""Given the trends that we're exhibiting, the reversal in those trends, I'm just trying to understand what confidence that we can put in a reasonable timeframe, long term is a fairly vague definition, a reasonable time frame for evolution toward a 55% OR." — RBC; "One of the pushbacks we get in sort of recommending your stock is that there is a perception out there that maybe management is a little bit taking their time on the margin side. There isn't as much of a sense of urgency." — Bernstein; "Lance, I wonder if you could just give your investors a little bit of confidence... you guys have had some pretty significant OR targets out there for some time now." — Barclays; "Our analysis shows a significant efficiency gap between Union Pacific and its peers... This structural opportunity is execution-dependent but we sense the productivity improvement momentum currently occurring in the U.S. railroads, in part due to the management changes at CSX, provides significant incentive for management to attack this opportunity with more vigor." — BMO; "...we expect that management will begin to act with a sense of urgency to restore investor confidence (or will face increasing pressure to do so)." — Bernstein; "[on relative underperformance vs. peers] "...this is a tough question. But Lance, is there a sense of urgency that's been elevated?" — Deutsche Bank; "Ultimately, management needs to deliver better cost performance and under constant questioning they remained steadfast in their outlook to do so... we believe pressure will build on management to execute well." — Citi; "...I just want to understand what's embedded in the back-half guidance or the revised full year guidance? Because this is now the second time in, I don't know, 40-45 days that we're revising the full year outlook. ...there are a few people out there that have many decades of PSR experience that have been PSR implemented... Those guys seem to be available on a consultancy basis. I don't know if there is scope to bring in somebody on a short-term basis to accelerate some of the progress... Is that something that you're considering or looking at doing?" — Deutsche Bank; "I want to ask just a bigger picture question. I think some people are questioning the success or maybe the sustainability of PSR. ... We were supposed to do at 55% this year on our way to a lower low to mid-50s OR in a couple of years. Are those just the wrong numbers to be thinking about now for the OR over time?" — Wolfe; "And then for next year, I heard the word confident a lot. ...but not confident enough to give the OR guide for next year of 55%. ...is 55% achievable for next year?" — RBC; "...you laid out a multiyear productivity improvement for the network. ...are you confident that you can eventually obtain the aggregate plan over time? ...reset at a lower level going forward?" — Evercore ISI; "...can you talk a little bit to the longer-term transition plans? What skill sets do you think the Board really is focused on for the next leader of the business." — Susquehanna; "After a period pre-pandemic where significant improvement in operating efficiency resulted in the mgmt. team at the time boasting a forecast for an 'industry leading O/R,' mgmt. has now backed off that objective... Looking back to the period late 2016 to early 2019, that time was characterized by guidance that lacked conviction, a dearth of PSR expertise at the mgmt. level and (ultimately) sub-par operating results. Fundamentally, we are concerned that we are entering a new period characterized by the very same challenges." — RBC"
Callouts & quotes from 1,069+ activist slides
Every emphasised callout and every pulled quote, extracted slide-by-slide. Search by keyword, filter by slide type or by source.
""Despite Juniper's strong fundamental performance this year that has driven the Street's EPS estimates higher versus a year ago, Juniper's stock (up 10% YTD) has underperformed relative to the S&P 500 Index (up 26%) in 2013. As such, we discussed the opportunity for an accelerated stock repurchase program with Juniper. ... We believe a $3 billion stock repurchase program could be 15-20% accretive to EPS" — Cantor Fitzgerald (12/11/13); "With respect to uses of cash, is there an argument for giving a committed level of cash return to shareholders out of free cash flow, given the healthy cash balance you have, given that it feels like cash flow, as a trend, should be rising going forward?" — Credit Suisse, CS Tech Conference (12/4/13); "Over the past three years, free cash flow generation at Juniper has averaged over $550 million per year. Further, the company has a relatively strong balance sheet with $2.8 billion of net cash at the end of the June quarter or 26% of the current market cap. ... we believe Juniper could and should institute a more formal capital return strategy" — Credit Suisse (9/18/13); "We believe there is scope for increased cash distribution" — Credit Suisse (9/18/13); "Healthy cash flow, no dividend. A quarterly dividend of $0.08/share would be very reasonable (potential yield 1.6%), but nothing's planned as yet" — RBC (8/12/13); "Juniper is a member of a club that most investors would like to see it resign from: Out of the 35 largest Hardware & Equip companies globally, JNPR is one of only four that is not expected to pay a dividend over the NTM. We believe it is time for JNPR to quit this club. ... we think a dividend would be viewed as a much-needed sign of mgmt's longer-term confidence. ... The knock-on positive effect of paying a dividend is bringing a whole new class of shareholders into the ownership base" — Citi (6/7/13); "We think it is time that Juniper quits the non-dividend payers and joins the overwhelming majority of global peers that directly return cash to shareholders" — Citi (6/7/13); "Risks to our Sell rating include a stronger carrier spending environment, improved competitive positioning, or a more aggressive capital allocation strategy, including the introduction of a dividend or a large buyback" — Goldman Sachs (4/24/13); "What would make us more positive? More aggressive capital allocation and/or activist shareholder involvement. Juniper's strong balance sheet ... and cash flow generation (estimated 7% FCF yield in CY13) make it a strong candidate for a significant buy-back or initiation of a dividend" — Goldman Sachs (3/19/13); "Juniper's share repurchases are typically used to offset stock option dilution resulting from the company's employee stock plans rather than being opportunistic buybacks based on price" — Goldman Sachs (6/13/12)"
""longer works because FD is now a detriment to the combined entity's valuation, 3) management seems unwilling to acknowledge the asset is destroying value, so 4) while the only hope is activism at this point - given management's ongoing hope that FD can rebound - the potential for activism seems low...." — Barclays – August 30, 2018; "Finally, we have also begun to field questions from investors about management's ability to successfully turnaround Family Dollar and whether DLTR would consider other strategic options...we are growing concerned that such a heavy focus of time, capital, and opex is being spent on Family Dollar with little to no fundamental improvement and that it may be better spent on the core Dollar Tree segment." — Goldman Sachs – August 30, 2018; "The market's interest in sum-of-the-parts (SOTP) and a potential break-up clearly indicates that the wheels have come off the Family Dollar bull thesis. This turnaround has stalled much too early and the core business, while producing good top-line, is experiencing margin pressure...Family Dollar a Clear Disappointment: Three years after closing on this turnaround project, comps are weak, the productivity gap to DG is as large as ever, and margins are back-tracking after initial progress. We estimate the value destruction of this deal at $7 billion...We were not fans of this transaction from the start, and it's now clear that DLTR would have been much better off today if they had not done this deal." — Wells Fargo – July 11, 2018; "While very low likelihood, in our view, DLTR could go down the path of multiple price points at Dollar Tree or simply raising the single price point. This could be done with or without the divestiture of Family Dollar stores. While, on paper, we understand the attractiveness of such a move (better comps and profit dollar growth, temporarily) we don't see the current Board or management team as amenable." — Credit Suisse – June 12, 2018; "Family Dollar's performance has disappointed investors – We have been disappointed/frustrated with Family Dollar's progression.... A 10% premium to the market for Dollar Tree implies investors are essentially getting Family Dollar for FREE...In this case, investors have essentially attributed ZERO value to Family Dollar's 8,000 stores, $10 billion of sales and $512mmE of EBIT." — RBC – June 8, 2018; "The Dollar Tree concept has been highly successful, but there remains significant opportunity to unlock value by expanding price points and we see three reasons this catalyst could arrive sooner than expected...Lastly, we believe the moment of truth is here for Family Dollar, and failure to drive a more meaningful comp improvement could leave management searching for another source of growth." — Wells Fargo – May 18, 2018"
""We believe the exit of CEO Kevin Johnson raises some concerns around execution, which has been largely uneven of late. That said, his eventual successor could be more opportunistic around costs and buybacks, while simplifying the product line. Time will tell" — Barclays (7/24/13); "Can we speak about the cost structure of Juniper and the scope for it to become more efficient? Because compared to many of the larger IT telecom equipment networking stocks, the operating expense to sales ratio ... [is] almost one of the highest of all the companies that we've looked at. ... Is it a case of direct cost-cutting?" — Credit Suisse, CS Tech Conference (12/4/13); "One of the frustrations I hear from investors is around OpEx and OpEx management. I think you have one of the highest percentages in terms of sales of R&D spend. We've seen other companies in the sector that have throttled back on OpEx, returning cash in an aggressive way, and they're being rewarded for that" — UBS, UBS Tech Conference (11/19/13); "Cost cutting should be focal. Juniper's operating margin structure has been under pressure for several years ... Over the same period revenue has grown at a CAGR of 3.3% per year which raises questions about management's ability to control operating expenses. On an absolute dollar basis, operating expenses have risen by over $300 million from $1.8 billion in 2010 to $2.1 billion in 2012 which, as a percentage of sales, is the highest within our coverage universe" — Credit Suisse (9/18/13); "The retirement of CEO Kevin Johnson, while not expected this quarter, could provide an opportunity for a new strategic approach given the difficulties the company has faced. At the very least, it gives the stock a chance to benefit from the restructuring and realignment story that usually occurs after a CEO transition" — Morgan Stanley (7/24/13); "We view the increased opex as disappointing as leverage was one of the main reasons investors were attracted to Juniper's stock" — Stifel Nicolaus (7/24/13); "We continue to believe the company's R&D level is far too high and generates below average returns compared to rivals such as Cisco and F5 which have R&D in the 10-11% of revenue range" — Wedbush Securities (6/13/12); "The main issue that is impacting Juniper's opex structure is the number of new projects the company has undertaken ..., each of which required big new investments. ... In our view, the underwhelming initial reception for MobileNext and QFabric is evidence that the company should adopt a more prudent investment strategy going forward .... We also believe that Juniper should address its cost structure ... including exiting lagging businesses" — Bank of America Merrill Lynch (5/23/12)"
""On the product portfolio side, is there an argument that Juniper should be somewhat more focused?" — Credit Suisse, CS Tech Conference (12/4/13); "Juniper's current product cycle ramp seems to be the result of efforts to out-innovate the competition beyond what the business organization structure could support." — FBR (9/18/13); "The Security business has been a very difficult one. ... Is that a core business for Juniper? Or could it be a candidate for divestiture at some point?" — Citigroup, Citi Global Technology Conference (9/4/13); "We wonder if a new CEO would initiate a restructuring. Specifically, we believe that the company has too many products that continue to underperform, especially on the security side" — Stifel Nicolaus (8/20/13); "And when QFabric came along, there was a very big promise. And yet it hasn't really delivered to where your expectations were" — Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer Technology Conference (8/13/13); "Juniper has been donating market share in security for several years now implying a new strategic direction may be considered" — RBC (8/12/13); "In security, Juniper has been trying to stabilize the business for some time. You have $2.8 billion in cash, which incidentally is the check that Cisco wrote this morning to acquire Sourcefire. So with that in mind, how do you accelerate change for the security division with the limited resources?" — RBC, Q2'13 Earnings Call (7/23/13); "Is it possible to separate [enterprise security] from the carrier security side and sort of run it for cash as opposed to for growth?" — Morgan Stanley, Q2'13 Earnings Call (7/23/13); "As the networking market has shown sort of below trend growth over the last several years, if it continues to be sluggish how will you guys think about right-sizing your business or restructuring to fit this new level of growth" — Investor Q&A, BAML Conference (6/5/13); "Juniper has had higher than average senior management turnover over the last 3 years. While change is constant in Silicon Valley, we are focused on future execution in the switching business, as two executives who led their entry into the market, Hitesh Sheth and David Yen, departed to competitors in 2009 and 2011" — Goldman Sachs (3/19/13); "Loss of focus, loss of share - We attribute Juniper's share losses to a number of factors... Beyond product deficiencies, we believe the company's dispersed efforts on multiple fronts (new routers, data center switches, MPLS, etc) restricted funding availability for sales efforts, exacerbating the problem" — Bank of America Merrill Lynch (1/8/13)"
"Okay, great. And finally, your gross margins went up sequentially, which is interesting given that your payments revenue is ramping. Can you comment that dynamic? Is that reflective of the strength within the software business [when you had some higher] ARPU in the quarter? Or are you also seeing some improvement in your payment margins based on your growing scale? — BMO Analyst, Nov 2020. Yes, a little bit of all of the above. I mean, we obviously, given the growth in customers, saw some nice increase in the subscription line churn starting to come back towards normal, again, which helped a lot. Some of the discounting measures that we had in place are going [all start there a little off balance], as you know. We do continue to kind of look for ways to drive incremental margin and payments. And I guess, the other aspect to the overall gross margin is -- as you know, we do have some legacy payment referral revenue streams. And as those volumes are covered in the quarter as well, it would have been incremental to margin? — CEO Dasilva, Nov 2020. You have the very helpful slide that shows the adoption and some of the geos and verticals. Certainly seems to be going in the right direction. I'm just kind of curious once we think about what this is going to look like maybe after we've incorporated ShopKeep and Upserve, which I believe have higher ARPUs in part because they've been successful at payments, if we should be expecting it to kick up? Or just curious on how the incorporation of those companies will impact these dynamics? — Keybanc Analyst, Feb 2021. Yes, for sure, will tick up the Upserve business in particular. The vast majority of their customers were using Upserve payments as kind of they have a really nice elegant solution that embeds Payments right into the product itself. ShopKeep, they were further along as well on the Payments journey from a customer adoption perspective, though as we've talked about, largely through a referral model, but a good percentage of their customers do use a payment solution there. And as we talked about earlier, the teams are working hard to move those or to build the infrastructure to make sure that Lightspeed Payments is available to those customers. So all told, we expect those things to really positively impact our overall penetration at a global level. And of course, that's core to what we're trying to do around here is to make sure that the vast majority of our customers worldwide take Payments. So all these things, I think, are helpful. — CFO Nussey, Feb 2021"
""Our analysis of a theoretical model in which 80% of BWLD is franchised along conservative industry standards yields per share valuations significantly higher than BWLD's current share price" — Nick Setyan, Wedbush, 2/8/17; "[D]irectionally the activist plan is a much better plan than the one the current management team is focused on" — Howard Penney, Hedgeye, 8/18/16; "[T]he math [on a transition to a 90% franchised business model] looks intriguing, even when using what we think are conservative assumptions" — David Tarantino, Baird, 10/24/16; "[D]uring its Analyst Day...[Management] failed to address any changes to BWLD's long-term company/franchise store mix (now at 52% company-owned, which we believe should be reduced) by defending ongoing consideration of future franchise purchases (where we would hope for a re-franchising strategy)" — Paul Westra, Stifel, 8/16/16; "We like the potential for additional value-unlocking actions or a more drastic tack in strategy in-line with some of the ideas outlined in a recent 13D filing...Investors may look past downward revisions if the prospect of transformative action is on the table, but if this is called into doubt, fundamentals suggest a lower price for the stock" — John Zolidis, Buckingham, 9/15/16; "[A] falling [ROIC] as a result of higher capex could suggest a greater proportion of units would create more per share value as franchised units (e.g., where the same capex could be deployed for share repurchases)...Investors remain highly focused on the potential opportunity for BWLD to increase its franchise mix" — Karen Holthouse, Goldman Sachs, 8/4/16; "We view refranchising as a realistic alternative path to value creation for shareholders...Investors often forget BWLD was >65% franchised a few years ago. Our conversations with brokers that specialize in restaurant and franchisee transactions lead us to believe the appetite for most of BWLD's markets would be strong, and could command multiples towards the higher end of the 5-6x unit-level EBITDA industry standard"' — Nick Setyan, Wedbush, 9/12/16; "We believe investors would applaud the introduction of multi-year refranchising programs from Buffalo Wild Wings" — Jeff Farmer, Wells Fargo, 7/13/16; "'Logic' supports the premise that a franchise model is better insulated against economic volatility, generating a high margin annuity stream of royalties with limited operating volatility...We expect investors to further encourage (re)franchising / licensing at [BWLD]" — Jeffrey Bernstein, Barclays, 5/17/16"
""Consumers increasingly see the value of a fiber broadband connection and the utility of a gig plus sort of in terms of what serves their household." — John Stratton, Executive Chairman of the Board, Frontier Communications - May 2024; "We grew ARPU because our customers are increasingly choosing gigabit speeds and value-added services to enhance their Internet experience, and they're willing to pay for it. As a result, we accelerated fiber revenue growth to 13% and lifted our overall company revenue growth to 2% year-over-year." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications - August 2024; "Firstly, building 1.3 million fiber passings this year will mean we will have delivered by the end of the year exactly the build ambition that we set out at emergence 2 years ago. And secondly, we are actually accelerating our build this year...The way to think about our build ambition of 1.3 million homes passed this year is at a minimum build from here on. We think we've got plenty of operational gas in the tank to further accelerate if and when the conditions are ready for that." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications, February 2023; "We are moving fast on 2 of our key value drivers, building and selling fiber and it's translating into financial growth. If you look at the left-hand side, you will see that our fiber passings are up 31% year-over-year. And customer growth for the quarter is up 17%. With data consumption expected to triple by 2025, it's a great time to be in the fiber business." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications, February 2023; "The long-term trends in our business remain extremely encouraging. Our industry thesis is based on the view that the significant growth in data consumption that we've seen over the past 2 decades will continue to ramp up, tripling over the next 4 years alone. We're confident that fiber is best positioned to meet the long-term demand for data consumption." — John Stratton, Executive Chairman of the Board, Frontier Communications, November 2022; "We built fiber at a record pace again, adding 351,000 new fiber locations. And as John shared, we will hit the halfway point in our initial goal of passing 10 million fiber homes later this month." — Nick Jeffery, CEO, Frontier Communications, November 2022"
""To summarize, the key growth assets underperform, expectations are lowered, and a key investor fear – Hess's propensity to outspend cash flow – is stoked by an early upward revision to the 2012 budget." — Deutsche Bank (April 25, 2012); "Flowing through from the high capex and low growth, the company has the lowest yield and lowest dividend growth combination amongst major oils." — Deutsche Bank (July 27, 2011); "The company has continued to be a net issuer of equity...at a time when most of the other majors have been buying stock back... and has produced low return on capital employed for most of the present decade." — Bernstein (October 22, 2009); "The company's refining and marketing assets remain emphatically not for sale, despite the fact that redeploying downstream invested capital...to the much higher returning upstream would make solid business sense." — JP Morgan (September 17, 2009); "Hindsight: We can't believe you're back to more hedging." — Deutsche Bank (September 29, 2008); "Notwithstanding the romance of Leon Hess's development of the company from one oil delivery truck into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, by the early 2000's the company's reputation with investors was one of a struggling oil essentially run as if it were private." — Deutsche Bank (August 7, 2007); "Historic mistrust, with certain major potential shareholders reluctant to invest based on the issues faced in the past with a distinctly mixed record of shareholder value creation to say the least. Ultimately, John Hess is still in charge, and that provides a major link to the past. Hess has historically shown poor performance on operational metrics..." — Deutsche Bank (August 6, 2007); "The change in 2008 estimated EPS is due to our belief in the industry-wide cost pressures being sustained into next year and the company's inability to manage them quite as successfully as do the Majors." — Bank of America (April 26, 2007); "Continued exploration losses are value destructive." — Deutsche Bank (October 25, 2006); "It is important to highlight that the highest paid companies are also the best performers, with the arguable exception of Hess. He is a dynastic executive left in a business that resonates with family fortunes..." — Deutsche Bank (August 24, 2006)."
"4/7/08: “Michael the good news is we have a team here that’s really working together.”; 7/8/09: “So the good news was we believe that there was room for improvement and here we go.”; 1/10/11: “Good news is, and you’ll see some of this here on the right-hand side, Alcoa continues to be recognized for what I would call values-based management.”; 10/6/08: “The good news is if you talk about real future projects, we can continue to look at future projects because as I said before our mid- to long-term prospect in alumina and aluminum is positive.”; 7/12/10: “I mean the good news is Russia is coming back.”; 4/11/11: “And the good news, also on top of it, 32% revenue growth on a year-over-year basis.”; 10/11/11: “We are, and that’s the good news here, whatever lies ahead of us, we are prepared to take it.”; 4/10/12: “And the good news also is all of that would not be possible if we wouldn’t have driven process innovations.”; 1/8/13: “In Europe, we expect a decline of 4% to 6% in 2013, and that is also relatively good news because the decline is slowing.”; 4/8/13: “But that’s better news -- I mean, more good news than bad news, I would say.”; 10/8/13: “So good news to come and I think the orders are showing in the right direction here.”; 1/12/09: “The good news is all of those markets are our end markets in Russia.”; 10/7/10: “So with that, let’s go to the aluminum demand and see what implications the end markets drive has on the aluminum demand, and this is actually pretty good news.”; 7/11/11: “And the good news is, we’ve constantly innovated and substituted our own solutions.”; 11/9/11: “So there’s a lot of moving elements in this segment of our business, we need the productivity but we also get it, and that’s the good news.”; 1/9/12: “Well, I think the good news is we’re doing it in addition to the things that we’ve done before.”; 11/7/12: “The good news is the growth rate is exactly in those fields that are higher-margin on traditionally and will be, that’s fantastic.”; 7/8/13: “This is the good news. I mean, the good news is that we will be able to grow our aerospace business, I mean, and every one of the segments that caters to aerospace.”"
""We've seen [auto] revenue off of a substantial base doubled in each of the last two years. And we expect to grow, while not at that faster rate, well over 50% for several years to come" — CFO Stifel Conf June 2016; "Yes, for the automotive in MPS, as you know, we entered the market about 4 or 5 years ago, and 4 or 5 years ago, our revenue almost 0. And even 2, 3 years ago very teeny, teeny, tiny. And it takes a long time to get the revenue. And so design cycle is about 3 to 4 years. And we are total TAM in automotive, it's about $6 billion, probably a little -- now they're more than that. And so what is our percentage? It's less than 1%. So it's a total greenfield for us to grow" — CEO Hsing April 2017; "Yes, it is fair that the growth rate it will not change much. Okay, but don't quote me exactly what's the rate. It would be very similar to this year. Which applications or which segments, I think in the next couple of years we're going to expand lot more segments. Now the lighting, infotainments and the safeties, and we will have a lot more safety products come out. And as Bernie said in his script, we have an ADAS and also the battery management as well as the connectivities. And those areas have a very little revenue or some of the items have no revenue, only sampling. And we expect to have a very high percentage growth in -- a very dollar amount growth in 2019, '20 and '21" — CEO Hsing Commenting on Auto Feb 2018; "The other thing I want to also point out is we're growing so fast, okay? 55% year-on-year growth last year. Take a look at the total semiconductor market in auto. It's about 13%, right? 4x growth versus the market. And you can see the TAM that we're going after, $7 billion. ...Really, we're at this moment where the opportunity is incredible. MPS happens to be at the right place at the right time. We've learned from the last 5 years of innovation of selling. We understand the customers. We have the great products. We see the growth really continuing over the next 5, 6 years, easily, 40% to 50% CAGR" — Allan Chan MPWR Auto Marketing June 2018"
""The continued string of negative news has left management with some work to do to rebuild investor confidence." — Bank of America Credit Research (January 31, 2003); "We believe Hess should trade at a 5%-10% discount to the Domestic Oils based on...[and 3] Damaged management credibility." — JP Morgan (January 30, 2003); "Credibility matters, and Hess has little of it left." — Credit Suisse (January 30, 2003); "REITERATE UNDERPERFORM; E&P DETERIORATION A SERIOUS ISSUE There is no change to our Underperform rating for Hess despite the continued slide in its shares. We believe large write downs at its LLOG and Triton acquisitions coupled with continued erosion in its base E&P properties point to serious problems with the company's exploration and production business." — Goldman Sachs (January 30, 2003); "...While investors remain worried over the management's seemingly sloppy attitude to shareholders...We are increasingly concerned over Hess's continuing ability to generate these 'non recurring' charges ...Carelessness with shareholders equity is a worrying trait in any corporation." — Credit Suisse (January 30, 2003); "...We believe even if the disposal program is completed the portfolio improvement is unlikely to be sufficient to result in returns in excess of Hess's cost of capital." — UBS Warburg (November 5, 2002); "...Production forecasts were revised lower supporting concerns that we have had regarding economic value creation..." — Morgan Stanley (October 25, 2002); "Hess's stock fell 12% today on the back of a downgrade to 2003 and 2004 production expectations and a further write-down of the LLOG properties. While neither of these things is devastating to the company's value, we believe that management credibility at Hess has been stretched very thin...This charge will be seen by investors as a continuation of a disturbing pattern of special charges at Hess...again calling into question the company's judgment..." — Credit Suisse (October 24, 2002)."
"Q3 2008 call: “What we keep seeing from operators is one, great interest; two discussing details of the projects; three, discussions between operators and OEMers about joint projects for the next year.” — DSP Group Management; Q4 2008 call: “This year's Consumer Electronic Show was an important event for DSP Group during which our XpandR product line received a clear vote of confidence and proof from the marketplace that the strategic decisions and investments we previously made were right.” — DSP Group Management; Q1 2009 call: “I can say that we shall begin deliveries and we shall begin to see revenues in the fourth quarter...we had increased tractions with customers and we are basically building on this momentum and working together with these customers in order to a) get these designs into production. But as Eli said, we will start seeing revenues coming in the fourth quarter and I would say most of these designs will -- can really mature into -- will mature into products into next year.” — DSP Group Management; Q2 2009 call: “we are still on track, so we do expect to see some revenues towards the end of the fourth quarter of this year. But as we said also in the previous call, most of these design wins will mature into revenues in 2010. But as we said, some production and revenues are expected in the fourth quarter.” — DSP Group Management; Q1 2010 call: “Now your second question was a more color on the new product line, meaning the XpandR multimedia. And as we said in the previous conference call following CS, we're seeing a lot of interest in the product...we believe that this products will gain traction in the second half and towards next year..” — DSP Group Management; Q4 2010 call: “What I can tell you is that we feel very good about the traction that we get for instance with the multimedia handsets that we showed that are several and new designs with new brands that will be launched from the beginning of 2011.” — DSP Group Management"
""HES has been what we call a 'value trap' for some time." — Societe Generale (January 30, 2013). "In multiple client conversations throughout the day we found literally no one that defended the shape, nor global strategy of Hess." — Deutsche Bank (January 30, 2013). "The simple fact is the market doesn't trust Hess to run its business well, and thus places a discount on everything the company controls." — Morningstar (January 29, 2013). "This is the most undermanaged major oil company in the world." — Jim Cramer, CNBC Faber Report (January 29, 2013). "And so, one of the problems is the board is stuffed with incredibly long-serving members, none of whom seem to have any experience outside the company running an oil company, so there's a real lack of oil industry depth here. And coincidentally, they also happen to have very strong financial connections with the Hess family, helping to run the charitable board, helping to run the estate of the founders." — Reuters Breakingviews (January 29, 2013). "Hess' board has consistently failed its shareholders and has never brought management to task, ever... In light of the company's poor performance the last decade, this is clearly a board that gives John Hess what he wants, rather than doing what is good for shareholders." — Morningstar (January 29, 2013). "The stock price reflects concern about ballooning capital costs, chronic lack of free cash flow, a high oil price breakeven, and recent difficulty executing against guidance and expectations." — Deutsche Bank (October 17, 2012). "We think the market will largely adopt a wait and see approach and not give any free passes to management until clear path towards their cash flow targets and execution capability is evidenced... From a valuation perspective, we think the stock is relatively cheap as a result of the company's less-than-stellar historical performance record and perceived execution risk." — Barclays (July 26, 2012)."
""The separation of our two business units—ESM and MSM—at the beginning of 2007 provides sharper focus and greater accountability. And the operating and financial discipline we've instilled across our company makes us a faster, more agile, and more productive enterprise" — Bob Beauchamp (2007 Annual Report); "The organizational separation of our MSM business from our ESM business two years ago continues to pay dividends. Our offerings today are superior to the competition's and our people are energized and focused" — Bob Beauchamp (2008 Annual Report); "So over the course of Fiscal 2009, we significantly strengthened our sales force. We invested in the most complete and powerful sales training in our history. We brought in new management and sales professionals to upgrade an already strong and talented team" — Bob Beauchamp (2009 Annual Report); "We substantially upgraded our Enterprise Service Management (ESM) sales force and expect that we'll increase the average number of productive sales reps in fiscal 2011 by 20% over last year's levels" — Bob Beauchamp (2010 Annual Report); "We also strengthened our ESM sales team, achieving a 20% increase in the average productive sales headcount compared to the prior year, while significantly slowing attrition" — Bob Beauchamp (2011 Annual Report); "We made further progress to improve sales execution, including numerous steps taken to address sales attrition, and our tenured and overall ESM sales force capacity, excluding Numara, is up, finishing the year with 20% more total sales capacity than at the beginning of fiscal 2012.... The progress here is evidence of our efforts to address our well-documented fiscal 2012 challenges to improve sales force capacity and productivity, and it puts us in a much-improved position as we enter fiscal 2013" — Bob Beauchamp (Q4 and FY2012 Earnings Call on May 9, 2012)"
"Clients have fired us because of performance -- yes, of losing clients. That's the danger, the worst thing that could happen. And so there's always, always the most stressful part as a part of the team, as a leadership team because you always want to have good client reviews. And so that's kind of what drives the performance up over time because the expectations of clients always change. And then when it's not good for a particular week, then everyone just kind of panics and does what they need to do to get it up for the next business review, which is a week later. So over time, it usually gets better or else, we get fired — Former Executive. They would leave TaskUs because we weren't able to meet the performance that they required, or usually, clients come to TaskUs, when they start off with TaskUs, TaskUs is the only vendor, and that's good for us. But then, eventually, they would want to get another vendor for business continuity purposes, right? Because you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. We get fired in some cases because the new vendor outperformed us. And over a span of a certain period of time, we are not able to cope up with that. And that's when they decide to move more of the volume to that other vendor and then get a third vendor to be the business continuity site which was TaskUs before. So then like most clients always have at least one more client -- I mean, one more BPO and there's always competition between the two BPOs. Sometimes there's even more. I've had instances where there were 20 vendors but that wasn't TaskUs, it was at my previous company. We're 20 vendors, and it was really hard to keep up. As to the firing rate, for me, I was handling 11 total clients, and 2 of them, I lost. So it's about 15% or so, 10% to 15% that I lost clients. — Former Executive."
"[Avon's] apparent lack of succession planning is 'an extraordinary indictment of the board,' said Mark Cohen, professor at Columbia Business School and former CEO of Sears Canada. — Reuters article titled 'Avon needs bold change as Jung's CEO tenure ends,' 12/14/11. [Coca-Cola] has landed a new chief executive after a search so remarkable that another Fortune CEO, A.G. Lafley of P&G, calls it 'one of the strangest processes we've ever seen.'... [I]t has become a case study in business dysfunction. — CNN Money article titled 'The Real Story: How did Coca-Cola's management go from first-rate to farcical in six short years? Tommy the barber knows,' 05/31/04. It's a tale of how good intentions clashed with hubris and ego can erode one of the most famous organizations in the world — a case study in corporate dysfunction and succession gone wrong. As Iger and the Disney board resume their search for a successor, a critical question looms: Have they learned the moral of the story? — CNBC article titled 'Disney's wild ride: Iger, Chapek and the making of an epic succession mess,' 09/06/23. Mondelez International's orderly succession planning is sweet inspiration... Others would do well to emulate the process... — Barclays research note, 07/29/21. Mr. Moeller has been front and center in P&G's turnaround over the past decade, [and] this announcement ensures continuity of a strategy that has already been working well... — Barclays research note, 01/30/23. [Hein] must have done a good job impressing the board with his vision for the company... [And] as we have seen many times before, unexpected hires can turn out to be very good... Dirk Van de Put is another excellent CEO who is now [at] Mondelez but who also came out of left field... — Barclays research note, 01/30/23."
"I think the world of the Phillips 66 refining employees, and I would love the opportunity to become a part of Phillips 66 again in a board role... — Brian Coffman, former CEO, Motiva, Elliott nominee for Phillips 66's board, April 8, 2025; This is a company that has good people, has a rich history, and great assets that don't necessarily belong together. — Sig Cornelius, former ConocoPhillips CFO, Elliott nominee for Phillips 66's board, April 22, 2025; Phillips 66 is a wonderful company with fantastic assets. And if we can change the corporate structure and unlock value, then I think that actually frees up every operation as a pure play... — Stacy Nieuwoudt, former energy and industrials analyst, Citadel, Elliott nominee for Phillips 66's board, April 15, 2025; They've got some of the best people that have been handcuffed and not allowed to succeed. — Mike Heim, co-founder of Targa Resources, Elliott nominee for Phillips 66's board, April 30, 2025; So, you've just got to give them the opportunity to spread their wings, go back out and repair a decade of damage or two decades of damage...and start to build the company again. — Mike Heim, co-founder of Targa Resources, Elliott nominee for Phillips 66's board, April 30, 2025; ...There is a pent-up frustration, but also pent-up creativity and excitement of the employee base [at companies like Phillips 66] that is just waiting to be unleashed. — John Pike, Elliott partner, head of global energy practice, May 15, 2025; We want to see this business [Phillips 66] thrive, and it would be our expectation that your career, your wealth, your sense of satisfaction at work would also thrive alongside of that. — Geoff Sorbello, Elliott's managing director of engagement, May 15, 2025"
""Management's initial announcement on asset sales and increased payouts to shareholders, while significant, appeared to undershoot the high expectations that had buoyed the share price at the start of the year" — Border to Coast. "Keisei initially announced it would sell 1% of its OLC stake, which disappointed the market. The value of the OLC stake has different meanings for different shareholders of Keisei; however, if it continues this path, they can unlock capital to fund growth in capex or return funds to shareholders." — MFS Investment Management. "In our view, Keisei Electric Railway is a discounted asset with the potential to unlock significant value by reducing its 20% stake in Oriental Land." — Franklin Templeton. "We also expect the company to monetize its 20% stake in Oriental Land, which equals Keisei's entire enterprise value" — Boston Common Asset Management. "The entire market capitalization of Keisei is $6.6bn, and they've got this $8bn post-tax investment sitting there. On top of that you're also getting this profitable rail business thrown in there basically for free." — Fidelity International. "The Fund considers that the valuation [of Keisei Electric Railway] is extremely inaccurate." — Sparx Japan Small-Cap Fund. "...it's remarkable that Keisei Electric trades at about a 50% discount to the value of that stake in Oriental Land, as well as the value of the land and the railway line business as well." — AVI Asset Value Investors. "Keisei Railways ... have significant latent value hidden in net cash or cross-holdings. Through the efforts of both ourselves and others, we believe this value has a strong chance of being unlocked amidst this new atmosphere of reform in Japan." — M&G Investments."
""Ultimately, we think that a typical point that we run will mature to a point where it's got a very, very solid consistent number of pets that'll treat on a weekly basis, and we're estimating that it takes roughly a little over a year to get to that point. And in a slow environment, it could take upwards of 18 months to get there." — McCord Christensen, CEO, PetIQ; "If you look at the right side of this chart, this shows the clinic rollout schedule as we've organized ourselves internally. For 2018, we believe we'll open between 20 and 30 locations; 2019, 80 to 120; and you can see the schedule out through 2023 to be able to have over 1,000 locations operating by the end of 2023." — McCord Christensen, CEO, PetIQ; "This is kind of mechanical in nature, but if I am looking at the way you discussed adjusted net income and excluding, I guess the clinics primarily, before you were using clinics have been open or now opened for a year, now that's shifted to what seems to be 18 months. Why that shift?" — Brian Nagel, Oppenheimer & Co.; "Yes. Brian, this is John. That's a great question and thanks for bringing it up. We looked at ourselves internally, and we said, we've been messaging all along that the maturity model on our clinic whether it's our new wellness center or when we enter into new markets or with new retail partners, the maturity model is 18 months. So, therefore when we evaluate the same-store sales add-back it should be looking at the exact same way." — John Newland, CFO, PetIQ; "As Cord mentioned, we expect [to] open more than 80 new wellness centers in 2019 beginning in Q2 with a vast majority of wellness centers opening weighted towards the second half of 2019." — John Newland, CFO, PetIQ"
"And then can you talk a little bit more about the profitability in your clean energy business and with PWRcell? I mean you mentioned that you were profitable. I think that was an EBITDA comment, but I want to clarify that. And can you talk at all about the gross margins for your clean energy business? Where roughly will they be by the end of 2021 in comparison to your overall gross margin? And just how should we think of it more on like a 2 to 3-year basis as you continue to ramp? — Roth Analyst. Yes. Ross, it's York. So yes, making very good progress on gross margin optimization, a lot of focus on the bill of material, a lot of focus on supply chain. And you're right. Leaving the year here in 2020, in Q4, we were profitable. That was a nice landmark or a milestone for the start-up business being profitable in Q4. But throughout 2021, yes, we do expect to ramp up our gross margins to somewhere in the mid-30% range. So that's relative what we do, almost 40%, I guess, high 30s here, gross margin for 2020. So close to the company average by the end of 2020 is the plan. And then obviously, we're going to be ramping up our operating expenses to really go fast after this market. So expecting EBITDA margins to grow throughout the year as well, along with gross margins, maybe hitting double digits there by the end of the year for EBITDA margins. — CFO York, Q4 2020. Today, clean energy, just thinking storage, that is a profitable business today. We haven't quoted exactly what margin profile is. It's profitable today. But over time, over the next call it, few years, that will also grow into that mid- to high teens EBITDA margins as well. So we've got a road map and a path to get there. — CFO York, Q3 2021"
""Investors in PFE have been battered twice in the last 2 weeks - the first came with danuglipron's failure (oral GLP1),the second with the new guidance. No doubt there was an element of capitulation... In other words, despite a year of major underperformance, it's hard to say PFE's a "buy." Some credibility has been lost, and the near-term catalyst path is not a strong one." — Wolfe, December 14, 2023; "Given the high number of questions we have received on EPS and margin dynamics and the implications for 2025 results, we do not see today's update as a clearing event. Today's update essentially should provide a floor on COVID estimates and EPS, in our view. However, there remains a significant amount of uncertainty on what is driving 2024 margins & EPS so low (i.e. whether this is due to depressed COVID guidance or there is an issue with the core business margins, or a mix of both). And based on our conversations, we expect that investors will have a hard time stepping into the story until they gain further clarity." — JP Morgan, December 13, 2023; "But we don't have much conviction in the outlook, making it tough to pound the table even from these levels... Level Of Confidence In Management - Our confidence is not the highest for several reasons. PFE provided guidance on many parameters but in retrospect much of it is proving to have been too optimistic, is no longer supported, and resulted in two reductions in guidance in 2023. We were not fans of the Seagen acquisition from the start, given that each of the key assets has associated questions, making the outlook less than clear, particularly given the price paid." — TD Cowen, January 4, 2024"
""Investors in PFE have been battered twice in the last 2 weeks - the first came with danuglipron's failure (oral GLP1),the second with the new guidance. No doubt there was an element of capitulation... In other words, despite a year of major underperformance, it's hard to say PFE's a "buy." Some credibility has been lost, and the near-term catalyst path is not a strong one." — Wolfe, December 14, 2023; "Given the high number of questions we have received on EPS and margin dynamics and the implications for 2025 results, we do not see today's update as a clearing event. Today's update essentially should provide a floor on COVID estimates and EPS, in our view. However, there remains a significant amount of uncertainty on what is driving 2024 margins & EPS so low (i.e. whether this is due to depressed COVID guidance or there is an issue with the core business margins, or a mix of both). And based on our conversations, we expect that investors will have a hard time stepping into the story until they gain further clarity." — JP Morgan, December 13, 2023; "But we don't have much conviction in the outlook, making it tough to pound the table even from these levels... Level Of Confidence In Management - Our confidence is not the highest for several reasons. PFE provided guidance on many parameters but in retrospect much of it is proving to have been too optimistic, is no longer supported, and resulted in two reductions in guidance in 2023. We were not fans of the Seagen acquisition from the start, given that each of the key assets has associated questions, making the outlook less than clear, particularly given the price paid." — TD Cowen, January 4, 2024"
""Programming is usually done by the rep. I have a programming computer, but the reps do it all day long. Legally, ethically, appropriately, the rep is supposed to meet the patient in my office. The reality is that some of them meet at the patient's house. They're not supposed to do that. They'll go to their house and they'll hook up their programmer and they'll program right there." — KOL; "Who has more experience programming the device - me or somebody who spends their entire life programming stimulators? Being a stimulator rep is not like being a pharma rep selling Viagra. You have clinic hours. It's a very unique sales position. You actually have patients. You actually come into clinic. I'll walk by a room and go, oh, Mike the rep is in room three and he's programming somebody. Cool, I didn't even know. I can make recommendations to reps but they're really the experts in programming." — KOL; "If a patient is not responding or the pain comes back, I have the rep come talk to them. They can check in a rough way whether the leads have moved so in most cases, they get an X-ray of the leads before they come in so they have a better idea of how to program it. If it's just that the therapy has diminished, then Nevro has a special group of clinical specialists that manage those cases remotely and guide the representatives on what to do if they cannot solve the problem themselves. Now, if everything is in place and everything is functioning as expected, but a patient is not getting pain relief, that's when they start trying other programs and they start engaging the Therapy Optimization Team as Nevro calls it." — High volume Nevro implanter"
""We agree with Elliott's assessment that there is more upside potential in the refining business, on both capture and opex, and we think Elliott's presence itself could refocus management towards this business." — J.P. Morgan, April 8, 2025; "Where we agree with Elliott that PSX is undervalued - at current levels we see no value for refining in the share price at current levels, under our integrated DCF analysis." — Wolfe Research, April 25, 2025; "We prefer a spin, or large selldown of non synergistic assets as we believe the volatility in Refining EBITDA swamps growth in more stable premium segments, keeping stability seeking midstream investors away." — Bank of America, April 25, 2025; "Despite the noise, expect that Elliott's pressure to execute on these targets will be a strong positive for the stock." — Piper Sandler, November 29, 2023; "We think PSX's 1Q25 results will have a mixed impact on near-term share price performance... the market may interpret the bad news as good news because it will give more support to Elliott's case and thus provide a potential catalyst to the shares." — Scotiabank, April 25, 2025; "We suspect Elliott's updated position will result in PSX having to find additional ways to close the refining performance gap vs large cap peers... A M/S spin seems like easiest to execute...A sale could be a more beneficial outcome, though requires a willing suitor." — T.D. Cowen, February 12, 2025; "Here Elliott sees Midstream assets as potentially worth ~$50B, assuming a ~10x multiple on synergized '26E EBITDA... We agree with Elliott on valuation disparity." — Citi Research, February 13, 2025"
""We believe the status quo at NSC will lead to continued underperformance of the railroad. We also believe that Board refreshment and Jim Barber's and Jamie Boychuk's leadership are essential for enhancing safety and for ensuring outstanding long-term achievements for the benefit of all NSC's shareholders and other stakeholders." — EdgePoint Investment Group; "[W]e believe a change in management and refreshment of the board at NSC are warranted and could stimulate improved operations and thus equity performance. For these reasons, we intend to support the election of dissident nominees Betsy Atkins, James Barber, Jr., William Clyburn, Jr., Sameh Fahmy, John Kasich, Gilbert Lamphere, and Allison Landry." — Neuberger Berman; "Important from yesterday's town hall was commentary that PSR implementation is going to be slower than what we saw at CSX given in our view changes to the regulatory environment and the proposed management team's focus on the customer [...] Overall, we view this plan as contrasting heavily against Norfolk's Resilience Model and expect headcount reduction can be achieved on the back of attrition, in addition to head office cuts." — RBC Capital Markets note issued on April 19th; "NSC's activist campaign appears to have unanimous support from institutional investors." — Deutsche Bank Research note issued on April 15th; "We see value in potential management change with Jim Barber as CEO and Jamie Boychuk as COO as proposed by the activist investor Ancora, especially given the historical margin underperformance of Norfolk Southern." — Barclays Equity Research note issued on March 25th"
""Consumer optics represent a long-term growth opportunity for Tessera and we believe we are on track for $100 million in revenue from this exciting business area in 2010." — Former CEO Bruce McWilliams, 4Q06 earnings call, 1/31/07; "We are one of the leading technology licensing and innovation providers in the imaging and optics field. And we remain confident in our goal for $100 million in revenue in total Imaging & Optics by 2011." — Former CEO Hank Nothhaft, 1Q09 earnings call, 4/30/09; "Well, I stated in June at the Cowen Conference that I felt that the [strategic alternatives and potential spin off of the Imaging & Optics business] process was in the 12 months plus or minus, probably plus timeframe." — Former CEO Bob Young, 2Q11 earnings call, 7/28/11; "... we remain on track for design wins with our MEMS auto focus actuator in the first half of 2012." — Former CEO Bob Young, 1Q12 earnings call, 4/26/12; "... we expect to get MEMS associated revenue in the fourth quarter of this year." — Former CEO Bob Young, 1Q12 earnings call, 4/26/12; "Our goal for DOC to become profitable in 2013." — Former CEO Bob Young, Vista Point acquisition press release, 3/2/12; "This transaction is a critical step in our strategy of transforming DOC from an optical and image enhancement software and components business into a vertically integrated supplier of next-generation camera modules...we believe we gain significant additional advantages when we control our own supply chain and manufacturing." — CEO Bob Young, Vista Point Acquisition Conference Call, 3/2/12"
"Question, Justin Post: "I know one of the initiatives of the Company is to move up to team sales. Just wondering how you are thinking about enterprise sales force and whether you might accelerate hiring there. And then on the CapEx versus the capital leases, maybe talk about why you choose to use capital leases, what are the advantages to the Company and how you think about the cash flow around those? Thank you." Answer, CFO Ajay Vashee: "This is Ajay. I'll jump in on the question on capital leases and thank you for the question. So the high level update there is that in the last quarter we added $25.5 million to our capital lease lines, and we made close to $30 million in payments against our capital lease obligations. And as a result, our ending capital lease balance was $170 million in Q1, and that was down about $4.3 million from Q4. And at a high level, while there may be some variances within a given quarter and between quarters, we expect to generally maintain our outstanding capital lease balance over the long-term, as capital lease repayments will roughly offset capital lease additions. And to your question on how we choose to buy equipment versus leverage a capital lease, we receive favorable financing terms on our capital leases. And we believe that for a portion of our infrastructure hardware, that they better match our capital investments with our cash inflows, and so that's why we leverage them. And we of course continue to evaluate our capital allocation strategy on an ongoing basis." — Q1 2018 Dropbox Call"
""our team continues the integration of insurance reimbursement as part of the Hims & Hers platform...Expect to hear more about this rollout in the second half of this year." — CEO Dudum on Q2 2021 Earnings Call; "But with that said, we are continuing to work on that insurance reimbursement. The team is actively involved in that for very specific conditions and specific categories." — CEO Dudum on Q3 2021 Earnings Call; "It's a great question. I'm glad you asked. We are continuing to invest in that integration on the insurance side. We believe that, that's a critical part of having a cost-effective platform for a very wide range of conditions. So I think it's something that you can look to hear from us with confidence in the coming months on where we stand, but I'm very energized by the team's progress on that initiative." — CEO Dudum on Q4 2021 Earnings Call; "And so -- we're continuing to look to your point, and we're always very open to find those opportunities where insurance might benefit our customers. But in the categories we're operating today in today and the categories we're most excited about, we actually think we can deliver cash pay prices that are easier and more beneficial." — CEO Dudum on Q2 2022 Earnings Call; "payers and insurance, it's something that we need to continue to explore. I think it goes alongside all of the different avenues that also we could invest in. So, I think at this point in time, we've opted to pursue other avenues of investment..." — CEO Dudum on Q1 2023 Earnings Call"
"“Okay. Where are you at - and where would Bemis be at in terms of its CAPEX cycle? ... And that would cause a drain on sales.” — David Errington, Analyst, Aug 2018; “David, we have been spending at just a tad above D&A. And this year in 2018, we've brought it down significantly below D&A.” — Bemis CEO, Aug 2018; “David, I just want to come back to the point about capital because I just wanted to mention the comment that I made... the math would suggest $350 million to $400 million of CAPEX.” — Amcor CEO Delia, Aug 2018; “Hi, guys. So, firstly, I wanted to ask a little bit about the CapEx, it seems it was a little bit lighter than expected this year...” — Analyst, Bemis Q4'18 Call; “Yeah. Salvator, we were right on target with where we've expected to be with our CapEx plans in 2018... we're talking somewhere between the $150 million to $180 million level of CapEx as you go forward.” — Bemis CEO, Jan 2019; “And we invest at about depreciation level in terms of CapEx or, call it, 4% of sales.” — CEO Delia, Dec 2019; “I think previously, you talked about D&A being similar to CapEx in the kind of $450 million range. It looks like after stripping out the amortization from deals, it was only $96 million in 2Q and kind of ran just a little bit north of $200 million in the first half.” — Analyst, Feb 2020; “Look, yes, typically, we would spend CapEx kind of in line with depreciation, so around that $450 million mark. We're a little behind that in the first half, just slightly behind.” — CEO Delia, Feb 2020."
"Q4 2011 call: "We anticipate BoneTone's business will generate modest revenues starting in 2012." — DSP Group Management; Q1 2012 call: "We're happy to update you about our first design wins for our HDMobile Audio products with a leading Korean OEM customer for Bluetooth headset product with revenues that are expected in early 2013...Now, we did not want to talk about any specific names because we cannot, but these discussions are ongoing and will continue...we have very high expectations of a commercial success." — DSP Group Management; Q2 2012 call: "Now because of certain confidentiality agreements and certain NDAs, we are not able today to disclose anything, but I'm sure that once these products are going to be designed in, and also will be launched into the market, it will be pretty much apparent to where we are and where we are not." — DSP Group Management; Q4 2012 call: "We expect to deliver engineering samples in the second quarter of 2013...And we are going to start delivering engineering samples, basically begin the design-in process in a significant way during the second half of the year with a target to achieving design wins during the second half and converting that to mass production in late 2013, early 2014." — DSP Group Management; Q1 2013 call: "And so we believe that we will see this year the evaluation, the designing process – the design-win process, and revenues as early as fourth quarter 2013 into first, second, third, fourth quarter of 2014." — DSP Group Management"
""Checkmate-026 failure highly surprising represents setback in largest segment of the I/O market...We are disappointed and highly surprised by the outcome and see the failure as largely driven by the study's broad design..." — JP Morgan, August 2016; "This is a MAJOR SURPRISE - possibly the biggest clinical surprise of my career...our only lead is the much-broader patient population in BMY's trial: their high-expresser cutoff was 5% PD-L1 expression, a much lower bar than MRK's 50%." — Evercore ISI, August 2016; "Not surprised CM-026 failed given the 5% PD-L1 threshold...unlikely that other factors played a role. PD-L1 expression level I was the key difference. Opdivo and Keytruda are therapeutically equivalent." — Cowen, August 2016; "...completely puzzled by Bristol's decision to evaluate...at a threshold this low, particularly given that the trial description indicated patients would be strongly expressing PD-L1...and probably most of the market, thought the threshold was at least 10%, and therefore expected that the trial had a reasonably high probability of success...suspect that the reason the trial failed is that the PD-1 threshold of at least 5% was too low." — BMO Capital Markets, August 2016; "Bristol-Myers Squibb has suffered a $21 billion self-inflicted wound." — New York Times, August 2016; "Bristol-Myers went for a broader patient population, potentially winning a bigger market but increasing its risk of failure." — Investor's Business Daily, August 2016"
"“I think they’re losing money partially because of pricing, obviously, and partially because their system isn’t as efficient as they expected. The people who are making money in this space are doing the volume that Twist is, and they’re not doing it at 10 cents a base. They have much, much higher pricing, but they will make any sequence you want. Some sequences are really complex to make, and pharma customers will put a value of $1.50 or $2 a base or more on those, depending on how hard they’ve tried to make them before they look for someone who can do it for them. There is money to be had there, but you can’t go after the entire commodity market. I don’t think Twist has the capability to make that harder stuff yet. I know they’ve talked about building it. They even talked about doing it when I was there, but it’s a different kind of manufacturing to make that work. It requires a different approach to what you’re doing, and I don’t think they’ve established that ability.” — Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles; “They charge a lot higher prices for their work. Almost double. No, they don’t lose money. Thermo wouldn’t tolerate that. They also have a better algorithm for scoring them so that you can say the average gene is going to cost you 18 cents a base. This’re really complex and long. It’s going to cost you 45 cents a base. They’re right most of the time.” -Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles"
"As the company matures, we believe management needs to offer a more sophisticated capital allocation strategy to reflect its size (both revenue and market capitalization) and stage of development. — Goldman Sachs, Sept. 2016; As Cognizant matures and its topline growth slows, the company’s overall capital return profile is increasingly important to investors. — Bernstein, Aug. 2016; Cognizant’s investors increasingly expect the company to return cash in the form of dividends and buybacks, specifically as its growth rates slow down and the stock transitions from being a growth story to a GARP/value stock — J.P. Morgan, Sept. 2016; …We believe the introduction of a regular dividend could broaden the appeal of the stock to new investors, while enhancing total shareholder return. In our view, gone are the days when investors look at the initiation of a dividend by a growth company as a negative. — Jefferies, Oct. 2016; In the recent past (last six to nine months), our positive bias of the company was largely driven by our belief that Cognizant would take on a more Accenture-like model, prioritizing capital returns to shareholders, especially in the form of a consistent dividend. On that front, we are disappointed with the company and have not seen any signs of the company moving in that direction. Given that this aspect of the story was a big driver of our Outperform rating, our diminished confidence has contributed to the downgrade. — William Blair, Nov. 2016"
""The large variability in capex versus original guidance (just set six months ago) demonstrates some lack of capital discipline within the company." — Citigroup (July 25, 2012); "Our view is that exploration spending should at least come down by 50%." — Citigroup (July 20, 2012); "The key issue for HES in our mind is capital intensity and the inability of management in recent years to live within the limits of its cash flows." — Citigroup (July 20, 2012); "Our valuation includes a ~$6 per share penalty for uneconomic exploration activity." — Citigroup (November 2, 2012); "We then discount that number [Hess value] by 20% to account for Hess's high exploration spending." — Deutsche Bank (November 6, 2012); "To summarize, the key growth assets underperform, expectations are lowered, and a key investor fear – Hess's propensity to outspend cash flow – is stoked by an early upward revision to the 2012 budget." — Deutsche Bank (April 25, 2012); "We believe Hess should consider further reducing its exploration program beyond what has already been announced." — Deutsche Bank (November 6, 2012); "A significant reduction in its global exploration program we also think is needed, as we do not believe Hess has a competitive advantage in all the areas it is currently exploring." — Goldman Sachs (June 11, 2012); "The company's high-risk/high-potential exploration and acreage strategy since 2009 is thus far not yielding favorable results." — Goldman Sachs (June 11, 2012)"
""The problem with AST SpaceMobile is the structural dynamics of their spacecraft – the way they intend to build a giant phased array antenna is really poorly thought out...their knowledge of structural dynamics is so positively infantile; I don't know how they got as far as they did. I think their approach to making a giant antenna just won't work. I think even if you could talk directly to a handset from space, they wouldn't be able to do it." — Physicist and Former Senior Engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; "The size of the antenna is terrifying...there’s only a handful of entities that have deployed a foldable thing in space that big and they’re NASA and intelligence entities...it’s an extremely difficult thing to do and it’s also more or less impossible to accurately test on the ground." — Former Director of Engineering at SpaceX, led team of 150 engineers across multiple disciplines; "Some of the preliminary engineering that I’ve seen did not have the same tolerances I would expect in a zero gravity deployment space environment and the number of single point failures in the articulation on deployment; all of those factors...talking about risk to the company, you’re betting everything on that one demonstration...all of that is riding on a hundred different opportunities for the phased array to not deploy." — Former Director of Supply Chain for leading defense prime who reviewed engineering designs for the phased arrays of BW3 and BlueBird-1"
""Deal terms, a $710mm upfront payment that we believe reflects certainly the value of this drug...So for us a very exciting opportunity, one that we believe will contribute significantly to the building of our I&I franchise..." — COO Perry Karsen, May 2014; "We had some thought leaders in the U.S., top-top thought leaders help us do the diligence and look at the data...We've done a tremendous diligence about it. We're very excited about it, and that's where Celgene should be." — Chairman & CEO Robert Hugin, June 2014; "Relative to GED, I think again, just to reiterate, we feel very strongly about the program, GED. It's our lead program in the Crohn's portion of IBD. We feel very strong about our ability to execute on it. We're excited. We're moving forward as fast as we can with all aspects of that program." — Chairman & CEO Robert Hugin, July 2015; "Key questions around the path to Ph3, the reproducibility of the data due to clinical site concentration and activity in broader set of patients remain unanswered." — Morgan Stanley, October 2014; "Expect upside for CELG as data support long-term $1.5-2B revenue promise as novel oral entrant in unmet Crohn's market." — Wells Fargo, October 2014; "We believe at peak GED-0301 could reach $3B++ in peak WW sales. Although Wall Street consensus includes very little for the drug, we believe investor expectations are much, much higher than zero." — Evercore ISI, October 2014"
"“Yeah. So I mean you know before I get into that part, I mean, our customer demand has been good so far this year, we're off to a good start. Very pleased with the first quarter and also pleased with you know our increased guidance to the full year growth number. As we kind of look towards the second half of the year, we expect market conditions to generally remain favorable. But I think there's maybe two points to mention. One is comparisons. You know we get into some much more difficult comparisons especially in a multi-year stack basis, I mean if you start to think about multi-year stacks Q2, Q3 they get a little bit more difficult and then even just a one year stack you know the fourth quarter of last year we grew organically by 8%, that's going to be a more difficult comparison for us. So it's -- it has a lot more to do with the comparisons in our mind is in terms of maybe how you're looking at the sequencing of growth. I think Q1 also benefited a bit from the timing of Easter and maybe an easier comparison to last year which particularly affected maybe our European results and then maybe the second comment is that in terms of this year we have a little bit of a headwind in terms of our food retailing business that we called out on our call. If you exclude the estimated impact of food retailing this year, our organic growth would be about 6%.” — CFO Vadala, UBS Conference, May 21, 2019"
""PFE best positioned for top-line growth among large cap pharma with the pipeline capable of replenishing 41% of the FY17 revenue base by FY25 (vs. peers 7%), well in excess of the 16% of sales exposed to generic/biosimilar headwinds (vs. peers 42%). While near-term growth will be depressed by the loss of Lyrica, we believe investors will look through this to a period of renewed growth. Post-Lyrica LOE, we model revenue CAGR rising to 7.7% (FY20-25) from 2.7% (FY17-20)." — Atlantic Equities, November 27, 2018; "Perhaps the greatest legacy of outgoing CEO Ian Read is a reinvigorated R&D pipeline that should sustain top-line growth beyond key patent expirations. We expect new CEO Bourla to leverage this significant boost in late-stage R&D assets to a level that could preclude the need for M&A or financial engineering" — Oppenheimer, December 11, 2018; "Pfizer has had pipeline success in 2018 with surprisingly good data from Tafamidis, Tanezumab meeting efficacy endpoints in smaller duration phase-3 trials but with questions on safety remaining, early encouraging data from next-gen JAK's for Inflammation and advancement of 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine into phase-3. We believe these events have a played a key role in changing the narrative on Pfizer from an M&A/Split story to a pipeline/growth story." — UBS, January 22, 2019"
""PFE best positioned for top-line growth among large cap pharma with the pipeline capable of replenishing 41% of the FY17 revenue base by FY25 (vs. peers 7%), well in excess of the 16% of sales exposed to generic/biosimilar headwinds (vs. peers 42%). While near-term growth will be depressed by the loss of Lyrica, we believe investors will look through this to a period of renewed growth. Post-Lyrica LOE, we model revenue CAGR rising to 7.7% (FY20-25) from 2.7% (FY17-20)." — Atlantic Equities, November 27, 2018; "Perhaps the greatest legacy of outgoing CEO Ian Read is a reinvigorated R&D pipeline that should sustain top-line growth beyond key patent expirations. We expect new CEO Bourla to leverage this significant boost in late-stage R&D assets to a level that could preclude the need for M&A or financial engineering" — Oppenheimer, December 11, 2018; "Pfizer has had pipeline success in 2018 with surprisingly good data from Tafamidis, Tanezumab meeting efficacy endpoints in smaller duration phase-3 trials but with questions on safety remaining, early encouraging data from next-gen JAK's for Inflammation and advancement of 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine into phase-3. We believe these events have a played a key role in changing the narrative on Pfizer from an M&A/Split story to a pipeline/growth story." — UBS, January 22, 2019"
""As an international entity, one would expect a nuanced understanding of regional markets. However, the track record of disastrous business decisions stemming from this ignorance is deplorable. It's disheartening to witness a company that fails to adapt to diverse market dynamics, making it challenging for employees to thrive in their respective regions. Secondly, the CEO's leadership is archaic and out of touch with modern business practices... Moreover, the company's apparent disregard for constructive feedback is alarming. Despite multiple negative Glassdoor reviews, there seems to be no initiative to introspect and address the root causes. Instead, employees are coerced into writing positive reviews, painting a false image of the company's internal atmosphere." - Dec 18, 2023; "The CEO often discusses plans and strategies, but these talks rarely translate into concrete actions, leading to frustration among employees. This has resulted in a high turnover rate, with experienced staff leaving and new hires struggling to piece together the remaining knowledge, ultimately starting from scratch." - July 12, 2024; "Driven by one man's ego. No strategy beyond acquisitions" - July 28, 2022; "CEO is a power crazed tyrant with absolutely no regard for employee wellbeing." - April 12, 2023"
""In 2003, Hess's ROACE of 7.6% is the lowest in its peer group and is well below Hess's cost of capital of 10%-12%." — UBS Warburg (September 22, 2000); "Hess announced a broad-based restructuring program involving reductions in overhead and capital expenditures...Regarding the stock, we maintain our longstanding Neutral rating. Investor interest is not expected to become material in this company until returns resemble the cost of capital on a sustainable basis." — Morgan Stanley (December 14, 1998); "Exploration expense is significantly above average...Hess, with a market capitalization of $4.5 billion, had 1997 exploration expense of $373 million; in comparison, Exxon, with a market capitalization of $175 billion, had exploration expense of $753 million. (In other words, Exxon's exploration expense is only twice as high as Hess's, while its market capitalization is almost 40 times as high)." — Goldman Sachs (September 4, 1998); "While Hess has not been an earnings story for many years now, the absence of profits is getting stale." — UBS (January 23, 1998); "Given the continued inconsistency in Hess results...we would not add to positions at these levels" — Smith Barney (October 23, 1997); "Hess continues to be the perennial turnaround story." — Paine Webber (May 7, 1997)."
"“...Mint is an amazing application... Mint has a chance for you to take a snapshot and understand where you are financially with all your accounts at one point. And within that, what we see is high levels of engagement, weekly active use and people rely on Mint to see all their accounts in one place.” — Greg Johnson, Intuit Executive VP & GM of Consumer Group, at Barclays Conference, 6/4/19; “No, no. They will be -- ultimately, they will be separate. They will not be combined into one app only because I think our focus is, we have a huge opportunity to ensure that we can fuel Credit Karma's growth, and we don't want to have any distractions other than ensuring that they can deliver for customers so they will be separate apps.” — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO, on FQ2 2020 Earnings Call; “And then last thing is prime. Prime customers are one of the largest monthly active users, and they're the least engaged because our typical focus in the past has been subprime and near prime. And now by putting Mint and Credit Karma together, we're building out prime capabilities. So those are priorities that gives us a lot of hope over time, we're going to get back to our 20% to 25% long-term expectation you said.” — Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit CEO, at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, 3/7/23"
""So about two years ago, we really started to push a more balanced approach between accessing unconventional hydrocarbon resources, oil and gas, to balance the high impact exploration program..." — John Hess, November 2010; "We have done a lot of work over the last 10 years to restructure our own Company significantly..." — John Hess, July 2011; "This change essentially began in 2009 and should be largely complete in 2014." — John Hess, July 2012; "On our July call, we explained that Hess was in the midst of a five-year transition... completed by the end of 2013." — John Hess, January 2013; "..our current board is comprised of highly accomplished directors who deserve credit for initiating the multiyear transformation that started in 2010 and that continues today." — Jon Pepper, Hess spokesman, February 2013; "the major moves to reshape our portfolio... will have been completed by the end of 2013." — John Hess, January 2013; "we'd say 12 to 18 months [March 2014 to September 2014]." — John Rielly, SVP & CFO, Hess March 2013; "...I mean, it's early in the process, but our guidance would be that we'd complete these sales by the end of 2014." — John Rielly, SVP & CFO, Hess March 2013; "monetization of our Bakken midstream assets expected in 2015." — John Hess, March 2013"
""We expect to have only 2 ERPs by the end of 2022, down from 8 ERPs in 2018 around the time of our spin." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, March 2021. "And we are in the position that we're in today because we made those investments. And this year, there's going to be another chunk because we're building out the new ERP system that I think is going to drive sort of the next wave of initiatives and enablement around the business." — Anthony Trunzo, Fmr CFO, Feb 2023. "In August, we implemented a modern ERP platform in our U.S. business, replacing an over 40-year-old system." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, Nov 2025. "And then the third big piece of not doing it is the amount of dollars that you have to spend... you're either upgrading your ERP system or you're spending an exorbitant amount of money on middleware, right, trying to get old systems to connect with new systems, which, by the way, is oftentimes not possible, not even possible." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, Nov 2025. "And so we had all of these kind of platforms, right, whether they were digital tools, whether they were going to drive further enhancements online, design capabilities, AI applications that we just had to keep on the sideline. Unable to actually deploy and use." — Rob Aarnes, ADI President, Nov 2025."
""About a year ago, at our Investor Day, we introduced to the market our near-term EBITDA target of $2 billion. We believed that we could achieve this number in the next two to three years...we continue to target a $2 billion run rate in 2017. With present industry trends, we think we will continue to see stronger specialty and differentiated growth than we had expected and softer commodity TiO2 in our recovery." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "We continued to emphasize our goal that we gave out about -- it's been about a year and a half now of a $2 billion EBITDA. Obviously, in the last 18 months, the world's economy and so forth is between the price of crude oil. We made that forecast as, what, about $110 a barrel, and what we were seeing growth in China and so forth. And a lot of that's been turned around from what we saw 18 months ago." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO; "...of the $2 billion [EBITDA], there was roughly $425 billion of the pigment's EBITDA in there, so if you exclude that and you use the FX headwind, that Peter mentioned, of about $140 million. That's a number, I think, that this company can hit in the next couple of years. Is $1.5 billion a number that we're capable of? Yes, I think that that's realistic." — Kimo Esplin, CFO"
""the major moves to reshape our portfolio... will have been completed by the end of 2013." — John Hess, January 2013; "We'd say 12 to 18 months [March 2014 to September 2014]." — John Rielly, SVP & CFO, Hess March 2013; "I mean, it's early in the process, but our guidance would be that we'd complete these sales by the end of 2014." — John Rielly, SVP & CFO, Hess March 2013; "monetization of our Bakken midstream assets expected in 2015." — John Hess, March 2013; "our current board is comprised of highly accomplished directors who deserve credit for initiating the multiyear transformation that started in 2010 and continues today." — Jon Pepper, Hess spokesman, February 2013; "On our July call, we explained that Hess was in the midst of a five-year transition... completed by the end of 2013." — John Hess, January 2013; "This change essentially began in 2009 and should be largely complete in 2014." — John Hess, July 2012; "We have done a lot of years to restructure our own Company significantly..." — John Hess, July 2011; "So about two years ago, we really started to push a more balanced approach between accessing unconventional hydrocarbon resources, oil and gas, to balance the high impact exploration program..." — John Hess, November 2010"
""We are repositioning our Verifi process control technology business. Market adoption has been below our expectations, and the business is not producing the returns we want. As a result, we have decided to operate Verifi as a more targeted niche offering, and have reduced our investment in growing the business." — Hudson La Force, CFO, W.R. Grace (7/23/14); "Verify is a new marketplace...We have a head start in this market. It's a relatively small business today but growing at very nice mid double-digit rates and we're investing in this business in terms of both its stickiness and its ability to drive performance with the Ready Mix customers" — Greg Poling, Fmr CEO, GCP (5/17/16); "Our capital investments could be slightly higher in 2018 than our target of 5% of sales due to investments required for our new VERIFI contracts." — Dean Freeman, Fmr CFO (2/27/18); "With an estimated addressable market of approximately $1 billion, VERIFI is a key source of growth for GCP and remains a top investment priority." — Narasimhan Srinivasan, VP Strategy & Corp Dev, GCP (8/7/18); "We've committed to having sales generated through the VERIFI program of $50 million to $75 million by the end of 2021." — Randall Dearth, CEO, GCP (2/26/20)"
"“The other aspect is how much do these PDN patients really want to have an implant? The back and leg pain patients are constantly getting bombarded with the idea of simulation. Here it's like a one-time consult, maybe a referral from a from a primary care doc and then the patient says "Well that's not really what I expected to hear" and they walk out. The back and leg patient keeps coming back to you and you can keep talking about stim as an option.” “For PDN it will have to be determined how they do in terms of negotiating with the payers. Are they going to get a label exclusivity on it? Because yes, you can code it today as neuropathic pain of the leg. The commercial payers are not interested in engaging with diabetic neuropathy right now. The trouble is that the diabetic population that has significant enough pain tends to be the Medicare, Medicaid population. You can use any device for Medicare. With the bulk of the population being Medicare, doctors can use the device for PDN today. And commercial-insured patients don't mean much, because commercial insurance usually means an employed person that generally is not the one that's usually a severe diabetic.” — KOL and one of Nevro’s highest volume implanters"
""The chronic pain patient population has a psychiatric toll. It affects 100% of patients. If a patient failed a psychiatric evaluation, the sales rep would send them to another psychiatrist. It’s fair to say they get shopped around. You don’t even need to get shopped around because the psychiatric evaluation is not in depth. It’s a bottleneck for time but not for volumes in the sales funnel." — Former Nevro regional sales director for one of its largest territories; "When Nevro’s call center would deal with patients, we’d realize they’d never pass the psychiatric evaluation yet here we are and they have the device." — Former Nevro executive; "We’d get calls from patients, hear their demeanor on the phone, and wonder how they ever got the device. These were not the best stimulator candidates. Our conversations in the call center were with device recipients who were suicidal, folks with really really high and unrealistic expectations. They told me I’d get 100% pain relief, it would cure me, it would go away. The call center would say it’s not true, it’s not a cure. I don’t know if they were oversold by the doctor or rep. Patients had unrealistic expectations of the device and therapy." — Former Nevro executive"
""It [Fiscal Year 2011] was a year in which we demonstrated our ability to achieve these results while at the same time making the investments in internal development, sales and services necessary to increase our competitive advantage" — Bob Beauchamp (2011 Annual Report); "It [Fiscal Year 2011] was a year in which we transitioned from being a strong, moderate growth company to one characterized by sustained, accelerating growth led by a solid Enterprise Service Management (ESM) engine capable of delivering ongoing double-digit growth" — Bob Beauchamp (2011 Annual Report); "These [Fiscal Year 2011] strong results underscore the success of our strategy over the last several years to make disciplined investments that enhance our market leadership and enable us to accelerate top line growth. As part of this strategy, we strengthened our sales force, increased internal R&D efforts related to cloud and other major technology trends, selectively acquired complementary technologies in rapidly growing market segments and bolstered our strategic partnerships. These initiatives are clearly paying off and we expect to reap additional benefits in 2012 and beyond" — Bob Beauchamp (Q4 2011 Earnings Conference Call)"
"“Okay. And then going back to the price of oil coming down. How long will it take -- are you in FIFO, first of all? How long will it take for you to benefit from those costs? I know that the intermediary has to come down as well, but it sounds as though they may be. And so let's say that you benefit from it in a 90 to 120 days, as Jay mentioned. Will you, at that point, have to give a price?” — Analyst G. Research, Q1 2019. “Pricing wise, we have a very -- our current pricing structure is in place and we see no reason to change that current pricing structure. You're right about that, it is about 90 to 120 days. We are on FIFO with -- in that time between when it's -- when the new lower material costs come into our manufacturing facility, and by the time it gets through to us, inventory, and on the end, it's 90, 120 days, maybe a little bit more. So -- which is why we haven't really made any changes to guidance going out.” — WD-40 CFO Rembolt. “If we do see any impact of a sustained lower oil price, we wouldn't expect that to be seen until the third quarter. Right now, our cost of goods are really reflecting the oil price in what months, Jay, July August?” — WD-40 CEO. “July, August.” — WD-40 CFO."
"“There were only 4 reps in capital asset sales before the RCA deal. The staff went to like 30 post closing. RCA was strong at the time, but we started to see as time went on the market took a turn, a large amount of cancellations started to occur. CoStar is the main product they are competing with. They are more dominant. RCA has flexibility for pricing, but most go to CoStar because it is the flagship product. To make sure at times clients didn't go to CoStar we did discount or had to do multiyear agreements. The RCA deal was not the best or easiest transition. It was pretty disorganized. It was like a dumpster fire. There were a lot of mismanaged accounts. I don't think they did enough due diligence, like on their run rate, and what they are producing. There were a lot of outdated or accounts that weren't updated. They were getting billed but were not an active client. Like one client said they cancelled a year and a half ago but were still getting billed. From my perspective, a lot of the RCA people left because it wasn't what they expected and they were getting paid better under the private vs. public company structure.” — Former frontline sales and business development executive"
""Now $1 billion is a big number. It's a 5x in fold from where we are today. So, let's talk about how we're going to get there. We're going to do it through acquisitions... We are very serious about our build to $1 billion strategy. With this acquisition, we'll be close to $1 billion adjusted EBITDA which is our EBITDA objective that we set out. We plan to maintain our strategy to achieve this target within the near term. Once this deal closes, or should the deal close, we will be from an EBITDA perspective, the fifth biggest tech company on the TSX." — Matt Proud, CEO of Dye & Durham; "Internally, the single best measure that we have is IRR when we're looking at our acquisition discipline. Personally, what I seek to do and what I've hopefully convinced others around Constellation to do is to use IRR as the method of choice. And because we're looking to buy and hold forever, I feel way more comfortable with IRR as an approach. And so we set a relatively high IRR bar and then we use multiple scenarios that are probability weighted to come up with the IRR that we expect, taking into account all possible outcomes." — Mark Leonard, Founder & President of Constellation Software"
""Just wanted to ask about the new product revenue numbers that you gave.... Within those cards you have a sense of how much of that is sort of incremental revenue versus how much of that is just cannibalizing or replacing existing product sales?" — Michael Matson – Needham & Company; "The biggest piece that probably falls into the gray area is Centrella... If I look at the rest of the product growth from where we are today going forward, most of it is nonreplacement new product growth. So of the ones on that slide that was in the LRP deck, Centrella is probably the only one that materially falls into the cannibalization bucket, if that helps." — John Greisch – President & CEO, Hill-Rom; "And I think John also mentioned in his opening comments, the new product momentum has been -- we're very pleased with that. $300 million this year. We exceeded our goal. If you recall, our original goal was about $200 million. So great performance in 2018, and now we're expecting $400 million in 2019. So not all of that is incremental. As you know, we're cannibalizing some of our products, but about half of it will be incremental." — Mary Kay Ladone – VP of Investor Relations, Hill-Rom"
"“...on the monetization of Patch... I would just say when we started the product in general, we started it without monetization in mind....” — CEO Tim Armstrong, 8/4/10; “And I think over time basically the expectations on monetization should be, Patch is going to be an investment property over the next two years and I think coming out of the next two years, we'd expect to have more meaningful monetization in general.” — CEO Tim Armstrong, 11/3/10; “So as we continue to rollout [Patch] properties, we would expect the model behind it to have rolling profitability to these sites at some point without going into detail, when.... And the reason I'm not giving you transparency around Patch is because I don't want to and I think we – but you're going to have to trust me on this....” — CEO Tim Armstrong, 2/2/11; “...monetization is coming to Patch, so we've gotten a lot of questions on that. We are dead serious about it and we're going to make it happen.” — CEO Tim Armstrong, AOL Investor Day, 6/16/11; “... I am a rational investor in Patch.... I would hope the profitability of the Patch is rolling thunder that we see over time....” — CEO Tim Armstrong, UBS Conference 12/5/11"
""Going forward, the Kao Group will aim to be a company that can contribute to minimizing the period of illness" — President Hasebe, June 2021 Small Meeting with CEO; "We need a new engine for the future. With this in mind, we aim to enter the medical (treatment/diagnosis) field" — President Hasebe, Nikkei Business Interview, March 2022; "Kao has great technology and many interesting products, but management has yet to translate this expertise into strong revenue-generating products" — CLSA, February 20, 2024; "We want to be a company that is not compared to P&G or Unilever" — President Hasebe, Weekly Economist Interview, April 2021; "Kao conducts world-class enzyme research... I think enzyme-driven batteries will be useful in unexpected places" — President Hasebe, December 2021; "Another Kao is intended to strengthen three categories: Circular economy, digital and health care" — President Hasebe, June 2024 Small Meeting with CEO; "Mondrian was concerned that Kao risks losing focus on its core consumer goods business, which is under tremendous pressure related to raw material prices and increased competition" — Mondrian Investment Partners, Stewardship Report 2023."
""I realized there was a large gap between the products we were developing, the products we were marketing and the products we were selling." — Former Lightspeed Employee #2; "So SEOshop, when it moved to the North American market for initial testing, it became very clear that the needs of North American retailers are very different than European retailers in the ecommerce space. There was a lot of work to integrate and adapt features to make sure it was ready for the North American merchants that they have. To be fully transparent, it was a rocky start." — Former Lightspeed Employee #2; "Regarding acquisitions, there were ones that once under the hood, I would say there was a lot more work than was estimated. In terms of actual functionality and meeting the needs of the market, there were expectations that were poorly set, meaning the delivery time to bring back to market was much longer and more difficult. They are very particular about what products are going to be brought to market. There have been ones that were completely stalled weeks before a launch because they were just not up to par with what the experience needed to be." — Former Lightspeed Employee #2"
"Hatfield plans to offer a variety of pork products across our portfolio of bacon, marinated, and fresh pork items that meet the “Prop 12” and “Question 3” statutory requirements. Sows will be housed in pens that allow them to get up and turn around freely at all times, and have 24+ sq. ft. of usable floor space per sow. — Hatfield Website; Hormel Foods has assessed Proposition 12 and, while it is still awaiting final clarity on specific details and rules, the company is preparing to fully comply when the law goes into effect on January 1, 2022. The company’s Applegate portfolio of products already complies with Proposition 12. — Hormel Foods Statement, Oct. 6, 2020; As we look at Prop 12, yeah, it's about 4% of total production. That's not significant for us today. Tyson is currently aligning incentivizing suppliers where appropriate. We can do multiple programs simultaneously, including Prop 12. — Tyson Foods Q3 2021 Earnings Transcript, Aug. 9, 2021; Seaboard said it is converting some farms to comply with the law and expects to have pork for sale to California this year that complies with Proposition 12. — Reuters report on Seaboard Foods, Feb. 8, 2022"
"As Steve said at Investor Day, we introduced a new transaction model for Flex, which gives Autodesk a more direct relationship with its customers and more closely integrates with its channel partners. We began testing the new transaction model across our product suite in Australia a couple of weeks ago. Assuming the launch proceeds as expected, in fiscal '25 and '26, we intend to transition our indirect business to the new transaction model in all our major markets globally. In the new transaction model, partners provide a quote to customers but the actual transaction happens directly between Autodesk and the customer... In the near term, the new transaction model results in a shift from contra revenue to operating costs that provide a tailwind to revenue growth, while being broadly neutral to operating profit and free cash flow dollars, and mechanically result in percent operating margins taking a step or 2 backwards. Over the long term, optimization enabled by this transition will provide a tailwind to revenue, operating income and free cash flow dollars, even after the cost of setting up our building platform. — Andrew Anagnost, CEO, November 21, 2023"