Callouts & quotes from 11+ activist slides

""Hess's near-term strategic outlook is fairly clear-cut: the company must improve. [Hess] will need to regain project management credibility after disappointing results..." — Bank of America (January 6, 2004); "Having lagged the recent rebound in the sector—adding to what has been long-term secular underperformance..." — Goldman Sachs (December 9, 2003); "We believe Hess had four issues it needed to overcome: Top management was not as strong as at its competitors; E&P asset base was very mature and short-lived; Balance sheet was weak; Capital discipline was expressed in words, but not practiced in actions." — Goldman Sachs (December 9, 2003); "Will perpetual restructuring mode ever end?" — Goldman Sachs (October 14, 2003); "Hess released another quarter of disappointing earnings...While offshore development delays are not uncommon for large oil and gas projects, Hess has consistently disappointed the market with operational performance over the past several quarters." — Bank of America (July 29, 2003); "[Hess] a company that we consider the most fundamentally flawed E&P or integrated in our investment grade universe... Unfortunately, these days a lack of astoundingly bad news is cause for celebration!" — Morgan Stanley Credit Research (May 1, 2003); "With below cost of capital ROACE, high upstream costs, and strategic impediments due to recurring high debt levels, we believe the Hess shares should continue to trade at a material discount vs. the integrated peer group. Moreover...we remain unconvinced that the company's planned upstream growth will lead to improved profitability and returns." — UBS Warburg (April 30, 2003); "The burden of high debt levels and low returns, with abandoned targets and a weak near-term production profile, leaves the management in need of reestablishing credibility and share price performance." — Deutsche Bank (April 8, 2003); "The material erosion of shareholder equity so soon after the completion of these two acquisitions is a clear disappointment... [It] also must raise questions as to the acquisition due diligence process within Hess...We believe investors' confidence in the company has been materially undermined..." — UBS Warburg (February 3, 2003)"

""The explant rate was more than 25%. It was a lot. A lot of time I’d replace Nevro with a Medtronic unit because it was so tiny." — High volume KOL; "For every 100 Nevro devices implanted, 30% of them will be explanted within a year or two. What Nevro has done hurts the rest of us because then people are less likely to use any company’s devices. What one greaseball does affects the rest of us. It’s flawed. Nevro’s research is deeply flawed." — High volume KOL; "I had stopped using Nevro. I know so many of their devices that were explanted because patients couldn’t stand the size and programs that drain battery life. The explant rate is higher for Nevro than anyone else. I’m so frustrated with how I put it in. I’ve had zero results with Nevro in trials and it’s so unusual. I’ve had more failed Nevro trials than with any other device. I don’t have an explant rate with other devices. Maybe some three to fours years out. Maybe once a year I explant out of someone. Colleagues tell me Nevro’s explant rates are higher than anything else. I hear that from other doctors. Walk around the next NANS meeting and ask people about explant rates." — High volume KOL; "What is the explant data? Nevro will not publish it. They have to keep information on every patient that gets explanted. With Nevro’s high frequency device, I have never seen so many explants from one company. Every once in a while, I’ll see a crap Medtronic or Abbott device and I need to put in something else. But just in terms of lack of efficacy and explants, Nevro is clearly number one." — High volume KOL"

""Typically, this is not how companies behave with somebody who helped them get FDA approval - one of the investigators, essentially. It's very unusual. We're a very high-volume user but that's Waleed's method, he and Tamar Khayal, his COO....that's how they roll. They play hardball. They've really alienated a lot of people and a lot of my friends have said, 'No way, I'm not ever using those guys because of the way they do business.' And my friends, of course...they're using OrganOX, and they're doing fine, and they're happy with their volume." — Transplant surgeon at a high-volume academic center; "I get badgered very regularly by their medical director - their director of surgeons. My impression is that he's getting badgered by Waleed and Tamer to get our institution in line because he seems uncomfortable when he's talking to me. But I get badgered constantly about it. Can you check on the contract? What's going on? And then, when I call him to say, why are you sending a team from [redacted city] when you have a team in [redacted city]? That makes no sense. And you can see the logic is so flawed; he just talks in circles." — Transplant surgeon at a high-volume academic center"

"“So we’re definitely not subsidizing anybody else's drug discovery [...] In terms of our ability or our willingness to be flexible on economic terms, we are very flexible. But there's definitely a red line where any deal has to pay for our cost, right? So the bare minimum. We're not going to do a deal that's not a gross margin positive. We're not in the business of subsidizing our customers' research.” — Twist CEO, Q2 2022 earnings call on May 5, 2022. “They have a very, very large and complicated manufacturing scheme where they overbuild in order to deliver the product [...] The thing I kept on saying is they were shipping with every gene and every oligo pool a $20 bill to people. That's basically that they were fundamentally flawed, that they were trying to keep up with the price, and they were taking it as a loss every time. But what they have never done is fix the fundamental manufacturing flaw that they have. They need to overbuild or do extensive rework in order to deliver these products.” — Longtime executive in Twist's space."

"“paresthesia-free” has backfired and resulted in a patient/doctor support infrastructure that renders the business model broken and permanently unprofitable. — Ex-executives. “paresthesia-free” is a fatally flawed concept and that he observed over half of patients failing to improve and virtually all experiencing lack of efficacy at various times. — Former regional sales director. Nevro found itself “in a bind” with the CEO and management refusing to accept that high frequency is a dud, leading to conflict with the field and sales reps leaving “in droves” despite the best compensation in the industry. — Former regional sales director. “despite repeated reprogramming sessions in the effort to achieve therapeutic optimization” — A January 2020 paper at the annual neuromodulation meeting (NANS). “differ greatly from the results we have found in real world practice.” — A January 2020 paper at the annual neuromodulation meeting (NANS). “disinformation” regarding explants, labeling Nevro’s conduct as “slimy.” — A KOL."

""Nevro tried to innovate, and I give them credit for that, but they're struggling and trying to survive. So they're trying to come up with these studies demonstrating superiority. The flawed design of their studies defines them as a company and they're failing." — KOL and high volume implanter; "There's no Rosetta Stone in medicine. There's no one thing that can treat everything but Nevro will have you believe that one therapy can treat every type of pain and all you have to do is put it in the same spot... It goes against everything in science and medicine." — KOL and high volume implanter; "The Hawthorne effect is well documented in science... Every patient in Nevro's study knew which device they got. Doctors believe the Hawthorne effect completely skewed Nevro's results. It happens in all their studies. Everybody knows which device they're getting. Nevro's always played a lot of games." — KOL"

"Still, the company believes there may be some opportunity to experiment with other price points if done right... Further, while it's Oops $2 and $3 price point experiment did not work, Dollar Tree believes this was more of a function of poor implementation as opposed to it being a flawed concept. — UBS, December 14, 2018; We are tired of hearing the same trite fixes (remodels, operational procedures, inventory balancing) and think investors should be as well...We are simply going to advocate for activist involvement and will work on a list of specific actions with our best estimates around what can be done. — Bernstein – September 4, 2018"

"“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"

"Before the current update the game was overpriced, had a flawed (probably manipulated) voting system and operated with sometimes incredibly amateur 3D designs - but it was still fun. Now it's overpriced, has a flawed voting system, bad 3D designs, AND it's nearly unplayable, it's a mess! Full of incredible stupid changes on user interface and annoying glitches! Not fun anymore. I regret I wasted money on this... "game". — Boglárka Ónody"

"Even Isteq stated that the "new" source technology they licensed to Lasertec for its A300 "Urashima" is a pipe dream that is as fatally flawed as Ushio's; that Lasertec's EUV tools are a failure; and that key customers they speak to like TSMC and Intel are angry. — Isteq"

"Even Isteq stated that the "new" source technology they licensed to Lasertec for its A300 "Urashima" is a pipe dream that is as fatally flawed as Ushio's; that Lasertec's EUV tools are a failure; and that key customers like TSMC and Intel are angry. — Isteq"