyed the doctors a lot because [the Penumbra salesman] should not be telling the doctors how they should be treating their patients. This also swayed some doctors to use Penumbra. — Neurovascular Products Sales Director; The FDA label matters more to less-sophisticated doctors, like radiologists. People like me do whatever I think is best. — Neurosurgeon"

""Deal terms, a $710mm upfront payment that we believe reflects certainly the value of this drug...So for us a very exciting opportunity, one that we believe will contribute significantly to the building of our I&I franchise..." — COO Perry Karsen, May 2014; "We had some thought leaders in the U.S., top-top thought leaders help us do the diligence and look at the data...We've done a tremendous diligence about it. We're very excited about it, and that's where Celgene should be." — Chairman & CEO Robert Hugin, June 2014; "Relative to GED, I think again, just to reiterate, we feel very strongly about the program, GED. It's our lead program in the Crohn's portion of IBD. We feel very strong about our ability to execute on it. We're excited. We're moving forward as fast as we can with all aspects of that program." — Chairman & CEO Robert Hugin, July 2015; "Key questions around the path to Ph3, the reproducibility of the data due to clinical site concentration and activity in broader set of patients remain unanswered." — Morgan Stanley, October 2014; "Expect upside for CELG as data support long-term $1.5-2B revenue promise as novel oral entrant in unmet Crohn's market." — Wells Fargo, October 2014; "We believe at peak GED-0301 could reach $3B++ in peak WW sales. Although Wall Street consensus includes very little for the drug, we believe investor expectations are much, much higher than zero." — Evercore ISI, October 2014"

"All of the SCS devices at the five-year mark really start to drop off. I'm always curious about what it is that happens after a year or two for these patients...No one has really studied that. That's the problem. For all SCS devices, I would say 50% have reached the point at 5 years where it's no longer helpful enough to keep using them and maybe even consider an explant. At 5 years they're explants or they move on to a different therapy but continue to use the stim, or they may even stop using the stim. We've seen patients say I am using the stim but I still need injections every three months. Or I need oral opioids. Some go on to have pumps. SCS was originally sold as a good opportunity to avoid having to return to ongoing injections or opioids. There was a retrospective review of changes in opioid use with stim because many companies would say "Oh, you know, you just how to solve the opioid crisis", but they found that you know with stim opioids don't necessarily go down. — High volume Nevro implanter; Long term, stimulators don't work as well. Patient are desperate, say it works, then say it doesn't work. It's usually a misleading trial in a patient. The published data says stim doesn't work in 30% of patients. — High volume implanter and moderate Nevro user; There were less than 10 neuromodulation studies in 50 years, only 6 even worth quoting. There's not much evidence. — Longtime Medtronic executive in SCS"

"[We] continue to view U.S. fiber assets as inherently less attractive due to the expensive availability of competitive fiber supply in the U.S. and the resulting less attractive growth and return characteristics of domestic U.S. fiber. — Former CEO James Taiclet, May 2019; With respect to outdoor small cells and fiber in the U.S., we've been a little bit less aggressive than some of our peers, in large part because when we run the numbers and input all of the modeling assumptions into our 10-year DCF, which we use for all of our investment evaluation, we arrive at overall returns that don't quite hit where we need them to hit. And for that reason, we've chosen to deploy our capital elsewhere. — Senior Director of Investor Relations, March 2019; To be big in fiber, by necessity, you probably have to have an enterprise business, which is a very, very different business. It’s just different. And we tend to stick with the stuff we know. — CEO Jeffrey Stoops, August 2019; We continue to be focused on macro sites...I mean, you used the word small cells, but really what small cells is, is fiber. And our shareholders want us to be a tower company, so we are very much focused on that. We will continue to look at exclusive pieces of real property where we might have some advantages that could lead to small cells, but to move into the fiber business is not something that we're pursuing today. — CEO Jeffrey Stoops, May 2017"

"We use [a lower EBITDA multiple] for MPC given its relatively less desirable refining asset footprint. — Jefferies, August 2016; Rain or Shine, Buybacks through Cycle; Upgrade to Buy — Jefferies, March 2023; MPC is a top-tier refining operator with commercial excellence...MPC [is our] top refining pick even after dramatic outperformance over roughly the past two years. — Raymond James, January 2023; [With] SU's older asset base and the current rising cost environment, it could be difficult to lower absolute operating costs. — J.P. Morgan, April 2022; SU continues to execute well under CEO Kruger, with strong operational results at nearly every Upstream and Downstream asset... — J.P. Morgan, November 2024; While our unchanged target price of $40 drives an attractive total return including dividends of ~19%, we remain In Line rated as we gain more comfort with the newly acquired business line and company's ability to execute on its pro forma financial plan. — Evercore, June 2023; During 2023 and 2024, NRG has been steadfast in executing against their operational and financial framework, which has yielded benefits as the company exceeded its adj. EBITDA guidance mid-point in '23 and raised its '24 guidance. — Evercore, January 2025; In a somewhat surprising tactic, PSX management talked down the potential [sum-of-the-parts] upside (i.e., [stating that the Company is] fairly valued). — Piper Sandler, March 2025"

"“Number one red flag and unanswered question is scalability. I will completely change my tone when I see a 20Ah battery from them. Two is energy density. Three might be whether you can scale sintering, that high-temperature process, but I think that's probably a little bit more nuanced. But one and two are the big ones. And one is the biggest one. There have been people who've shown really good data with single-layer pouch cells that could never scale. There was a thin film battery company that showed amazing cycling data, but they made it in a way that was never going to scale, so that company does not exist today. Can QuantumScape's single-layer cell scale and can it achieve a reasonable energy density?” — Solid state expert; “Although this looks great on paper, the real challenge comes with getting the product out in the market and that is where I feel that there are significant roadblocks.” — Former employee; “People need to understand what is needed for them to get to that manufacturing level. It goes back to the fact that you need to have that final spec battery ready and hit the mark for the size, the capacity, the pressure, the temperature, cycling speed, all of that. But then you also need to do it on such a scale that you're able to make hundreds, millions of these things over and over, like separators to make one part—but the separators, hundreds and millions of them.” — Another former employee"

"…it’s not as if [HYDROS] is adding to the TAM that already exists for the robot… — Former Procept Executive, Nov 2024; if you’re somebody that’s doing three a month or a hospital system that’s doing only five a month, there’s no rush to go get that new system. Absolutely not. — Former Procept Sales Rep, Nov 2024; Now, if they are a low volume customer, probably they won’t [upgrade to HYDROS], but if they’re, I would say medium to high, I would say they will upgrade. — Former Procept Manager, Nov 2024; …I believe they are offering sort of discounts and other things like that for hospitals that want to upgrade, and I don’t know how many are taking advantage of it. I would guess that they’re offering trade in trade up programs… — Former Procept Executive, Nov 2024; Now here’s where it gets a little awkward. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I said to them, so when do you give me my HYDROS? And they said, ‘…I think we could do a trade-in for $450,000’, and I said, ‘I don’t think so. It’s got to be a freebie because… there’s no way I could get my hospital paid $450,000 just so I don’t have to turn my head left to right. I think there’s going to be a little weirdness…I think they got to give [HYDROS] for free or they’re going to piss people off…If [my hospital] were to say to me, ‘dude, do we really need to upgrade? Is it better?’ I would say, ‘no, not at all.’” — Major Hospital Urologist, Nov 2024"

""The biggest risk is pricing pressure. I would say big pricing pressure from the retailers. Also, supply chain distribution is another risk. I would say price pressure will eat up their margin because they are over exposed to big box retailers." — Former PBH Employee; "As far as the big box stores, the pricing for the past 10 years has been very flat. There has been some growth in certain segments, such as C stores where they have seen some growth on the pricing side. But for the big box stores, the price changes were very flat because of reason like allowances, they would give a lot of concessions." — Former PBH Employee; "I am worried about the supply chain disruption because sometimes they can absorb the price increase from the suppliers. but sometimes retailers cannot pass on the consumer. I would think that for the big box retailers, they'll have a lot of price pressure. They will have to come up with some creative strategy to pass it on to other channel that are not as price elastic. I don't think they will have a lot of price increase they can pass on to the big box retailers because they will come up with private brands. They will grow and put intense pressure. The only way is to go after the smaller players." — Former PBH Employee; "The challenge comes when its more than 50% savings. When a product comes in a 50% savings, that's when you lose much more." — Senior Manager Large PBH Customer"

""I was seen by this clinic several times, a different person each time, and only on the last visit did I get to see the lauded Dr. [redacted]. He stormed into the room, introduced himself, and told me, without hearing a word from me, what he had determined I needed to do next, which was another procedure. When I told him I was not interested at this point in that procedure, and tried to discuss what I had come to talk about, which was concerns about contraindication with the medicine he had prescribed, he raised his voice and began telling me about how his way is the only way that works, and all my other doctors are incompetent. The longer I tried to get back to what I needed to speak with him about, the nastier/louder he got, until he was literally standing in front of me, yelling at me. In the end, he yelled he wouldn't treat me any more, and yelled from down the hall for me to leave. He absolutely did not care about anything I had to say. Please beware of this clinic and this man." — Patient review, 11/11/2019; "I felt he was trying to SELL me a spinal stimulator, rather than explain what it is. He blatantly lied about the size of battery and the pain level associated with it."- Patient review 6/26/2018; "Dr. [redacted] is the greatest doctor in the world, and if you don't believe it just ask him. His explanations are poor, doesn't seem to want to listen to the patient." — Patient review 11/1/17"

"Each new corridor, use case and service increases our TAM, differentiates us from the competition, and creates new revenue streams, driving even more growth. — CEO on TAM, Q4'24, Feb 19, 2025; So I think you're seeing that increased mix which is exciting from -- for a whole host of reasons, but most importantly, kind of sustainable long-term growth because the 900 corridors we launched last quarter, they are not going to materially contribute to revenue this quarter, next quarter. They're going to contribute to revenue in the years to come. — CEO, Q2'2022, Aug 3, 2022; So quite honestly, the top 20% of corridors, we as marketers would know and have a gut sense like, oh, yes, U.S. to India versus U.K. to India versus U.S. to Philippines, we just had this gut sense of their value, what was different in the marketing, all of that. But the other 80%, we put into this bucket called long-tail corridors, and they got essentially the same sort of marketing with obviously replacements...But a lot of those corridors were added kind of in large groups and they say, well, this is an additional corridor to continue to expand, but we don't know that it's going to be a massive corridor. So it sort of grow into our default bucket. And it would be marketed too, but it would be marketed with the same formula of all of our other long-tail corridors. — Former Remitly Channel Executive, Tegus Interview, June 14, 2024"

""John Kasich is a man of immense capacity to do good and has made a difference in the lives of so many, including my own. Integrity, smart, ability to go to the most important issues immediately, and a capacity to listen carefully – all characteristics of John Kasich. And, I believe, the needed characteristics to serve on a corporate board. Whatever he does, he adds value and makes a difference." — President Gordon Gee, West Virginia University – Apr. 4, 2024; "It was clear from the beginning that Governor Kasich was up to the challenge of navigating the budget crisis. He built a team of capable, trusted advisors, identified the issues and made tough decisions about what programs and funding to cut and where to invest. While he had strong opinions about what to do and how to do it, he also listened to our input, adjusted his plans and built consensus." — Thomas Neihaus, Former Ohio Senate President – Apr. 4, 2024; "Governor Kasich's creation of Jobs Ohio, aimed at fostering innovation, research and job creation in Ohio, further solidified his reputation as a visionary leader dedicated to driving growth and prosperity. As a Board Advisor, his strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, and ability to instill a sense of urgency have been instrumental in driving tangible outcomes and enhancing shareholder value." — Mahendra Vora, Executive Chairman of The Vora Group, based in Ohio – Apr. 4, 2024"

"“What they did was use an optical tool from KLA – the Teron product line. And this is an optical tool with a 193-nanometer light source. So, there's a limitation to what defects it can detect. Very small defects, it cannot clearly distinguish. For something that looks like a defect, they record the coordinates, and then these coordinates are transferred to an electron beam inspection tool, which is only looking at these suspicious-looking defect locations. Is the defect on print or not? So, they need a combination of optical DUV and electron beam inspection to inspect the mask.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec's CEO; “The current KLA systems are pretty good, but they're not as good as actinic. Having said that, a well-engineered system is more important than the wavelength...they're using the current DUV tools, and it was announced at the most recent conference that people who are appreciating all the work that KLA did on supporting EUV with the DUV tools. EUV and DUV are different but for supporting EUV inspection, the DUV tools actually do work...Those tools work really well and have been well-engineered for a long period of time. That's what people use. I think today, I think people are using the Lasertec actinic pattern mask inspection tool - they use that when it works...” — Ex-KLA director of engineering focused on EUV mask inspection"

""it is not a trivial task to find product-market fit. I think the entire technology came out of a prominent professor at UC Berkeley. It sounds very cool that you can move cells with electromagnetic waves and that you can repurpose semiconductor technology to assist with this movement. There was a search for a long time for, like, what could be applications where this is useful? The origin of the company wasn't a huge problem that no one else can figure out, so let's find the best solution. It was like, they found some great phenomena. Let's see what we can do with it. And sometimes, it does take a long time to figure out the best applications." — Former BLI executive; "I can give a little bit of history on the company side. The company started as this cool technology that could move cells. So, now what do you do with the with it? They tried to do many different research applications on it. None of it really stuck." — Former BLI product manager; "This wasn't like a typical company that I worked at. It was like they built a technology thinking it is going to do something, and then they had to figure out where to apply it ...I think a lot of people get into the wow, it's cool, but how exactly does the rubber hit the road? What application am I running? What's the data on the application? Is it robust? What's the price point for me to run it? What's my value proposition?" — Former BLI executive"

"“Yeah. So I mean you know before I get into that part, I mean, our customer demand has been good so far this year, we're off to a good start. Very pleased with the first quarter and also pleased with you know our increased guidance to the full year growth number. As we kind of look towards the second half of the year, we expect market conditions to generally remain favorable. But I think there's maybe two points to mention. One is comparisons. You know we get into some much more difficult comparisons especially in a multi-year stack basis, I mean if you start to think about multi-year stacks Q2, Q3 they get a little bit more difficult and then even just a one year stack you know the fourth quarter of last year we grew organically by 8%, that's going to be a more difficult comparison for us. So it's -- it has a lot more to do with the comparisons in our mind is in terms of maybe how you're looking at the sequencing of growth. I think Q1 also benefited a bit from the timing of Easter and maybe an easier comparison to last year which particularly affected maybe our European results and then maybe the second comment is that in terms of this year we have a little bit of a headwind in terms of our food retailing business that we called out on our call. If you exclude the estimated impact of food retailing this year, our organic growth would be about 6%.” — CFO Vadala, UBS Conference, May 21, 2019"

"“Many of these systems are about a small adult elephant in size and that’s not surprising because you have a lot of equipment. You have lasers; you have optical systems; you have a vacuum chamber; you have an electronic system, everything has to be well isolated, routed, all of that considered, and you also have to make room for physicists to go in and tinker, so human intervention from time to time is necessary. I understand the stock photos that IonQ uses often showing it is a small thing...that’s a vacuum chamber, it’s a fraction of the actual size of a quantum computer because to me; a computer is not necessarily just the ions and where the ions directly fit. To me, a computer is sort of a holistic thing. Because when we talk about the size of a computer, we’re talking about CPU, RAM, and all of the electronics that connect them and all of the things considered. If I have to use the conventional definition of a computer, the actual computer size is pretty large.” — Former senior technical IonQ employee; “If you look inside, you might see what looks like the optical equivalent for this spaghetti that you see on a superconducting dilution refrigerator with all of these wires coming down and things like that. The optical equivalent of that would be an optical table with mirrors and lenses and things like that” — Leading quantum computing scientist and longtime friend of both co-founders."

"Typically, someone can get up to speed in a quarter, and you probably need one to two FTEs working on it. It's not like a PCR machine that you can set it up and go. So, you need one expert or two, and there is a lot of headache on the downstream. By that, I mean, even if you can get the cell out, it's not that easy once you have the cell to do something. You need to do some large steps to actually do the sequencing. That is not that straightforward. — Former BLI product manager; The need for FTEs is much higher typically because you probably need three to five FTEs to do the same job, maybe something like that, and also some of them may need some skill that is specific, not just easily transferable. The ongoing cost to do the same experiment probably is—depending on how you do it—maybe half of a person. — Former BLI product manager; When it comes to the limitations, it's a tool that's not like a PCR machine; it's a little more like a FACS machine, which means you need a special operator. It's not like anyone can just jump in and do it. And that also maybe creates some pushback from the regular customers. Also, you need to plan a lot before getting something on the machine because you need to do a bunch of assays. These are not easy assays. Even though you're doing bulk format, so when you're trying to do a single-cell level, it gets pretty complicated. — Former BLI senior scientist"

"“Berkeley Lights uses a microfluidic device that has some chambers that are etched literally into the device. The limiting factor is how many of these chambers you have on the chip, and over time, they've developed chips with up to 13,000 or 14,000 chambers. The maximum number of cells that you can screen is actually right now, I think, only up to 13,000.” — Former BLI scientist; “Another issue that limits throughput is export of the cells from the microfluidic device to a plate, like on a culture plate. That process is also relatively time-consuming. It takes several hours to export a few hundred cells. Ultimately, those are the points where there's not much more optimization of the system that can be done to speed up the process. There are one or two main bottlenecks that we never really brought the throughput on par with a flow cytometer or sorter or some kind of droplet-based technology.” — Former BLI scientist; “Understanding the way technology actually works, which is by moving cells individually, that takes a certain amount of time. It can take up to a couple of minutes to process one cell. So, that gives you a massive throughput limitation. Just to screen one chip and to take a couple hundred cells off of that, that's an all-day process. And the cells only stay alive for a day or two maximum, depending on which immune cell type you're working with.” — Former BLI executive"

"“Considering that the average Remitly transaction size is around $350, we believe that the proposed rule change would impact the majority of Remitly's customer base.” — Letter To FINCEN Nov 27, 2020; “But when you're comparing why's, which was the question to Remitly or banks to Remitly, the average transaction size will bring down the take rate significantly even though the revenue and profit per transaction would be more similar.” — JP Morgan Conf May 23, 2023; “And the reason I mentioned that the $200 to $300 kind of average transaction size is our customer segment, unlike some other customer segments, the more affluent bank customers might have the privilege to wait to send money when rates are good.” — Goldman Conference Sept 7, 2023; “So the last 12 quarters, which is -- goes as far back in terms of when we've shared that as a public company, the take rate has been between 2% and 2.5%. So a lot of stability there between 2% to 2.5%. That's point one, stability in pricing.” — Goldman Conf Sept 2023; “So I'll break out pricing and take rate separately. On the take rate side, it makes sense, investors look at it because you've got revenue and you've got total volume. But the kind of take rate fluctuations, which were within a few basis points in Q1 is mainly due to mix shift because take rate is so heavily influenced by average transaction size.” — JP Morgan Conf May 20, 2024"

""So if you look at, for instance, our new 32 qubit system..." — IonQ CEO Chapman; "In our system, what we’re doing is we’re addressing the qubits directly. So, we’re not moving the qubits during computation. What there is, is there’s 32 laser beams, which come down and address each one of the qubits. And you can do that without actually moving the qubits themselves. In our next generation system,..What you’ll see is more qubits. And then there will be a qubit address selector technology that allows you to take the 32 qubits and address any one of the qubits that are sitting in the ion trap chip. Again, not moving them." — IonQ CEO Chapman; "And so, you could kind of think of it as the Honeywell system is... Maybe a good analogy would be they have a two qubit bus and we have a 32 qubit bus. And maybe trying to take a bit of a classical analogy, as well." — IonQ CEO Chapman; "We put our first customers onto the 32 in June, which was on private. So, we’ll continue to do that with private customers through the beta period." — IonQ CEO Chapman; "I mean, it’s that stark when you go from 32 to 64 qubits and you have two to the power of 32 more power in a year. I mean, imagine the pricing power that IonQ is going to have, right? These are the things that really get investors out of bed, get customers out of bed and, of course, are why we’re so excited about the space." — dMY CEO De Masi"

""The founder of the company and all the people that he brought over were all semiconductor guys. The company is really built around semiconductor engineers who were getting into biology. So, there's definitely this rift in the company between engineers and biologists. They're making equipment for biology and were kind like we're in charge. They didn't value or listen to their biologists so much." —Former BLI executive; "It was engineered by people who are not biologists, and it had some conceptions of biology that didn't match biologists' views...The problem is that they built this thing without a biologist's point-of-view, and so, in the beginning, they were battling biology. But these are the people that you're supposed to be selling equipment to...There was a conflict, engineers thinking they knew better how to do something than the biologists. It was this general-purpose concept-driven thing then had to try to find a home in terms of commercial or research value." —Former BLI executive; "For the longest time, we were missing a really good biologist at the executive level. I think that took a toll. Some of the mismatch was the semiconductor guys trying to understand biology, how biologists think, how research happens. That has a long-lasting impact. It was hard to get the biologists a voice there. There were a lot of engineering-driven decisions." —Former BLI senior scientist"

""We have years of disdain from leadership, and that’s how labor has been treated... I mentioned the word disdain before and I’m going to say it again because that’s the only way that really we can describe how labor has been treated and SWAPA and our data-driven analysis has been treated." — SWAPA Leadership, The SWAPA Number Podcast (July 1); "I’m a retired Southwest Captain and I couldn’t agree with you more on the next steps for Southwest... When I started at Southwest in 1997, it was ‘us against the world!’ Now it’s every man for himself as our famous culture is dying a slow, painful death." — Former Employee; "Not only do I have a vested interest in the success of the company (my SWA stock has lost over half of its value) but I have spent 50% of my life flying and working for a company that was once the envy of every other airline operating in the world. Without any doubt I agree that a new leadership team is needed." — Current Employee; "As a SWA employee of more than 23 years, I am in complete agreement with your analysis. I have been screaming this for 15 years." — Current Employee; "I am a former 21 year employee retiree and stock holder of SWA who completely agrees with your perspective of current senior management at SWA. [Bob Jordan] has driven the airline into the ground. Thank you for taking a bold stance and insisting on making some changes." — Former Employee"

"I think there’s a lot of window-dressing with Grossman and that’s why you’re not seeing this big uptake in revenue. If Omnia is so good and you’re got a hundred more reps out on the field and you’re doing all this great selling and all these customers are happy, why is it not going up? They’ve eroded their price. Nobody’s going to buy Omnia, unless you’re getting paid a couple thousand bucks to be put in a study to use it. — Former Nevro executive; When I listen to earnings calls, it’s “the business has stabilized, we’re excited about all these new platforms and new disease states, we’re going to do more of this” but at the end of the day, I just don’t see it. I really don’t see it. You’ve seen massive losses in Australia where that business used to be number one and now they’re number three or four. In Europe, high percentages of business are just going away because they don’t have the core competency in leadership. Here in the US, they’re going to have to start making changes in leadership and when that happens and stock options expire, then Keith is back in a corner. They’re going to lose a lot of their high-quality reps that have been on guarantees. For their management team, the stock options have already hit. They’re going to sell those and get out of there and then you’re back to pretty average people with pretty average performance. — Former Nevro executive"

""The story of the quarter is one of service revenue miss as it was essentially flat on a year-over-year basis. Our core offerings were affected primarily by channel disruption associated with cloud adoption. We did see some spending pull back late in the quarter and then we saw some underperformance in the U.K. So we're trying to be very transparent here to tell you why the miss." — CEO Shirley Singleton; "Total gross margin in the third quarter of 2016 was 35% compared to 38% in the year ago quarter, while gross margin related to service revenue in the third quarter of 2016 was 37% compared to 40% in the third quarter of 2015. The year-over-year change in both total gross margin and service gross margin during the third quarter of 2016 were primarily attributable to the current year increase in project and personnel cost and a decline in the software revenue margin contribution due to the change in the comparative quarterly software revenue mix." — CFO Tim Oakes; "Net income for the third quarter of 2016 was $43,000 or $0.00 per diluted share compared to net income of $1 million or $0.08 per diluted share during the third quarter of 2015. The change in periodic net income is in large part attributable to the previously discussed flat year-over-year third quarter 2016 service revenue combined with the increases in projects and personnel costs." — CFO Tim Oakes"

"Yeah...there was an instance where I was in the OR and the original center that was supposed to take a liver said we don’t want it. So, they had gone to the next place. And the next place was like, yeah, we’d like the liver. And so, we have TransMedics in the OR. Do you want to use them? And I believe it was a hospital that I think was in Arizona, and they’re like, well, yeah, I think we would love to do that but we don’t know what to do and everything. So, they were thinking about it. I remember they were on the phone, and then they were like, actually, never mind. We just want it on ice. We don’t want - they talked to the people from corporate at TransMedics because they were trying to get them to be like, oh, we can do a contract, and you can take it on OCS, and I think they were like, never mind, we want it on ice, so it didn’t go to that aggressive center...I know a lot of the times TransMedics would call, after the original hospital that was supposed to take this liver refused it. So, they would say, here’s a list of aggressive centers. Make sure you remind them who the aggressive centers are...they were very much campaigning for them. But they were always organs that had already been turned down by the first place...and then the next place would get to decide. But they really did want it to go on OCS once they were already there. — Former OCS Specialist"

""The New York office of Alcoa is best characterized as stale and unchanging, filled with protected mediocre talent who couldn't compete elsewhere." — Glass Door, April 10, 2015; "Management lives in a bubble, reactive, no planning, no support, it is like working with hands tied to your back and wearing blindfolds." — Glass Door, July 24, 2014; "Get some plant experience so you and your staffs learn that cost reductions often cost plants more than the savings you take credit for. Senior management is failing to deliver on promises to shareholders since company separated from Alcoa. Visit the plants and listen to the plant management to find a profitable path forward" — Glass Door, March 4, 2017; "While the C-suite enjoys an ever increasing suite of luxurious perks, they are consistently reducing benefits, withholding raises and cutting back for the regular employees who actually make the company run. The board needs to fire the CEO and stop his lavish spending." — Glass Door, July 13, 2016; "Stop putting non-technical background people in high leadership positions. They will run your plant into the ground and someone else will have to fix it." — Glass Door, January 16, 2016; "Unfortunately, without the engagement of your people that actually do the work and make your products, you can never achieve the excellence that you aspire to." — Glass Door, May 25, 2014"

""The data does not support the board's argument that the integrated strategy results in superior returns over the long-term..." — ISS; "In a campaign inextricably predicated on the notion that P66's asset mix is a favorable differentiator, the board's inability to draw what we consider to be a strong, straightforward throughline to shareholder value is a bust." — Glass Lewis; "Phillips 66's current conglomerate structure appears to be suboptimal for sustained financial growth." — Egan-Jones; "PSX has established a track record of providing selective and ambiguous disclosure that obfuscates results, makes it difficult to assess decisions, and creates impediments to evaluating performance." — ISS; "These issues stack on what we consider to be fairly disconcerting corporate governance considerations, including a dubious commitment to good faith engagement, a questionable and counterproductive realignment of key oversight roles and a late-stage candidate pivot which seems to call into question the board's prior candor. These issues should, in our view, be of significant concern to P66 investors." — Glass Lewis; "Currently, the Company has a combined Chairman and CEO leadership structure, a classified board, and over-tenured directors. A plethora of these problematic governance practices appear to be a driving force in the Company's underperformance." — Egan-Jones"

""A bunch of the guys that are [titles redacted] at Nevro used to work for me. I hired them into the neuromodulation space. Grossman's chief commercial officer doesn't know this space. I don't know that she understands the war that she's in for [...] Internally at Nevro, I don't think they see the substance, based on what I've been told, and they're scratching their heads and saying, "Hey, whatever. I'll take it. I hope the stock keeps going." There aren't fundamentals behind it." — Longtime SCS executive; "On his first two quarterly calls he basically said, 'I'm too new to give you numbers. I'm not going to commit to anything.' I've said all along; eventually, this guy is going to have to perform. His timing [in getting a pass from COVID] is pretty damn good because I know the people on the street at Nevro who are selling product, and I know the roadblocks they're up against. They haven't out-performed from a revenue standpoint. They've been given a 24-month pass. Rami was the scapegoat, and then it was, "Okay, let's give Grossman a year to get his feet under him," and now it's COVID. So, when does Nevro actually have to perform in Wall Street's eyes? They were the first company to say that that SCS market was shrinking and that just wasn't true. It's that they were losing market share, and they didn't know how to explain it away." — Longtime SCS executive"