Callouts & quotes from 55+ activist slides

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Spruce Point believes that Dropbox overstates free cash flow with a simplistic presentation that is analytically flawed and ignores two material costs such as: 1) Costs required to repurchase shares related to employee compensation programs, which are operating in nature, and 2) Costs associated to pay for infrastructure, which are effectively deferred capital expenditure payments."

"Among the distortions employed by the Company to hide management's history of value destruction, Arconic's purported TSR calculations assume an arbitrary start date that essentially matches a multi-decade low in the trading price of Alcoa Inc., a fundamentally flawed approach that ignores the fact that Alcoa's peers hit their lows on different dates than did Alcoa Inc."

"Part II: Twist’s “DNA chip” narrative - 10,000X higher throughput and lower cost - is fraudulent, covering up a manual, labor-intensive, and fatally-flawed manufacturing process crippled by errors, bottlenecks, and pitiful yields – thereby driving gross margins we estimate to be negative, not unlike Theranos which claimed to run blood tests on its “chip” but wasn’t."

"Spruce Point believes PowerSchool’s current share price presents asymmetric downside risk due to growing regulatory risks, a domestic customer base that is struggling to fund necessities, a flawed international growth plan, and nascent personalized learning products that we believe are unlikely to become meaningful contributors to bottom line."

"Seemingly unlike iRhythm’s Board, we do not believe the same management team that resided over a systematically flawed quality and compliance system should receive extra incentive compensation just to remediate their shortcomings, obey basic medical device laws, and cease endangering patients."

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

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

"While the volume of FIGS Threads for Threads donations has been questioned, management has openly admitted to donating flawed product. This anecdote strikes us as tone deaf and disingenuous. Were these units included in the donation totals?"

"With less than a third of long-term pay tied to business growth the new compensation scheme - aligned with K27's flawed targets - fails to link management incentives to long-term performance metrics essential for a successful turnaround."

"HARMONY 1 and the other pivotal trials allowed concomitant use of a wide range of medications for narcolepsy, cataplexy, and excessive daytime sleepiness, creating a confounding factor that renders the trials flawed and useless."

"Twist’s “DNA chip” narrative - 10,000X higher throughput and lower cost - is fraudulent, covering up a manual, labor-intensive, and fatally-flawed manufacturing process crippled by errors, bottlenecks, and pitiful yields."

"In Spruce Point's opinion, CHD's current equity method accounting for its Armand Products business is highly aggressive, if not outright flawed, and allows it to avoid full consolidation of an entity it largely controls."

"In conclusion we think that Ceres’ licensing business model is deeply flawed. The company essentially shifts all the risk to its licensees while relying entirely on them to commercialize a new product."

"Engine does not intend to tender its shares into the Veritas Capital ("Veritas") tender offer as it believes the $21 per share offer undervalues the company and is the result of a flawed process."

"the idea that data centers are the “silver bullet” market for SOFC (and by extension for Ceres) appears structurally flawed and overly optimistic given current technical and market constraints."

"We believe Autodesk must improve its compensation practices, address its flawed budgeting process, and move to best-in-class standards for operations, compensation, and governance"

"We believe Autodesk must improve its compensation practices, address its flawed budgeting process, and move to best-in-class standards for operations, compensation, and governance"

"The similarity between both the light source and particle contamination issues for Lasertec's DUV and EUV products suggests a fatally flawed and defective technology platform."

"The similarity between both the light source and particle contamination issues for Lasertec’s DUV and EUV products suggests a fatally flawed and defective technology platform."

"We believe that the strategic rationale for the Red Lobster Separation provided by the Company in its recently filed investor presentation is incomplete and highly flawed."

"The Board and management's flawed response is costly: Norfolk Southern has reserved $1.1 billion in charges so far as a result of the 2023 derailment in East Palestine."

"In addition to a defective light source and optics, the key mechanical component of Lasertec’s actinic mask inspection tool - the mask stage - is also fatally flawed."

"Spruce Point believes that its dividend policy is flawed because of WTRG's large growth capital expenditure ("capex") requirements and commitments to acquisitions."

"Our Board Concluded that Starboard Missed Important Details in its REIT Valuation Analysis Thereby Leading to a Flawed Conclusion on the Value Creation Potential"

"We believe the company is hiding a flawed business model with abysmally small revenue potential behind a façade of big-name announcements and lofty projections."

"Spruce Point believes two key sell-side assumptions are flawed. First, JP Morgan's claim that 70% of handle comes from the NFL is inconsistent with state data."

"Former employees stated the claims are false and described a fatally flawed, manual, labor-intensive process plagued by errors, delays, and horrific losses."

"Our interviews painted a consistent picture of a one-product company conceived on a fundamentally flawed premise and which never found product-market fit."

"Phillips 66 has been a perennial underperformer – weighed down by operational missteps, a flawed conglomerate structure and poor corporate governance."

"XPO conveniently ignores return on capital as a key metric to compensate management, and has defined its own flawed and aggressive financial metrics."

"If incentives can be used by a company with a flawed business model to offset substandard operations, we think it is time to rethink the incentives."

"We believe AVY's free cash flow presentation is highly aggressive and analytically flawed in a manner that vastly overstates performance."

"Burford's abysmal second-half performance speaks to the company's exaggerated marks, which are married to a flawed business model."

"Ultimately, we believe Ceres embodies a fundamentally flawed business model unfit for a public company in its current form."

"The Sumitomo stage that moves the mask/reticle is highly flawed and produces contamination inside the inspection tool"

"We Estimate That Starboard Inflated Their REIT Multiple Analysis by ~4x Through Flawed Calculations and Assumptions"

"Mr. Shaw's most "decisive action" has been pivoting to a value-destructive and operationally flawed strategy."

"Disney has used a methodology for evaluating prior Trian investments that we view as flawed for many reasons."

"Disney has used a methodology for evaluating prior Trian investments that we view as flawed for many reasons."

"We Believe BOOT Is Struggling More Than It Cares To Admit Because Of Its Deeply Flawed Big-Box Strategy"

"Spruce Point observes substantial modifiers tied to the analytically flawed Free Cash Flow metric"

"Lasertec's flagship ACTIS EUV product line is defective with a fatally flawed EUV light source."

"Lasertec's flagship ACTIS EUV product line is defective with a fatally flawed EUV light source"

"It is flawed to value the stock based on its "industry leading ROIC.""

"We believe the Patch business model is flawed and will not succeed"

"We see AKG root problem as flawed geology."