Callouts & quotes from 10,384+ activist slides

"So, if they get 90% of the target, then 90% of the target would be paid out. — CFO on Deal Conf Call; We wouldn't disclose the terms of the service agreement other than to say that it's multi-year — CEO on Deal Call; During this period, operating results will be recorded in the company's net sales line, impacting many of our metrics as we detailed in the earnings release. For the remaining four months, FLAWLESS results will be consolidated within specific P&L line items — CFO Q1 2019 Conf Call"

"And we should like to mention that although the amount for the structural reforms and other adjustments is JPY 40 billion, the actual cash out would be, in other words, the actual expenditures would be 10% of that. And what we will be doing is the cash out itself will be in the amount of JPY 4 billion. And so therefore, for the remaining JPY 36 billion, it will be on a noncash basis. And in other words, what will be carried out are impairments, or we'll be taking out reserves. — Nagamori (CEO)"

"So you'll see us roll that out over 17,000 associates and employees across the UBS universe over the next coming weeks. So we feel pretty good about that. — CFO Reese, Evercore Conf March 3, 2022; It has been really exciting, this past quarter as we've seen the workstation go live, and it's been in beta the last year, but go live with 15,000 advisers, client service associates, home office associates and others and the feedback on that has been great. — CEO Gokey, Q3 2022 Conf Call May 3, 2022"

"July 2012: “Yahoo has 18,000 employees, and on paper it should have closer to 6,000 to 8,000, [Silicon Valley tech investor legend Marc] Andreessen argues. Every analyst has noted pretty much the same thing, and to date no CEO has had the guts to cut that deeply, even as each of them have been vilified for making cuts. Will Mayer be able to do what most outside observers say is necessary?” — Marc Andreessen; December 2015: “My view is that [Yahoo is] dramatically overstaffed” — Marc Andreessen"

""I wasn't getting the best results...it wasn't like a wow like they get with Xyrem. For me, the Xyrem is just so effective that it just pales in comparison to that. So, I relegated it pretty early on to my Xyrem failures or Xyrem intolerance...My last start on Wakix was probably late last year or early this year. I can't recall; it's been a while, and we're at the end of this year. It's been almost a year, I have not started anyone." — Neurologist and professor at a large academic institution."

"“...Understand that the founders will stop at nothing to succeed and that means lying to press, vendors, employees and glassdoor.” — Jul 27, 2019 - Teams Sales Manager on Glassdoor; “I think you would need to consult with a psychiatrist to really get at the root of this. I would say it definitely starts with the two founders.” — Former Executive Interviewed by Spruce Point; “But working there was the worst place that I've ever worked in my life.” — Aug 10, 2022 - Former Sales Manager on Tegus"

"“Not only did we have to get through the deal at a blistering pace, but I had to manage the process under strenuous circumstances. The deal was done while the annual audit work was underway as well as an accounting system conversion. And we continually had to deal with legacy matters within the finance and operations.” — Former Neurio VP of Finance; “This acquisition was one of the larger and more complicated technology M&A transactions in BC during the past year” — Jon Conlin, Fasken Partner"

""And I’m not sure another studio will ever achieve some of the numbers that we achieved. I mean, we got to the point where if a film didn’t do a billion dollars in global box office, we were disappointed…That’s an unbelievably high standard and I think we have to get more realistic." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, November 2023; "I think the bar is now raised in terms of quality about what gets people out of their homes, into movie theaters." — Robert A. Iger, CEO & Director, November 2023"

""[Over] the last 10 years, our [Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)] has been higher than our refining or midstream peer sets. And we absolutely believe and are committed to ROCE as a key metric because we believe that we can accrete ROCE through disciplined investments, through disciplined asset dispositions and asset acquisitions. And we believe that ROCE is the leading indicator for increasing total shareholder return." — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Wolfe Refining Conference, March 6, 2025"

"In the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, the Company initiated a restructuring plan (the “Q1 2020 Restructuring Plan”) as part of the Company's effort to realign its cost structure in both its go-to-market and engineering organizations. The Q1 2020 Restructuring Plan included reduction in force of approximately 90 employees within the sales, marketing, and engineering functions and was largely completed by March 31, 2020 with no material future costs expected to be incurred. — Forescout 10-Q"

"“Right now, there are Tesla's giga-factories, and there are hundreds of gigawatt-hours of worldwide production capacity for lithium batteries, conventional liquid electrolyte batteries, and all of that manufacturing capex is already installed, and it's already partially depreciated. So, just the depreciation costs alone on the capital equipment are already brought down to the point that it becomes so much cheaper to make huge volumes of liquid-filled lithium-ion batteries.” — Former employee"

"“There are very few technical challenges at iRhythm, but many procedural and political ones. Decision making is terrible. Inconvenient truths are hidden under Directors and hand-waved away to be fixed later - the result is significant technical debt (in my opinion) in the core products while trying to scale. These problems are surmountable, but not with current leadership, and not without holding middle-management accountable for performance.” — Engineering Lead, iRhythm, Glassdoor, 11/14/24"

"Reported EPS included a $0.75 ($18.7m) acquisition gain related to our earn-out accrual with Biotix... The Biotix acquisition was structured with a large potential earn-out component. While we are very pleased with the Biotix acquisition and expect their operating profit to grow by more than 35% in the first two years, they fall short of the earn-out level. As a result, we recorded a one-time, non-cash gain to reverse a significant portion of the original amount. — CFO Vadala Q4'18 Conf Call"

""This -- we've talked for a long time in our investor conferences in discussions around trajectory and continuing that trajectory. And both companies have been on pretty amazing trajectories. And so this is continuing the trajectory. So if you just think about Kanye West, bigger, faster, stronger, right, so we're delevering the balance sheet. This is going to be a straightforward integration." — C. Steven Guenthner, President, Principal Financial Officer, Treasurer & Secretary, Almost Family"

"“Nevro obviously through their actions knew that their metrics were flawed, because they were saying, ‘We have the panacea. It’s a car with five wheels and everybody with four wheels is behind.’ What does Nevro do now? They’ve introduced a four-wheel product and they’ve shut their mouth about their five-wheel and basically stopped selling it. They now offer not only a high-frequency IPG, but they offer a low frequency. They’re hypocrites. They’re liars.” — Longtime executive in the SCS space"

"I have never seen a person who used Nevro and say it didn't work. I haven't seen one....I have no financial connection with Nevro or any other company...Ask people who use Nevro and find one who says it doesn't work...There are doctors who are really against Nevro despite using only one implant but opposing it from beginning. They complain it's not working. It's just their opinion. It's never backed up with quality studies. We produce a lot of papers based on science. — Nevro loyalist KOL #1"

""We can't see selling, for example, our current hardware configuration of the starter kit, at an ASP of $850 to a broad population of patients who aren't going to wear it each and every single day. So the configuration needs to be easy to use, it needs to be small, it needs to be disposable and it needs to be inexpensive. We are not going to go in and charge people $200, $300 for a two week sensor session, so we have to develop economics around that." — Kevin Sayer – President & CEO, Dexcom"

"As a result of this external evaluation, we now believe that our total addressable market has doubled from $20 billion to $40 billion. When you couple this analysis with the success of our new stores, both in building out new markets and adding to existing markets, we now feel confident that our U.S. store count can successfully reach 900 stores over time. This is quite exciting news for us, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future. — CEO James Conroy, May 10, 2022"

""We're very excited, and I feel more confident today than I ever have about the future. I know that's something that everybody always says. But why do I feel that, I feel that because we have more control of these issues...there are going to be headwinds here and there. But what we can control, what we're focused on as a company, and what we're able to do, I think, puts us in a unique opportunity to further transform this business." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, November 2021"

""as an important step towards its aim of having developed 50GW of renewable power by 2030" — BP Press Release; "exactly the right person at exactly the right time, a globally respected and deeply experienced leader in renewable energy with a proven track record of transforming and growing businesses" — former CEO Looney; "be available to address shareholders' concerns which have failed to be resolved by the chair, CEO or CFO or for which such contact is inappropriate" — BP governance (2024)"

"I joined the military right after high school. Actually, I was still 17. Didn't know what I was going to do with my life. So when I graduated, my dad encouraged me to join the military. Best move I could have made because they quickly teach you how to focus, how to become disciplined, and how to become a team. And I needed all that tremendously after I graduated from high school. And to this day, those are lessons that I learned and I still practice at this point in my life. — Brian Coffman"

"We’ll also continue to improve gross margins. The Company’s current gross margin is about 52%. We can earn a higher total company margin by achieving best-in-class margins in more categories and business units. Based on industry benchmarking, we believe that only about half of P&G businesses have gross margins better than their competitive peer set. As we get more of our businesses to best-in-class levels, we’ll increase our total company margin. — A.G. Lafley, Former CEO 2007 Annual Report"

""We're very excited, and I feel more confident today than I ever have about the future. I know that's something that everybody always says. But why do I feel that, I feel that because we have more control of these issues...there are going to be headwinds here and there. But what we can control, what we're focused on as a company, and what we're able to do, I think, puts us in a unique opportunity to further transform this business." — Peter Huntsman, Chairman, President & CEO, November 2021"

"[Over] the last 10 years, our [Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)] has been higher than our refining or midstream peer sets. And we absolutely believe and are committed to ROCE as a key metric because we believe that we can accrete ROCE through disciplined investments, through disciplined asset dispositions and asset acquisitions. And we believe that ROCE is the leading indicator for increasing total shareholder return. — Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier, Wolfe Refining Conference, March 6, 2025"

"I think for soybean and corn trading, it's going to be challenging. It's not that Bunge plus Viterra will be 1+1=two. 1+one would be 1.5, to be very honest, because there were overlaps. I know Viterra operation in Brazil very well. I think most places where Viterra operated, Bunge will reduce because Viterra would trade with a lot of commercials, companies that Bunge, Cargill, and ADM would not trade with. They would definitely reduce volume, especially for the initial years. — ADM Director"

"At the early stage Intel is the one that pushed them. They heavily invested, and instead of having a program that will take five, six years for development, they laid it down and said, you need to ship it in three years. Lasertec said there is no way that we can develop stuff that fast. So they used a Japanese connection. They went to Ushio, which was the only company that had a source that has enough brightness. — Former KLA executive in a leadership role in their EUV mask inspection group"

"Actually, [the offset loan] is part of the treasury management of the company. We had some arrangement with a major commercial bank in china. The bank provide a loan 200 million USD. At the same time, the money will be transferred into RMB and deposited totally in the bank. And also, we enter into a forward contract to convert RMB into USD as of the maturity date of the loan so this means there is no risk and we are guaranteed a fixed return from this arrangement. — CFO of Man Wah Holdings"

""In the past it was always interpreted fairly if an injury on the job occurred. Now, as employees have seen, if you report an injury the company will come back with the argument that the injury only occurred because the employee was negligent in following safety rules no matter the situation. Not following safety rules is cause for dismissal. So, employees have gotten the message not to report injuries or problems... retaliation against whistleblowers is rampant." — Former UNP Executive(1)"

""Here's the shell game on this one. The shell game is that they're comparing their battery to what is available in the marketplace today. But that's an irrelevant comparison... there are other players that have achieved five minutes." — Former employee; "50% in 15 minutes isn't really accurate... So they're sandbagging a little bit on the state of the art. Certainly, they're not better than the conventional technologies that QuantumScape wants to have something." — A second former employee"

""My skepticism comes from how often they were able to do it and what yield. When I was there, it was really hard to get a full cell that was repeatedly performing for a long period of time... it's one thing to show it on the research level and another thing to show that it can be scalable." — Former employee; "I don't believe that they can do that pretty consistently. It's not a robust process at the moment... And from the people that I still talk to, they can't." — Another former employee"

"“I am a former employee. Left on good terms with the company. But the frustrations I had with the lack of communication and infrastructure had me shaking my head often. With more than 20 years in the restaurant industry, I was quite taken aback to learn that my two supervisors - a direct, and a vice president - had NO restaurant experience. And these were the people "leading the charge." It provided a lot of frustration to both me and my peers” — Former Buffalo Wild Wings Employee, 4/11/17"

"Secondly, Colleen is a big-picture thinker and someone who's not afraid to operate in gray areas, and, Although she is very detail oriented, articulate and a rule follower, she's also helped Zebra teams like mine operate with extreme financial responsibility within our existing structures by sitting down, understanding what we need and identifying areas where we can tailor accounting practices to our business processes versus having to re-engineer business processes. — Zebra Blog Interview"

""I guess my first question, Eli, you had a comment where you said that you have a number of projects moving to production from development phase... what's the pipeline for new projects to replace the ones that are moving into production?" — Ashwin Shirvaikar, Citigroup; "...usually a successful project leads to other successful projects, and as we are expanding our offering.... And projects, usually when they come to fruition, they don't go to zero." — Eli Gelman, President and CEO, Amdocs"

"With the anticipated sale of INVISTA, DuPont will be a smaller company with the potential for higher growth and profitability... But unlocking that potential means doing things differently. If we are to meet our earnings growth objectives - which we will - we cannot support the complexity and cost entailed by diverse and specialized organizations and processes. The actions we are announcing today are necessary to the near- and long-term competitiveness of DuPont. — Press release, 12/1/2003"

"Nelson was a terrific colleague on the Heinz Board. His focus was on constructive contribution. He added keen insights and a colorful wit to our board discussions. Nelson is a problem solver who understands strategic opportunities and he works in a collegial manner with his fellow board members to achieve the company’s goals. I relished my experience working with Nelson. — Leonard Coleman, Former President, National League of Professional Baseball, and former Director of H.J. Heinz Company"

""The million dollar question is what’s this retail business worth? ... When UAP was trading, they were trading at about 9x. If you look at Tractor Supply ... they are trading at a multiple of 11x ... I’ll just keep hammering at you until we get [the multiple] up to what we feel is a reasonable number" — Agrium CEO Michael Wilson, 2011 Investor Day; "Agrium's Board has not been able (or willing) to quantify, explain, or defend the current company structure" — Credit Agricole / CLSA, 11/5/12"

"Nelson was a terrific colleague on the Heinz Board. His focus was on constructive contribution. He added keen insights and a colorful wit to our board discussions. Nelson is a problem solver who understands strategic opportunities and he works in a collegial manner with his fellow board members to achieve the company’s goals. I relished my experience working with Nelson. — Leonard Coleman, Former President, National League of Professional Baseball, and former Director of H.J. Heinz Company"

"Nelson was a terrific colleague on the Heinz Board. His focus was on constructive contribution. He added keen insights and a colorful wit to our board discussions. Nelson is a problem solver who understands strategic opportunities and he works in a collegial manner with his fellow board members to achieve the company’s goals. I relished my experience working with Nelson. — Leonard Coleman, Former President, National League of Professional Baseball, and former Director of H.J. Heinz Company"

"“is the best way to do that” — An ex-KLA director of engineering. “a well-engineered system is more important than the wavelength” — An ex-KLA director of engineering. “the DUV tools actually do work [for EUV masks]...those tools work really well and have been well-engineered for a long period of time.” — An ex-KLA director of engineering. “made essentially their own...in-house inspection system...so did Intel...Intel doesn't talk about it, but they did” — A leading EUV lithography expert."

"Gandler: "Okay, great. And last question. Bemis' working capital to sales is twice Amcor's, roughly twice Amcor's. Is there something structural there or is that an opportunity you guys have identified as well?" CEO Delia: "I would say it's an opportunity we've identified as well.... Look, is it going to get to our level? I don't know. But what we see without question, without hesitation there is the cash synergy opportunity from optimising working capital." — Analyst Gandler and CEO Delia"

"The IMT segment includes the financial results for the Premier Agent and rentals marketplaces (including StreetEasy rentals product offerings) as well as Other IMT, which includes our new construction marketplace and revenue from the sale of other advertising and business technology solutions for real estate professionals, including display, StreetEasy for-sale product offerings and ShowingTime+, which houses ShowingTime, Bridge Interactive, dotloop and interactive floor plans. — 2022 10-K"

"Adam Goldstein himself said on social media April 4th, 2024: 'Joby does have the most amount of flying experience in the industry, albeit on an experimental uncertifiable aircraft. The clock starts ticking once you start flying conforming aircraft. Everything else before that is just practice'. And we could not agree more, Adam. You are right, this is the basis for an apples-to-apples comparison, and your clock is not ticking because you do not have a conformal aircraft. — Grizzly Research"

"“actinic is not going to be sufficient for mask inspection because sub-resolution assist features will become necessary...those features you cannot detect with actinic light...ultimately an electron beam solution is required...they need features on a mask that are smaller than 13.5nm...higher resolution than EUV is required...and people are working on an electron beam solution...KLA is one of them.” — Longtime, senior semicap equipment executive in Japan who is friendly with Lasertec’s CEO"

""We closed our acquisition with Stripe! Together we're scaling digital dollars to businesses everywhere. Stablecoins aren't the future—they're already transforming how people move money today." — Zach Abrams, cofounder of Bridge, on X. "It's been incredible hearing from users just how big of an impact stablecoin infrastructure is already making. We believe stablecoins will play a critical role in turbocharging cross-border commerce." — Neetika Bansal, business lead at Stripe, on LinkedIn."

"We're committed to achieving a $1 billion run rate sometime in FY '21... and I know you guys can all do the math, but if you take the outer edge of that and look at $250 million of revenue in Q4 of that year, that would be a 23% compounded annual growth rate. So we expect to be growing at least that fast over the next few years. And in terms of how that breaks down, we're expecting our existing customer base to drive the majority of this growth. — CFO Dylan Smith, BoxWorks, September 2016"

""We have reviewed the procedures used by the Board of Directors in arriving at its estimate of value of such investments and have inspected underlying documentation, and, in the circumstances, we believe the procedures are reasonable and the documentation appropriate." — Arthur Andersen LLP (previous audit language). "[W]e have written that we believe these allegations are unfounded and uninformed and have attempted to produce as much factual rebuttal as possible." — Merrill Lynch report."

"Listen, why are we not going to take action against this employee that we fired is because that's not we want to be focused on from the management team, and that's not what we want to do with shareholder equity and shareholder capital. Our focus is to deliver results. At the end of the day, our stakeholders will judge us not by an anonymous blogger, right, but by our results. If he's broken any laws, then I think it's the regulators' responsibility to pursue that. It's just- — Mr. Alireza"

"“Twist is not a big vendor, and they cannot offer many different things. They have their market, which is laboratories in universities, smaller startups, and some part of pharma, but they will not suddenly grow like crazy...what could happen in the future is that they go bankrupt or they collapse because at some point, if they are selling everything at a lower price, I don't know how they are going to compensate for that.” — Novartis, a large Twist customer, scientist in a leadership role"

""According to the National Bicycle Dealers Association's 2017 report, the number of independent bike dealers (IBDs) in the US has decreased from 4,256 in 2010 to 3,700 in 2016, a total decline of 13 percent." — Bicycling.com. "Harley has for years failed to increase sales in the United States, its top market accounting for more than half of its motorcycles sold. As its tattooed, baby-boomer base ages, the Milwaukee-based company is finding it challenging to woo new customers." — CNBC/WSJ."

"Other expenses that are not directly attributable to a particular segment are based upon allocation methodologies, including time estimates, revenue, headcount, sales targets, data center consumption and other relevant usage measures. Due to the integrated structure of MSCI's business, certain costs incurred by one segment may benefit other segments. A segment may use the content and data produced by another segment without incurring an arm's-length intersegment charge. — MSCI SEC filings"

"“It's hard to quantify it succinctly. So I think maybe a longer off-line conversation. I would tell you that the Engage opportunity is quite large. Those deals tend to be very large software deals, because they're typically going house-wide or hospital-wide. And once they make the decision to do these kind of clinical integration, they want to standardize it across the health system. And so those end up being very, very large software opportunities.” — CEO Lang Response, Q3 2021 Conf Call"

"“Ginkgo wanted to pretty much control everything and be in charge.” — Current Motif executive; “The amount they charged us, there was no negotiation.” — Current Motif executive; “Exactly. I would say that the person that was the director of R&D, pretty much overseeing the project, was actually a Ginkgo employee at first, so he had really little say because he was an insider from Ginkgo, so he couldn't really tell them what you're doing is not the perfect thing.” — Current Motif executive."

"So, it's a great question. So I'll take it in the order that you asked it. So there are two things with sample size... And that's why just a raw sample size matters, and so compared to the competition in the devices out there, broadly, we think we look at more samples. We know we look at more sample size, there's just more urine, there's just more fecal material prepared to look at. So I think that's good. The second part of your question. And I'm sorry, I just forgot. — Kevin Wilson, CEO"

"Regarding non-food activities, our sales have declined in the context of soft discretionary spending by Brazilian households. Nevertheless, we succeeded in limiting the decline in sales of Via Varejo in Q4 2015 compared to previous quarters, thanks to targeted action plans aimed at finding a better price positioning, particularly through more effective promotions. As in 2015, our priority for 2016 is to maintain a positive operating FCF for all our Brazilian Activities — Casino Management"

""I am aware of the medication and have seen some of the data presented and looked at the paper. I have about 3 to 5 PWS patients at the moment. We do trials, so I expect we were contacted about the trial. We actually did it in our journal club with our group. And then I was just both at the European and the US peds-endo meetings. And I actually spoke to Dr. Miller. And, obviously, they were trying to educate/sell the drug." — Pediatric endocrinologist, division chief at an academic center"

"“I know that if it was one salesperson telling me this, that would be a different story. But whenever, you know, a third of the people are coming out and saying, 'I can't believe what this sales manager just said to my provider that I've been calling on now for three years. I mean, literally threatened them not being a speaker anymore if they didn't pick up the volume.' And I'm just like, 'Dude, they can't say that.' 'Well, they did.'” — Ex-field reimbursement manager working with Harmony"

"TSMC, but they did some things. They generally made essentially their own inspection system and in-house inspection system, and so did Intel. Intel doesn't talk about it, but they did. ... everybody was doing this, some quietly and some more publicly. Samsung, we knew, but Intel and TSMC all did the same. ... Samsung still uses it, and so does TSMC, and most likely Intel does it too. But Intel is very quiet about what they do. — Leading EUV lithography expert close to Lasertec's customers"

"“As a condition precedent to Sonera’s purchase of the participatory interests in KazNet, KazNet will acquire two limited liability partnerships in Kazakhstan, namely Aksoran LLP (“Aksoran”) and Instaphone LLP (“Instaphone”). Aksoran and Instaphone each holds certain radio frequency permits that are capable of being deployed for the operation of a WIMAX business in Kazakhstan. Once formed, the KazNet group will own and operate a WIMAX business in Kazakhstan...” — Kcell Prospectus, page 58."

"“Dongfang Trading Co. Ltd in the most recent two years almost doesn't have any revenue,” the aforementioned tax bureau insider informed me, “It's just like a shell company.” — Tax bureau insider; “My ownership was withdrawn in 2004,” Liu Zhen Yong responded. — Liu Zhen Yong; “Li Jian Jun comes from Beijing”, “This is a Beijing company”, and “Apart from this company, we have suppliers from other places such as Beijing.” — Liu Zhen Yong; “Some people have ulterior motives.” — Liu Zhen Yong"

""The HAMR process has a bit more steps, which is something that is never, from a material process perspective, more steps is never great." — Materials Science Expert; "I think the headline here is that there's three and a half times more capacity than sales for six four powder." — Materials Science Expert; "So I would never, as a former engineer, I would never try to launch a company saying, I'm going to come out with new fasteners from a technical standpoint." — Materials Science Expert"