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Callouts & quotes from 10,384+ activist slides

Every emphasised callout and every pulled quote, extracted slide-by-slide. Search by keyword, filter by slide type or by source.

Showing 1981–2040 of 10,384
quote villain critique

"It is very important from a culture perspective that companies that they acquired have a similar culture because the goal is not to take the product and fire the people. It's really to expand the knowledge of the team and to grow the Lightspeed team from an employee perspective. So usually during those acquisitions, there are very few people who get released because they choose the organizations that have similar cultures, mindsets and goals, and its really about blending the two of them together to bring something better to the market. — Former Lightspeed Manager"

Lightspeed Commerce, Inc. · LSPD Spruce Point Capital · p. 62
quote villain critique

""The same thing that's happened with Fleetmatics is the same thing that will happen with Samsara, and you're already seeing it a little bit. Samsara's renewal rates will suffer because their service and support is not really as big of a part of their business as acquisition is. So when you're going to look at the average lifetime of customers at Samsara, that number is going to keep shrinking as they grow, and their renewal rates, I know, are already going to start showing signs of weakness." — Tegus Interview with Associate VP of Carrier Sales at Geotab, 7/31/23"

Samsara Inc. · IOT Spruce Point Capital · p. 66
quote villain critique

"Two days after Cullinet’s shareholders approved the deal, Charles Wang called the company’s managers to a lunch-hour meeting and asked them to draw up their employee hit lists. Before the close of business, Wang had been given 400 names, representing about 25 percent of Cullinet’s payroll. The next day, the dismissed employees were notified and told to clear out their desks at once. Of the nine top executives, only one was asked to stay on: chief financial officer Douglas Robinson, who is now the vice president in charge of internal audits at Computer Associates."

Verint Systems, Inc. · VRNT Spruce Point Capital · p. 96
quote ceo quote

"“The SEC has recently confirmed, with little further guidance, that in fact fair value is not intended to be a ‘fire sale’ price. In In Re Parnassus Investments, an administrative law judge found that the fund had violated the requirement that the fund’s board of directors fair value restricted securities in good faith. Respondent had argued that the ‘current sale’ requirement was tantamount to a ‘fire sale.’ The judge responded that ‘[r]espondents are correct in that fire sale pricing was never the intention of the Commission.” — SEC/In Re Parnassus Investments"

Allied Capital · ALD Greenlight Capital · p. 9
quote ceo quote

"“We have had this strategic transformation...underway really going back, not only since I became Chairman and we started to shift to E&P, but predominantly when we started to build our Bakken position in 2010. So this is not something that just happened overnight and is response to an activist. In fact, Elliott got on the train after it really left the station. This is a carefully structured strategy that's been given a lot of thought, and it's really the natural culmination of the strategic transformation I went through in my remarks...” — John Hess, March 2013"

Hess Corporation · HES Elliott Management · p. 91
quote villain critique

"We own a 35% interest in Dominion Terminal Associates LLP, a limited liability partnership that operates a ground storage-to-vessel coal transloading facility in Newport News, Virginia. The facility has a rated throughput capacity of 20 million tons of coal per year and ground storage capacity of approximately 1.7 million tons. The facility primarily serves international customers, as well as domestic coal users located along the Atlantic coast of the United States. From time-to-time, we may lease a portion of our port capacity to third parties. — Arch 2021 10-K"

Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc. · AMR Spruce Point Capital · p. 54
quote ceo quote

"We believe Adjusted EBITDA is useful to management, investors and analysts in providing a measure of core financial performance adjusted to allow for comparisons of results of operations across reporting periods on a consistent basis. These adjustments are intended to exclude items that are not indicative of the ongoing operating performance of the business. Adjusted EBITDA is also used by our management for internal planning purposes, including our consolidated operating budget, and by our Board in setting performance-based compensation targets. — NOVA 2019 10K"

Sunnova Energy International Inc. · NOVA Spruce Point Capital · p. 56
quote ceo quote

""And what we said is, it'll be at the low-end of the organic revenue range you've seen from us in the last several years. So, that was the qualitative comment. So, I can put numbers around that, our organic growth rate has ranged from 3.5% to 6.5% over the last call it three years" — G&K CEO, June 9, 2016. "And finally, we are excited about our recent acquisition of G&K. Preliminary results are very encouraging. We are on track to meet our financial and non-financial objectives and look forward to the many opportunities G&K provides" — Cintas CEO, July 20, 2017."

Cintas Corp. · CTAS Spruce Point Capital · p. 46
quote villain critique

""I don't think that the IRS has solar experts, so when they audit us, we [were] basically educating [them on] what's going on." — Former solar industry appraiser. "That $3,000 [per customer] of renewal value is not real value. You should be very skeptical there... and you know, I would say there's significant creative license taken in calculating those renewal values. They're nowhere near what they should be; they're not being conservative... and in those numbers, in fact, it's the opposite. They've been quite aggressive, right?" — Former RUN finance executive."

Sunrun Inc. · RUN Muddy Waters · p. 7
quote ceo quote

"“From the time of our IPO last year, we talked about having an under distributed business model, which has been an area of investment focus. We've accelerated investments originally scheduled for 2022 into 2021 expanding our commercial teams globally. Today, our commercial team has more than doubled from the first-half of last year, and we're extremely pleased with the talent we brought on board. The team is making real contribution and there's a lot of momentum which is both very exciting and an important inflection point.” — CEO Fayer, Q3 2021 Conference Call"

Nuvei Corp · NVEI Spruce Point Capital · p. 105
quote villain critique

""Their Jet7 catheter sucks and they know it... [Penumbra's] CEO was just on a goodwill tour trying to make sure -- his last words for us as we all shook hands goodbye was 'Don't give up on us.'" — Neurosurgeon; "[Penumbra] launched their smart coils with a lot of fanfare, but it has not come through in the way they said it would. It did not surpass the technology of Target, Stryker's Coil, which is #1 in the in the US and World Market." — Neurovascular Products Sales Director; "Homeboy wouldn't be going on goodwill tours if they were rocking it." — Neurosurgeon"

Penumbra, Inc. · PEN Spruce Point Capital · p. 44
quote villain critique

"Performance of the battery at low temperatures, especially sub-zero temperatures; that's something that they were never able to get right back then. From all of the statements they've put out, from all of the publications that they've done...I mean, this seems almost like a sudden discovery. Until about a year back, they couldn't solve the problem, and all of a sudden, it's just solved and not just solved but stabilized and now scalable as well? That's something that I would pause to look at and seriously evaluate from a materials perspective. — Former employee"

QuantumScape · QS Scorpion Capital · p. 84
quote villain critique

"“What they do is very low margin and labor-intensive to provide that service. You can see the gene oligo synthesis. You can probably automate it. They try to automate all of the processes. They try to decrease the cost, but the problem is DNA oligo synthesis has a very low value. You cannot sell it very high, even for the DNA and, yes, the panel; you have to customize it. You have to have someone test and design those oligos and test those oligo sets to demonstrate it works. You have to improve it. It takes manual labor.” — Former Twist employee, director-level"

Twist Bioscience · TWST Scorpion Capital · p. 74
quote villain critique

"Ending Q1 2011, there were 33 Patches that had above $2,000 per month in revenue. Ending Q4 2011, there were 401 Patches above $2,000 per month in revenue.... We arrived at our cost estimates for Patch of $160 million in 2011 based on the following statement by the Company's Chief Financial Officer at the AOL Investor Day on June 16, 2011: "... we're going to spend $160 million a year this year on Patch..." Further, in a research report published on May 10, 2012, Barclays estimated that Patch generated EBITDA losses of $151 million in 2011. — AOL CFO / Barclays"

AOL, Inc. · AOL Starboard Value · p. 82
quote precedent table

""In sum, Defendants' compensation structure incentivizes Distributors to purchase thousands of dollars of product to receive recruiting-based rewards and to recruit new participants who will do the same..." — FTC v. Herbalife International of America, Inc., et al. (July 15, 2016). "In sum, unlike legitimate multilevel marketing businesses, Defendants reward Affiliates for recruiting and for purchasing products to maintain bonus eligibility rather than for selling products to ultimate-user consumers..." — FTC v. Vemma Nutrition Company, et al. (August 17, 2015)."

Herbalife · HLF Pershing Square · p. 22
quote ceo quote

""Welcome to Innovation Day. Today, you'll hear from our management team on how our commitment to innovation, our differentiated portfolio of solutions and our extensive partner ecosystem have positioned us well for long-term profitable growth." — IR Opening Comment; "And innovation is what we're about. Today's complex world that requires technology and innovation ultimately that we build at Zebra to be able to extend to our customers to make them more efficient and effective in their business each and every day and to better serve their customers." — CEO Burns"

Zebra Technologies Corp. · ZBRA Spruce Point Capital · p. 42
quote villain critique

"Interesting, but definitely not a blockbuster. Can't make long-term judgements based on a short study. — Key Thought Leader; From the clinical perspective, somewhat useful, but does not eliminate the need for transfusions or influence the underlying biology of the disease. — Key Thought Leader; GLEEVAC, an oral lifesaving drug for the treatment of leukemia with a 50% mortality rate at three years, has a compliance rate of only 75%. Luspatercept, a palliative drug is likely to have a lower compliance rate consistent with statins [25 – 50%]. — Key Thought Leader"

Bristol-Myers Squibb · BMY Starboard Value · p. 119
quote ceo quote

""They (Western Union) have the advantage of the brand over some of the players, such as Remitly that are more known in the U.S., but I feel like in most other countries they operate on don't have much of a brand which hurts them on the CAC side. They have to build the brand and they probably have to pay more for a customer than someone like Western Union or Ria has to just because they get this organic traffic of people just searching and knowing the company. That's (sic: my) initial very high-level view." — Former Remitly Regional Business Head, Nov 11, 2024"

Remitly Global, Inc. · RELY Spruce Point Capital · p. 29
quote ceo quote

""We heard investors and reducing our leverage ratio is a priority for us. Our aim is to bring the business down to below 4x total net debt to adjusted EBITDA as soon as possible." — Mr. Proud, Q1 2024 earnings call; "We are committed to driving our leverage ratio below 4x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, including the converts as quickly as possible." — Mr. Proud, Q2 2024 earnings call; "We understand the importance of reducing our leverage, and we have set a clear target to reduce it below 4x total net debt to adjusted EBITDA." — Mr. Proud, Q3 2024 earnings call"

Dye & Durham Limited · DND Engine Capital · p. 12
quote other

""And so the more you see robots, any type of robotics and automation, it's actually reducing the number of workers. And in those cases, solutions where a value-added reseller is heavily dependent upon a handheld device, whether that's a handheld RFID reader or an enterprise mobile computer, you have a dampening force." — Former Executive. "Yeah, that's the unfortunate thing about machine vision and fixed industrial scanning is it's built to last. You don't have a refresh rate as fast as you do with the PC or the tablet or a handheld side." — Former Executive."

Zebra Technologies Corp. · ZBRA Spruce Point Capital · p. 22
quote ceo quote

"“Often people ask well, what does a distributor look like? How do they behave? Last year, when distributors ordered from the Company, 51% of the time, their average order was $100, and they received about a 25% discount. So most of the distributors tend to be discount buyers, similar to joining Costco or some club like that, where you pay $49, and you get a 25% discount at Herbalife – just like you would buying a club card at Costco and enjoying the discount on the product.” — Rich Goudis, CFO of Herbalife, Canaccord Adams Global Growth Conference (8-11-2009)"

Herbalife Ltd. · HLF Pershing Square · p. 121
quote villain critique

""Some of Vistaprint's key foundational basics either have not progressed rapidly enough or have deteriorated while Visatprint focused on evolving it customer value proposition" — Cimpress 8-K. "Our customer experience is not good enough: it suffers from bugs...lacks personalization..and our mobile experience is poor" — Cimpress 8-K. "Even the customers that I was serving and I give two example that you know about Kornit's biggest customer, which is Cimpress and Amazon actually were – they are big customers of HP Indigo" — Ronen Samuel Intro Call June 4, 2018."

Kornit Digital Ltd. · KRNT Spruce Point Capital · p. 30
quote ceo quote

"“...it's important context in that we're really bullish in terms of what we saw with TurboTax Live going after the assisted segment because now you have a $1.4 billion business growing at 17%. And with that being 30% of the total TurboTax franchise, when we flip that over to, now it becomes 50%, 60% of the franchise, it really accelerates the growth of the entire TurboTax franchise. And what we demonstrated this year, I would almost say for the first time is, we moved the needle of taking share in assisted.” — Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, FQ3 2024 Earnings Call"

Intuit Inc. · INTU Spruce Point Capital · p. 84
quote villain critique

"I keep telling people, I think that there's obviously a lot of hype in the community, but Soleno has done a pretty good job of drumming that with their informercials or whatever you want to call them. People are excited, but people are also now starting — I just think that once it gets out there for a little bit and we get some more real-world data, once we get more people on it who aren't screened and vetted, and just like a perfect fit for a clinical trial, I don't know what we're going to see. — KOL in the PWS field; involved with Soleno's clinical program"

Soleno Therapeutics · SLNO Scorpion Capital · p. 253
quote villain critique

"“They only stated discharge energy percentage. They didn't tell you the absolute number. That's a definite red flag.” — Solid state expert; “If we made a 200 milliamp-hour cell, we must show the Department of Energy how much energy is left in absolute numbers after 1,000 cycles, when cycling 80% of the total energy. We're not allowed to use percentages.” — Solid state expert; “You really need to understand what it means to have 100% depth of discharge... when you show a percentage, the denominator must be clearly, unambiguously defined.” — Solid state expert"

QuantumScape · QS Scorpion Capital · p. 102
quote villain critique

"The valuer used the Residual Value Approach for the valuation of the investment property under development. In order to assess the market value of the sites, the valuer undertook a development appraisal to assess the potential value (Gross Development Value) of the fully completed and leased development as currently proposed, and deducted hard costs, soft costs, financing costs and a developer's expected required profit (which reflects the required level of return to a developer and the risk of undertaking the project). — CPIPG 2023 management report, p. 117"

CPI Property Group · CPIPG Muddy Waters · p. 8
quote other

""Policy values in IULs are depressed for many years due to high up-front charges and high surrender fees," says Roth, adding that, "These typically last for more than 10 years after the policy was taken out." — Steven Roth, Wealth Management International. "The fact is, in a different (and better) economic environment, less in premiums would be paid than originally planned," he notes. "Owners of this product must be aware of exactly how it works, because, unlike certain other types of life insurance, IULs have a fluctuating component to them." — Dolan, ACLI."

Aegon Ltd. · AEG Spruce Point Capital · p. 64
quote villain critique

""But they may still answer 'no' to all of those questions, and their temperature may be normal, but they may still be infected though they're not showing symptoms yet," said Dr. Fotinos Panagakos. — West Virginia University School of Dentistry. "Every clinical institution and leader that I'm talking to is saying PPE, PPE, PPE," says Janis Orlowski, MD. — AAMC News. "We're not putting on hazmats suits if we're doing a filling. But, we want to keep our aerosols that we're breathing, and we have patients breathing in our face," Dr. Rodriguez says. — AAMC News."

Align Technology, Inc. · ALGN Spruce Point Capital · p. 72
quote other

"We procure the majority of our products from suppliers located outside of the United States, and as a result, we are subject to risks associated with obtaining products from abroad, including the imposition of new or different duties (including antidumping and countervailing duties), tariffs, taxes and/or other charges on exports or imports, including as a result of errors in the classification of products upon entry or changes in the interpretation or application of rates or regulations relating to the import or export of our products; — Floor & Decor 10-K"

Floor & Decor Holdings, Inc. · FND Spruce Point Capital · p. 124
quote precedent table

""In December 2000, we expanded our cardiovascular focus when we acquired the assets and certain liabilities of Cooke Pharma, Inc., the exclusive maker of the HeartBar® line of arginine-enriched products, which operated as Unither Pharma, Inc. (Unither Pharma), our wholly-owned subsidiary. Arginine is required by the body to produce nitric oxide. Unither Pharma is the exclusive licensee of patents entitling it to claim that arginine is critical for maintaining vascular function and certain other natural functions." — United Therapeutics Corporation 2007 10-K"

Herbalife Ltd. · HLF Pershing Square · p. 35
quote villain critique

""There is a risk that regulatory authorities in some jurisdictions may find that our contractual relationships with our fertility specialists violate laws prohibiting the corporate practice of medicine and/or fee-splitting." — Progyny 10-K; "the way Progyny does it, it's in the contract. And so basically you get a bonus, not a huge amount, but you get a bonus. So it's added to your reimbursement..." — Fertility clinic executive in PGNY network; "they pay a little additional funds if you do single embryo transfer" — Former Director of National Accounts, PGNY"

Progyny, Inc. · PGNY Spruce Point Capital · p. 93
quote villain critique

""That's exactly right. It's a little underwhelming. Your questionnaire result was better in one group versus another. But hard endpoint - heart attacks, strokes, deaths. Granted, that's a very high bar to meet. Very few drugs are going to be so powerful that you knock it out of the park that way. But, if the goal here is largely appetite, weight, that sort of zone, at least show a benefit in BMI or something. Those are the typical endpoints that we use when we talk about medicines in this space." — Endocrinologist in TX, private practice with 5 PWS patients"

Soleno Therapeutics · SLNO Scorpion Capital · p. 400
quote appendix disclosure

""Yeah, I mean, I would say the that piece is about $430 million at 14 -- 13 or 14 loans, the average loan is $37 million. There is, some that are bigger, some that are smaller. There's some that we never think about and there some that we think about every other day. I mean this is, this is a chaotic environment and so we have some businesses that have benefitted from it and there's some that are grinding through it. So I would say -- I -- that's as much color as I would give you only because of not -- I think that tells it all." — Chairman/CEO Bryant Riley"

B. Riley Financial, Inc. · RILY Wolfpack Research · p. 21
quote ceo quote

"In late 2017 two institutions, the Mayo Clinic, Rochester and UCLA, secured IRB approval to conduct a randomized clinical trial investigating the efficacy and associate health economic outcomes of Pheno.... Regardless, the study is nearing completion, and we expect enrollment to finish in Q3 with early data soon after. If this study concludes as we hope it will demonstrate the improved outcome for these critically ill patients with positive impact on mortality and morbidity length of stay stewardship and cost. We can't wait. — Mehren (Q1 2018 Earnings Call)"

Accelerate Diagnostics · AXDX White Diamond Research · p. 27
quote ceo quote

""When you think about how cash flow and leverage should play out over the balance of the year, we should incur an additional $140 million to $150 million of CAPEX and approximately $140 million, $145 million of cash interest costs in the second half of the year. If you layer on the conservative assumption of working capital, ending the year as cash flow neutral, you get to a free cash flow number of somewhere between $275 million and $300 million for the back half of the year, depending on your views of where we end up in terms of EBITDA." — GFL Management"

GFL Environmental Inc. · GFL Spruce Point Capital · p. 23
quote villain critique

"“In order to realize the power of quantum computing, you have to be able to scale up to essentially an arbitrary number of qubits, certainly thousands and probably millions of qubits... I would want to see that they can actually successfully optically interconnect two of those and perform operations between the ions in the two separate traps. That would be a landmark type of result that would give us hope that you can actually scale up the technology as realized in terms of linear traps. And that hasn’t been done yet”. — Leading quantum computing scientist"

IonQ Inc. · IONQ Scorpion Capital · p. 86
quote ceo quote

"“And I think you made a comment that there's significant tax leakage around monetization. Is that in the case of spin as well? And then can you provide a little bit more detail or help us quantify a framework for thinking about tax leakage associated with Midstream monetization.” — Goldman Sachs; “I think many Midstream investors don't own PSX stock because of the volatility of the earnings of the other segments. Is that your view as well?...What other things can PSX do to get fuller credit for the stability of the Midstream earnings in your stock?” — BofA"

Phillips 66 · PSX Elliott Management · p. 49
quote ceo quote

""Restricted stock units were also granted on an off-cycle basis to Mr. Boehnlein and Mr. Menon in May 2021 and to Mr. Pierce and Mr. Stiles in October 2021... awarded in recognition of their efforts and contributions related to the Company's cost transformation initiative" — Stryker Proxy Statement. "And so we haven't seen anything really show up in terms of any major impacts on our financials... we expect gross margin performance to be negatively impacted by 50 to 100 basis points" — CFO and IR Q3 and Yr End Call Conf Calls and Cowen Conf March 11th 2022."

Stryker Corp. · SYK Spruce Point Capital · p. 171
quote villain critique

""So here's the deal with diabetic neuropathy. I used to lecture on this in the 90's. I've used stimulators for PDN for 25 years. Nevro's PDN study is not telling us anything new at all... The study has value to Wall Street and no one else." — KOL and high volume implanter; "In the 1980's, half of the patients we implanted with stimulators were for PDN." — High volume Nevro user; "Nevro saying they have this diabetic peripheral neuropathy indication is so stupid. We've been doing PDN treatment with stimulators forever... This has been around forever." — KOL"

Nevro Corp. · NVRO Scorpion Capital · p. 154
quote villain critique

""dealing with Waleed...it’s all about the money...I’m just hoping that with these other devices coming into the market...." — One of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world, based at a leading Midwest academic center. "I don’t like the TransMedics people...to be honest with you, a lot of people are very pissed off...they are acting too greedy and predatory...I really support that letter from the Congressman...a lot of the people in different transplant centers are very pissed off...I can tell you, I hate the CEO." — Transplant surgeon at Vanderbilt."

TransMedics Group Inc · TMDX Scorpion Capital · p. 252
quote villain critique

""You're right...you're definitely right about that...you're definitely right about that...a lot of it's coming from — Soleno definitely has quite an involvement in this...and definitely a lot of it, I'm sure who's supporting the study people being supported by Soleno, they are communicating on the same message...maybe we are being naïve to rely on it...now I'm just — you're making me question a lot of things... I appreciate your input...you brought up factors that I think maybe you are unique in bringing them up...no, I appreciate it." — Endocrinologist #5"

Soleno Therapeutics · SLNO Scorpion Capital · p. 86
quote villain critique

"“I can tell you right off the bat...they haven’t taken any impairments against their balance sheet, so they’re probably over-valuing their inventory far greater than it’s actually worth...a lot of these companies are sitting on so much inventory....” — Marvell executive. “There’s credibility to it because that’s what I’ve also heard as well. A lot of these companies are sitting on so much inventory because the 5 nanometer, the market size of it, has basically softened to a significant degree from 2022 to currently.” — Senior employee at Marvell Technology."

Lasertec Corporation · 6920 Scorpion Capital · p. 238
quote villain critique

"Throughout the experiment, IonQ did call it the 32-qubit machine. As we were doing the experiment, they did call it the 32-qubit machine. However, the Goldman experiment never really used 32 qubits. Throughout the experiment, they kept referring, okay, this is going to be the 32-qubit machine, blah-blah-blah. Let me pull this up here. I think they just used 4 qubits based on what it says here in the paper. Yeah, it uses 4 qubits and 4 RBS gates. They basically just used 4 qubits. But they kept referring to this as the 32-qubit machine. — QC Ware executive"

IonQ Inc. · IONQ Scorpion Capital · p. 52
quote villain critique

""found two things that could put me in prison if I had not done anything about it." — Former employee; "I would rather not discuss this business as I felt I had to resign to avoid future risks to my professional credibility and future as a company director." — Former employee; "Let me put it this way. The entire time I was there, one of my roles at OSI was [redacted]. And OSI was doctrinaire, exceedingly exacting, for all of its subsidiaries including Rapiscan and S2 and everyone else about compliance with the anti-bribery act..." — Former senior employee"

OSI Systems, Inc. · OSIS Muddy Waters · p. 18
quote ceo quote

""As we get larger and larger, and as we work to make the company operate like it's smaller, developing a culture of taking personal responsibility for the execution that occurs is critically important. And that's what we're doing right now. We're emphasizing that culture. I won't say it didn't exist before. But we're emphasizing that as we get smaller, and as we behave like a smaller company, taking that personal responsibility and having that personal accountability for excellence and execution becomes absolutely critical." — Bob McDonald, CEO, 2/18/2012"

Procter & Gamble · PG Pershing Square · p. 40
quote ceo quote

"And the class of '20 and class of 2021 are the best class of stores we've ever opened. — CFO Lang, GS Conf. Sept 8, 2022; And so that's part of the reason our CapEx costs are going up is because we're doing more of that. — CFO Lang, Stephens Conf. Dec 2, 2021; Based on challenging macroeconomic conditions, our class of 2022 and class of 2023 new stores are estimated to be below these targets. — 2023 10-K, Feb 22, 2024; We expect about 25% to 30% of our planned 2024 new warehouse store openings could be in smaller format stores. — Q4'23 Conf Call, Feb 2024"

Floor & Decor Holdings, Inc. · FND Spruce Point Capital · p. 27
quote ceo quote

"“Our LTM is about $1.4 billion. We have an objective to go to $2 billion of EBITDA. Many of our businesses are sort of at that level...But really, on track we think near term to get to that $2 billion of EBITDA.” — Kimo Esplin, CFO, December 2014; “I would say that we should quite soundly beat the projections that we gave for the $2 billion. Again, we still have a great deal of confidence in the $2 billion number...I think that when we look at the overall composite, we still feel very confident about that.” — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, February 2015"

Huntsman Corporation · HUN Starboard Value · p. 119
quote ceo quote

"“In respect to MSCI ESG, yes, there's been slower growth, substantially slower growth as far as I know. And one of the reasons why I also left MSCI is because I anticipated that there's a very strong saturation of the market with ESG or ratings, which is the product which MSCI can charge the most for. And any other products which are in the family of ESG family of products, ESG family of products, they are nowhere close in terms of how much value they bring to the client base. Plus, they're not sticky and they're not as pricey.” — Former MSCI ESG Employee"

MSCI Inc. · MSCI Spruce Point Capital · p. 56
quote villain critique

"“You raise a very good point. It’s something that many of us who were working on the trial raised and felt was valid.” — Ex-Soleno employee #1, key role in clinical trial program; “Well...the thing with orphan diseases, the parents are chit-chatting in their WhatsApp group, chat group, and then the community is very tight. They discuss a lot like, is your kid on active or placebo? How do I get my kid on active? They all want to game the system to get on the active drug because they’re desperate.” — Ex-Soleno employee #1, key role in clinical trial program"

Soleno Therapeutics · SLNO Scorpion Capital · p. 229
quote ceo quote

"Now, the self-similarity of this [highway driving] and the R&D investments we make have allowed us to bring online new lanes in a much more rapid way. And to give you a specific example of this, Dallas to Houston, which we started operating on first, when we went to expand that to Fort Worth-El Paso, a lane of approximately 3x the size in terms of length or mileage. That required bringing online only two new capabilities, driving on grades with the engine brake and passing through inland border patrol crossings. That was it. — Aurora Innovation Management"

Aurora Innovation, Inc. · AUR Kerrisdale Capital · p. 15
quote villain critique

"There is a lot of work that the Lasertec engineers have to put into it to keep it running. And then, on the light source side, we have some issues. Things break, and we repair them...it does seem that the product was rushed and that Lasertec was out of their element when they got thrown into this...Lasertec causes a lot of headaches for their end user. They're lucky that the competitors didn't jump on making pattern inspection machines right off the bat. — Ushio field engineer who maintains light sources on Lasertec ACTIS A150 machines at Intel Oregon fab"

Lasertec Corporation · 6920 Scorpion Capital · p. 119
quote ceo quote

"“I think -- well, it's inevitable that for every CEO, the success is measured through -- with total shareholder return... And the purpose of the pharma company is to bring breakthrough products that change patients' lives... So a way to measure it, for us, it is we have put out there a list of 15 potential blockbusters that could come by the year -- in 5 years, so it is by 2022 when we put it out in '18. And I think my focus would be to make sure that we deliver more than our fair risk adjustment of this number, and that will be success.” — Albert Bourla"

Pfizer Inc. · PFE Starboard Value · p. 15
quote villain critique

"When you think about how cash flow and leverage should play out over the balance of the year, we should incur an additional $140 million to $150 million of CAPEX and approximately $140 million, $145 million of cash interest costs in the second half of the year. If you layer on the conservative assumption of working capital, ending the year as cash flow neutral, you get to a free cash flow number of somewhere between $275 million and $300 million for the back half of the year, depending on your views of where we end up in terms of EBITDA. — GFL Management"

GFL Environmental Inc. · GFL Spruce Point Capital · p. 67
quote villain critique

"First Question At Needham Conf (Jan 11, 2022): "In my discussions with investors, people are still trying to figure out what C3 AI actually does? How you fit into a broad, very fragmented analytics landscape?" — Needham Conf; Former C3 Employee (Tegus Interview, Oct 2020): "So I mean, I've been in this a long time, and I spent a lot of time looking for an AI platform. I didn't find C3 in it. And I don't think it's presented in that, right, as I find new stuff, right? So outside of the advertisements, they are literally invisible right?" — Tegus Interview"

C3.ai, Inc. · AI Spruce Point Capital · p. 18
quote villain critique

""DIS’s stepped-up Parks investment has the potential to drive significant returns, however investors likely need more insight into how DIS intends to allocate this capital across its resorts and cruise lines to factor this upside potential into estimates and valuation." — Goldman Sachs, September 2023; "Following the announcement, Disney’s shares are down ~3.5% intraday. Since it will take time before DIS sees the EBIT benefit from higher DPEP capex, we suspect investors are concerned about the potential near-term pressure to FCF." — Citi, September 2023"

The Walt Disney Company · DIS Trian Partners · p. 118
quote ceo quote

"“...we obtain data from our partners solely in the context of providing them with advertising services; we do not work separately with data brokers. Adjust and MAX operations are entirely independent and transparent, with no conflicts or house bias. We also do not have any means or desire to look at other company's bid or user data; our models use solely behavioral data, ad engagement data, win/loss notifications from mediation (same data shared to any bidder on our platform), and advertiser data to generate predictions.” — Adam Foroughi, CEO of AppLovin"

AppLovin · APP Muddy Waters · p. 24
quote villain critique

"“DIS’s stepped-up Parks investment has the potential to drive significant returns, however investors likely need more insight into how DIS intends to allocate this capital across its resorts and cruise lines to factor this upside potential into estimates and valuation.” — Goldman Sachs, September 2023; “Following the announcement, Disney’s shares are down ~3.5% intraday. Since it will take time before DIS sees the EBIT benefit from higher DPEP capex, we suspect investors are concerned about the potential near-term pressure to FCF.” — Citi, September 2023"

The Walt Disney Company · DIS Trian Partners · p. 118
quote ceo quote

"“I want to ask about the pace of store openings... But does the slower same store sales assumption change your thinking about how aggressively you want to push new stores out there?” — Mark Petrie, CIBC; “No, it does not. It does not. And that I would also add that if the pace at which we've been opening stores this year is slower than last year... it could be that there is an overlap between a few more stores at the end of this year or a few more stores in the beginning of next year, and it will keep our pace of 60 to 70.” — Michael Ross, CFO, Dollarama"

Dollarama Inc. · DOL Spruce Point Capital · p. 24
quote ceo quote

"FTAI's 2023 Module pricing is cited above. Former employees and industry experts we spoke with believe most modules swaps will be for LPTs, followed by fans. Although prices will have come up some from July 2023, they will still be in the low to mid one million range. Fans will be the least expensive. Cores will be the most expensive of the three but are very rare as modules. Prices vary depending on factors such as condition, cycle life remaining, configuration, etc. FTAI's modules tend to be built to 5,000-6,000 or fewer cycles. — Muddy Waters Research"

FTAI Aviation Ltd. · FTAI Muddy Waters · p. 60
quote villain critique

"“There’s a lot of competition. You probably realized we’re shifting a lot of the business away from them, actually. We’re rarely using Twist now. That’s my current company’s situation. So, a lot of gene synthesis is called protein expression. It’s a protein or an antibody. We can actually use a different company in China called Biointron. They synthesize DNA from DNA synthesis to deliver protein in three weeks. That’s three weeks. Twist can barely deliver DNA construct. And the other company can deliver proteins.” — Former Twist employee, director-level"

Twist Bioscience · TWST Scorpion Capital · p. 204