Callouts & quotes from 10,384+ activist slides

"Focus is solely on revenue. Customer satisfaction isn't acknowledged. Shove integrations down clients throats as fast as possible even if it is sloppy. Company is realigned nearly monthly. I had 6 managers in 12 months, 3 of which never met with me. Company is cut throat and is laying off and firing their best employees. — Glassdoor Review"

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

""Lets start having fun ... lets get funky ... lets announce everything ... lets be WILDLY positive in our forecasts ... lets take this thing to the extreme ... if we get wacked on the ride down – who gives a shit ... THE TIME TO GET RADICAL IS NOW ... WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE...." — Eric Lefkofsky (quoted in lawsuit regarding Starbelly.com)"

"“made material misstatements and omissions to key stakeholders, such as the Board, the Company's external auditors, and the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC")” and that “At one point, Mr. Petit falsely testified under oath during a deposition when discussing the Company's largest distributor”. — MiMedx Audit Committee investigation"

"The Durham County Council hereby give notice in pursuance of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that planning permission has been granted for the carrying out of the development referred to in part one hereof in accordance with the application and plans submitted subject to the following conditions and reasons. — Durham County Council"

""Our Nation is staging one if the greatest and fastest comebacks in history. In just 4 short months, we are respected again, respected like never before, and just wait, with many Trillions of Dollars of Investment in Plants and Factories, until you see the numbers on GROWTH. This is, indeed, THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA!!!" — Donald J. Trump"

"We view Dropbox as having no economic moat due to its lack of competitive advantage. While Dropbox boasts over 500 million active users and stores over 400 billion pieces of content, we do not believe that either of these create a network effect or produce significant switching costs for users. — Morningstar Analyst John Barrett, Feb 2019"

""Our operating leverage was up 245 basis points year-over-year..." — Todd Gibbons. "This is one of our real focuses, delivering positive operating leverage and improving the operating margins of our company...And so you can see over the last 12 months, the operating margin has in fact, improved by 78 bps across the firm" — Gerald Hassell."

"“Killer Strengths, Just Needs a Killer Growth Strategy” — SMBC Nikko Securities. “Profits bottomed out, but still not much confidence in full-fledged growth turnaround” — J.P. Morgan. “Kao has great technology and many interesting products, but management has yet to translate this expertise into strong revenue-generating products” — CLSA."

"The lucrative earnings emphasized in promotional messages depend on reaching a high position in the pyramid, but new participants lack requisite information on the realistic odds of obtaining such a position. — Peter J. Vander Nat & William W. Keep, Marketing Fraud: An Approach for Differentiating Multilevel Marketing from Pyramid Schemes"

"“...when the Mines minister considered the appeal, they ruled against the AJAM’s first appeal verdict but they left the original revocation of (mining) areas in place.” “....my understanding is that Alcira has been operating outside the law since these areas were revoked in 2015.” — Former Senior State Mining Authority (AJAM) Legal Source"

"These (tax) rates (from 2020) reflect onetime operational fluctuations that arose due to the pandemic... For 2021, we do not anticipate these circumstances arising as we expect to return to normalized operations during the year. And we expect our full year effective tax rate to be in the range of 15.5% to 16.5% — CFO Boehnlein (Jan 2021)."

"The Durham County Council hereby give notice in pursuance of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that planning permission has been granted for the carrying out of the development referred to in part one hereof in accordance with the application and plans submitted subject to the following conditions and reasons. — Durham County Council"

"We learned that BEKE is registering some Shanghai employees who have hukous in other cities in its Shenzhen entities. However, BEKE claimed 21,000 agents in Shanghai, while SAIC data for its two Shanghai brokerage subsidiaries show only 9,996 employees and 199 employees in its other subsidiaries (including its VIE). — Muddy Waters Capital"

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

""this is going to sound maybe cynical, but I'm overall...I'm skeptical in terms of if it's going to be successful or not"; "problems with the study trial design itself, the power of the study, how much statistical significance is going to be there? It's all rather difficult to say. That's the reason for my hesitancy." — Endocrinologist #3"

"I would say whenever you're compensating someone—this is the only situation that I'm aware of in my tenure working in reimbursement... I mean, you don't get paid for patients that don't get the drug. You just don't. No one else is getting paid on that. The pharmacy is not getting paid. — Ex-field reimbursement manager working with Harmony"

""This flight officially kicks off our UAE Launch Edition program and is an important next step in our commercial deployment plans in the UAE" — Adam Goldstein. "We will launch – the goal is to launch this year first internationally, we will launch in Abu Dhabi, but the goal is to quickly launch here in the US after that" — Adam Goldstein."

"The SafeCharge one just felt off compared to those. — Former Nuvei Employee. I would say their targets for integration and migration were unrealistic. — Former Nuvei Employee. For me its odd to see everything in the black. There is a little bit of me that is saying, “ok, what accounting practices did you change?” — Former Nuvei Employee."

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

""Well, I can give you the marketing answer or I can give you the clinical answer. The marketing answer is they are all very different and unique. Yes. The real clinical answer is there is no difference, none whatsoever, especially in terms of the diagnostic yield, so sensitivity and specificity." — Director at Philips Healthcare, 6/27/24"

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

"「300～400万ドルに上るに違いありません。もちろん、サービス契約については顧客から支払ってもらいますが、各々の装置については1年の無償保証を提供します。それは基本契約の一環としてあります。それは最低限の負担です。それに加えて、納入してから正式な受納までは長ければ6ヶ月があります。したがって、18ヶ月の整備費を負担しなければいけません。約400万ドルの損失になります。それを取り戻すためには、無償保証期間が切れてからサービス契約で年間600～700万ドルを取らなければいけない、ということになります。それについては、顧客は相当な不満を抱いているに違いないでしょう」 — グローバルファウンドリーズの幹部として長年の経験を持ち、レーザーテックとマスク検査全般に関わっている人物"

"“In 2015 [GZ 1-1] used cards to track students, each learning center and student had a card, which showed Xueersi’s brand, then around September 2015 they started using a cell phone app from Changing Edu in place of the card. They used it for about three months and then changed back to using a card again.” — Teacher at GZ 1-1 (2014-2016)"

"The quarterly results include an operational gain of S$10.1 million in Q1 FY2013 on account of fair valuation of biological assets. The quarterly exercise of fair valuation of biological assets was started from only Q3 FY2012 and hence there was no operational gain/ loss booked in the corresponding period of FY2012. — Olam Q1 2013 Filing"

"“Remember dLocal, even though they say they're from 2016, they have all their know-how from AstroPay. So really, they've been operating in the market since 2005. It's a lot to build upon because with dLocal, what we literally did is copied and pasted the operation of AstroPay, and do the duplicate, and separated the entities.” — Source B"

"For the year ended December 31, 2021, approximately 3% of our TPV was processed by collection agents that are owned either by our employees or certain of our directors, and in 2020, approximately 5% of our TPV was processed by collection agents that are owned either by our employees or certain of our directors. — Dlocal, 2021 20-F, p. 29"

"We often purchase products from our suppliers under agreements that are of limited duration or potentially can be terminated on short notice subsequent to unfavorable legal action... Current agreements, or agreements we may negotiate in the future, may commit us to certain minimum purchase or other spending obligations. — Heska 2020 10-K"

""The complaint is for damages as a result of an alleged fraud and stock manipulation. The Company is seeking monetary damages in excess of $200,000,000." — Dwight Cantrell, CFO of Endovasc. "Di Ricco is a disbarred attorney with criminal convictions for aiding and abetting the preparation of false tax returns and obstruction of justice.""

"The reason being, we don't have the full-service offerings. We stress the importance of being with a doctor and a staff that they're already familiar with, and the importance of the expanded model of traditional veterinary hospitals. And the importance, if the pet falls ill, of the staff being familiar with the pet. — Dr. Douglas Spiker"

""That’s how they came out of the shoot. They came out as low pricing, and I think what they’re finding out now is the verification of the oligonucleotide sequence, and then the verification of the gene sequence is going to cost them a significant amount of money." — Longtime oligonucleotide manufacturing expert and executive; ex-Agilent"

"We identified a material weakness in connection with our internal control over financial reporting. Although we are taking steps to remediate this material weakness, there is no assurance we will be successful in doing so in a timely manner, or at all, and we may identify other material weaknesses. — Super Group (SGHC) Limited Form 20-F"

"Our Nation is staging one if the greatest and fastest comebacks in history. In just 4 short months, we are respected again, respected like never before, and just wait, with many Trillions of Dollars of Investment in Plants and Factories, until you see the numbers on GROWTH. This is, indeed, THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA!!! — Donald J. Trump"

"“Then that's the reason why we believe that we do have some technological edge to making those motors for drones, and that's the reason why we are just educating in that area.” — Masuo Yoshimatsu, Q1 2015 Call. “Then for that point [haptic], we do believe that we have technological superiority over our competitors.” — Nidec FY2014 Call."

"Management of the resource is the key and should be privatised and the farmers/harvesters allowed to sell to whom they like and DEC becomes the auditor - this would at least give local companies a chance to buy wood from numerous rather than one source giving more local, grass root working people much needed income. — David Brocklehurst"

"Annual crops consist of seeds for various commodities (cotton, onions, tomatoes and other vegetables) that are given to farmers to sow and grow. Farmers take all the harvest risks and bear all the farming costs. On harvesting of the commodities, the Group has the first right to buy the produce from these farms. — Olam 2012 Annual Report"

"Based on the financial characteristics of the selected publicly traded companies and Diamond, and based on its professional judgment and experience, BofA Securities applied calendar year 2019 and 2022 Adj. EBITDA multiples of 6.5x to 8.0x... to calculate ranges of implied enterprise values for Diamond. — BofA Securities Fairness Opinion"

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

"“...for families who can do the hard work to start with of providing food security for their kids”; “it’s not going to work for the families that can’t provide the environment and structure to begin with...for families who can do it...can they just throw caution to the wind...no.” — Trial investigator, pediatrician/geneticist, professor"

"“you have a very active community; with social media you have a very active group of people that are looking for things...there's an investigator in Florida, Jennifer Miller... lot of families that have the resources go see her once a year...so, they're very closely connected...” — Pediatric endocrinologist at a Delaware academic center"

"Drug-induced phospholipidosis is characterized by intracellular accumulation of phospholipids with lamellar bodies, most likely from an impaired phospholipid metabolism of the lysosome. Organs affected by phospholipidosis exhibit inflammatory reactions and histopathological changes. — Research literature on drug-induced phospholipidosis"

"This is one of the most crooked companies I've ever done business with. I made the mistake of buying two cars from them, and they require a GPS unit to be installed in the cars, which is fine, except their hack mechanic that installed them caused a short in one of the cars, and they refused to fix it without charging me. — Yelp Reviewer"

"“...we've maintained margins in the 75% to 80% range over time and we expect the long-term margins to stay in that 75% to 80% range.” — CFO Dylan Smith, August 2015; “...75% to 80% long-term range, which is still our current view in terms of the steady state and long-term gross margins of the business.” — CFO Dylan Smith, December 2015"

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

"“We finally received a little peek into the future of Disney’s streaming plan as the company shared a target of double-digit profit margins in streaming. As new CFO Hugh Johnston rightly admitted, that target should have been obvious, however, the timing and path forward still remain pretty ambiguous.” — MoffettNathanson, February 2024"

"results from sites in Russia...cannot be trusted — Study of foreign trials cited in Petitioner's report. "disturbing and it's good to get it published...offshoring for financial reasons is bad because it raises risk of malfeasance." — FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. "The primary EDS endpoint, the Epworth Sleepiness Scale" — FDA review."

"“The proposed spin-off of Aabaco Holdings, Inc. ("Aabaco Holdings") is not Yahoo's best alternative. Instead, you should be exploring a sale of Yahoo's core Search and Display advertising businesses ("Core Business") and leave Yahoo's ownership stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan in the existing corporate entity.” — Starboard Value"

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

"“Much of the rest of biology is conducted on plastic, which its not necessarily natural, but all of our expertise was developed on these plastic plates and dishes. It makes sense when you move over to silicon; there's going to be a lot of unnatural things that are going to happen as well” — Leading academic institution/ex-BLI scientist"

"“We finally received a little peek into the future of Disney’s streaming plan as the company shared a target of double-digit profit margins in streaming. As new CFO Hugh Johnston rightly admitted, that target should have been obvious, however, the timing and path forward still remain pretty ambiguous.” — MoffettNathanson, February 2024"

"“The Paragonix devices are changing the whole - I was in the operating room the other day - Mass General, was getting lungs from California, in a Paragonix. And typically, that would have only been TransMedics a couple of years ago. but they’re changing the game.” — Organ procurement specialist at a Northwest academic transplant center"

"I’d figured I’d start my presentation off with a little math formula… And it’s basically the formula for how AOL returns to overall growth. And basically that happens… when the absolute dollar growth from all the growth businesses… exceeds the decline of the subscription and search operations. — CFO Arthur Minson, Investor Day, 6/16/11"

"“We have this going on now”; “we are on week 5...she had some edema too...did your kiddo have swelling as well?”; “each time the dose goes up she has swelling worse”; “water’s heavy...that is a lot...a gallon of water is roughly 8 lbs so 5 lbs would be more than half a gallon of retained fluids....” — Parents in Vykat discussion groups"

"“There were three main side effects which not everybody gets. I want to say about 15% may have had the side effect of edema and maybe 20% the side effect of hyperglycemia and maybe 20% the side effect of hypertrichosis. There certainly was potential for unblinding. No question..” — Trial investigator, pediatrician/geneticist, professor"

"“The frictional costs and operational risks, including tax implications, of executing Pershing Square's ideas” — Target Management; “The risk of diverting management's focus away from core business operations over an extended time period to execute such a complex transaction, particularly in the current environment” — Target Management"

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

"“Ultimately, I think the relationship got much better with the manufacturers that stayed with ATD. They saw blood in the water when Goodyear and Bridgestone dropped ATD and went out of their way to lower price or give us more incentive to replace that business with their brands.” — Former TireHub employee, Public Interview, March 2023"

"Moreover, we find that the compensation provided by Elliott to their nominees is consistent and comparable to that of the company's continuing directors; specifically, continuing directors have similar upside potential on historical share grants received during their tenure as directors. — David H. Batchelder, Relational Investors LLC"

"“The company stuck with inexpensive reality TV productions after their novelty began to wear off. Viacom ‘built franchises that lasted a decade — such as SpongeBob, Dora The Explorer and Jon Stewart — but hasn’t reinvested for the 21st century,’ says one executive who knows the company well. ‘It’s jaw-dropping.’” — Anonymous executive"

""So it's not that we are not looking at the utilization of factories, right, but what we have the advantage that we also have a lot of technology so we want to get to a position where ideally we can combine those both worlds where we can give the customer a value at the same time at lower cost." — Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, November 4, 2014"