Callouts & quotes from 285+ activist slides

"“Now, the integration value [of Speedway] is, I would say, proprietary. I can't give out a number from a competitive reason of that integration value, but I can say it is very significant...” — Gary Heminger, July 28, 2016; “So we look at the integration value [of Speedway]. We look at kind of the dis-synergy if we were to do something different with Speedway, and we still believe that it has a very strong fit in our system.” — Gary Heminger, October 27, 2016; “There have been some questions about a sale of Speedway and we have such a low tax basis in Speedway. We would find that hurdle hard to overcome...” — Gary Heminger, February 14, 2017; “The bottom line is that there is no compelling valuation opportunity in separating our retail business, and that any potential separation will cause loss of integration synergies, additional cash needed to maintain appropriate balance sheet strength, increase volatility in the remaining business, and, we believe, result in long term value disruption.” — Gary Heminger, September 5, 2017; “As part of this exploration process, MPC and Speedway negotiated a potential post-spin supply agreement. Our analysis indicates any supply agreement structured in pursuit of a tax-free spin would be market-based and arm's length. Such a conventional supply agreement would be limited in term and in volume. As a result, the supply agreement only temporarily and partially mitigates the loss of integration synergy, and the synergy value lost beyond the term of an initial supply agreement is substantial. In short, such a transaction, even with the supply agreement, would destroy significant value.” — Gary Heminger, September 5, 2017; “...we completed the very comprehensive review of Speedway and the conclusion, the unanimous conclusion by the board was that Speedway would remain in the vertical integration of MPC.” — Gary Heminger, February 13, 2018"

"“Now, the integration value [of Speedway] is, I would say, proprietary. I can't give out a number from a competitive reason of that integration value, but I can say it is very significant...” — Gary Heminger, July 28, 2016; “So we look at the integration value [of Speedway]. We look at kind of the dis-synergy if we were to do something different with Speedway, and we still believe that it has a very strong fit in our system.” — Gary Heminger, October 27, 2016; “There have been some questions about a sale of Speedway and we have such a low tax basis in Speedway. We would find that hurdle hard to overcome...” — Gary Heminger, February 14, 2017; “The bottom line is that there is no compelling valuation opportunity in separating our retail business, and that any potential separation will cause loss of integration synergies, additional cash needed to maintain appropriate balance sheet strength, increase volatility in the remaining business, and, we believe, result in long term value disruption.” — Gary Heminger, September 5, 2017; “As part of this exploration process, MPC and Speedway negotiated a potential post-spin supply agreement. Our analysis indicates any supply agreement structured in pursuit of a tax-free spin would be market-based and arm's length. Such a conventional supply agreement would be limited in term and in volume. As a result, the supply agreement only temporarily and partially mitigates the loss of integration synergy, and the synergy value lost beyond the term of an initial supply agreement is substantial. In short, such a transaction, even with the supply agreement, would destroy significant value.” — Gary Heminger, September 5, 2017; “...we completed the very comprehensive review of Speedway and the conclusion, the unanimous conclusion by the board was that Speedway would remain in the vertical integration of MPC.” — Gary Heminger, February 13, 2018"

""We think the most viable form of unlock would likely come via spin-off of Midstream....That said, we think it might make the most sense to not include refinery-related assets/EBITDA with the Midstream spin, given the integration with and commercial value to the company's refining business." — J.P. Morgan, February 2025; "However, when [the Company was] pressed on these points, some of the integration case fell apart, in our view. For example, management acknowledged that a midstream spin could be done tax-free." — TPH & Co, April 2025; "In our view, the potential (transformative) investment case for PSX comes down to a question of 1) the potential value uplift of a particular action, and 2) the likelihood of that action taking place. For example, on one end, the monetization of the European retail business is highly likely, but the shareholder impact is relatively modest. On the other end, a spin/sale of the Midstream business is by far the single largest source of potential value creation ($40B-$45B of proceeds at a potential multiple - 10x - that offers by far the largest multiple uplift/arbitrage), but is also the strategy to which the management has been the most strongly opposed." — Piper Sandler, February 2025; "We believe the strong valuations and ability for a standalone company to better capture growth opportunities in the sector make a Midstream spin/sale appealing, in our view." — T.D. Cowen, February 2025; "At our theoretical SOTP of $160/share (our DCF-based price objective is $147), selling some midstream assets could unlock value." — Bank of America, February 2025; "PSX is unlikely to ever receive sufficient credit for much of its marketing and midstream business...there is clearly value to be created via disposals, of which is the initial $3.0B plan is a good start." — Piper Sandler, November 2023"

"“We find it odd management believes value can be created by separating the business into two mature companies... We think one of the most interesting statements in the Darden release was the following one: ‘A spin-off will also allow us to target our efforts and investments on value creation opportunities that may be material to a stand-alone Red Lobster but not to Darden overall.’ Management did not elaborate on this value-creation opportunity during the conference call, but we believe monetizing the real estate Red Lobster owns may be impactful for shareholders.” — KeyBanc, December 20, 2013; “On the day Darden’s strategic plan was announced, the stock closed down 4% to $51. This didn’t exactly strike us as a vote of confidence in management’s plan to create value. Two days later, Starboard Value announced a 5.5% position in the company and the stock rallied 6%. For the most part, the stock has traded sideways since then, until rallying 3% on the news that Starboard retained former Olive Garden president Brad Blum to serve as an advisor in its battle against Darden. The takeaway from stock action and, in our opinion, sentiment since 12/20/13 is the stock rallies when there is movement toward replacing management and sells off when management publicly digs their heels in.” — Hedgeye, February 24, 2014; “Moving forward with Red Lobster sale or spin. Unless the separation helps drive a significant improvement in operating results, we don’t envision this being very accretive to valuation. Mgmt has previously stated standalone RL will do mid-to high single-digit EBIT growth, a target that appears aggressive.” — Oppenheimer, March 3, 2014"

""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 see the most efficient means to maximizing shareholder value as spinning off the Engineered, Products & Solutions (Downstream) segment to capture the peak valuations of the aerospace cycle.” — Sterne Agee, March 13, 2014; “However, through a sum-of-the-parts analysis we believe significant investor value can be unlocked through re-rating segments.” — Sterne Agee, April 1, 2014; “Does it stick with its current integrated strategy? Or does it finally start listening to those who think the company should spin off its "downstream" Engineered Products & Solutions segment? [Dr.] Kleinfeld has never given much hope to those who think the company should break itself up.” — Gordon Haskett, April 9, 2014; “Investors were very focused on ways to separate the upstream and downstream businesses to create more value. AA’s management was vocal that it is ready to implement any strategic action to further enhance stakeholders’ value and has ran various iterations of possible scenarios, but to this point, has not identified a suitable solution which would generate more value.” — Goldman Sachs, May 28, 2014; “At this point in time, we feel that the structure is the one that adds the most value.” — Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, Firth Rixson M&A Call, June 26, 2014; “At the risk of beating a dead horse, we'll mention [Dr.] Kleinfeld has typically answered this question by saying there are no sacred cows in the portfolio but AA's integrated model is synergistic and there are no plans to break things apart.” — Gordon Haskett, June 8, 2015; “...company announced split-up of company (finally).” — Mario Gabelli, September 28, 2015"

""There are doctors that are saying, 'I saw [doctor name redacted] speak at NANS, and I saw [doctor name redacted's] outcomes and other doctors' outcomes, and I dug into it, and I'm having the same outcomes. I'm not using high-frequency anymore.'" — One of the most senior and plugged in executives in the SCS space; "The NANS talk was well-attended. I was surprised. It was at 6AM and a lot of people came. It filled up like three rooms. They had to take the dividers out. I'd say there were 100 to 150 attendees" — KOL; "After Nevro's explant rate was publicly presented, several doctors came up to say that more research needs to be done on this because we're seeing a lot of explants as well. A lot of pain doctors aren't willing to say much about the negative aspects of spinal cord stimulation, but a lot of them at the conference approached the author about their explant rates. They said we're seeing about the same numbers. They of course didn't look into their data. When you're a provider, you're noticing trends. It's not a day to day thing, but you're thinking that for some reason in the past few months I'm explanting a lot of high frequency spinal cord stimulators." — KOL; "The most important thing the presenter said was that 5 or 6 implanters came up to him after the talk and said they had the same experience. Another paper shows that doctors who did big volumes had the same explant rate. This study will be big and show what's going on because right now Nevro is going to try and throw [redacted] under the bus and say [redacted] is getting paid by somebody else to do this." — KOL"

""This process will unlock the tremendous value of our real estate portfolio as we create two distinct public companies, which allows us, to attain a much lower blended cost of capital and allows us to move into markets and places and - where we cannot go today." — Peter Carlino, Chairman and CEO, Nov 16, 2012; "The Company's board of directors believes that a REIT conversion could provide substantial benefits to the Company and its shareholders given its significant real estate holdings." — Press Release, August 25, 2014; "Investors favor companies with greater strategic focus on our core businesses. We are exploring the opportunity to improve upon the excellent shareholder return created since MSG's spin-off over four years ago by separating our business into two companies, each with its own distinct value proposition for investors." — Tad Smith, CEO, October 27, 2014; "We believe the separation would provide a lower weighted average cost of capital and an attractive financial platform to take advantage of future opportunities to create long term shareholder value" — Anthony Sanfilippo, CEO, November 6, 2014; "We, together with our board, have been working with our financial and legal advisers, to make sure we are best positioned to increase shareholder value over the long term, including potentially, through the formation of a REIT." — Keith Smith, CEO, October 30, 2014; "The structure of the agreement enables us to capture the value of Red Lobster and establish a market validated valuation of its real estate" — Chuck Ledsinger, Lead Director of Darden's Board, May 16, 2014"

""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"

""According to a 2019 contract obtained by the German language paper, California-based Nevro...offered Swiss doctors CHF10,000 ($10,181) for each Nevro spinal cord stimulator implanted in a patient...The kickback scheme, which has now been terminated, has been running since 2017 under the auspices of the “Nevro Partnership Program.”" — Swiss Broadcasting Corporation; "Nevro keeps explant rates very well hidden from the field reps...The explant rate was a hell of a lot higher than [the stated] 2%. I don't know that people asked for it, because ignorance is bliss. I didn't want to know. Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to. My peers in the field felt the same way." — Former Nevro regional sales director; "If you put doctors into boxes, Money Mike couldn't care less if there's a high explant rate. It's just about the price you give him for the device. He could care less about whether it works or not. Yes, there are unethical, corrupt doctors. In that population, Nevro is the best thing since sliced bread." — Physician #4; "A lot of doctors in Germany are saying that Nevro's device only works for 2 to 2 ½ years and then the patient comes back with more pain...People have become nervous and become afraid to use Nevro." — Physician #5; "We went to Nevro's headquarters to discuss the explants...I realized this shit doesn't work...His take on Nevro is slimy people, falsification of data...I don't understand how Nevro can continue to keep the smoke and mirrors going, I really don't. I mean, it's crazy." — Physician #3"

"“the easiest sale ever because everyone wanted to try this paresthesia-free stimulator” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “this all worked” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “Nevro changed the entire dynamic of the spinal cord stim industry. They created excitement. It was the first company to do a head-to-head level one RCT study against the competitor and their data was remarkable. It was the best data that we’ve seen and so, that’s one of the main reasons I went there. There were doctors that were reaching out to me—it was the easiest sale ever, because everyone wanted to try this paresthesia-free stimulator that sort of crushed axial, back, and leg pain. The only thing I had to bring in was the stim and it sold itself.” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “So let’s go back to 2015. We’re growing. The trials always did very well with Nevro and with HF10 and across the board, trials typically do very well in this industry because it’s sort of like the patients get this burst of: “Wow! Pain relief.” It’s remarkable, right? They only have this for seven days and, you know, the representatives, they’re reaching out to them, they make sure everything is going well, so the trials always did very, very well at Nevro.” — Former Nevro district sales manager; “We went up to around 15% of the market. But this all worked because the data they were selling was based on choosing the exact patients they wanted. A lot of it was just biased. It wasn’t real-world data.” — Former Nevro district sales manager"

""I was seen by this clinic several times, a different person each time, and only on the last visit did I get to see the lauded Dr. [redacted]. He stormed into the room, introduced himself, and told me, without hearing a word from me, what he had determined I needed to do next, which was another procedure. When I told him I was not interested at this point in that procedure, and tried to discuss what I had come to talk about, which was concerns about contraindication with the medicine he had prescribed, he raised his voice and began telling me about how his way is the only way that works, and all my other doctors are incompetent. The longer I tried to get back to what I needed to speak with him about, the nastier/louder he got, until he was literally standing in front of me, yelling at me. In the end, he yelled he wouldn't treat me any more, and yelled from down the hall for me to leave. He absolutely did not care about anything I had to say. Please beware of this clinic and this man." — Patient review, 11/11/2019; "I felt he was trying to SELL me a spinal stimulator, rather than explain what it is. He blatantly lied about the size of battery and the pain level associated with it."- Patient review 6/26/2018; "Dr. [redacted] is the greatest doctor in the world, and if you don't believe it just ask him. His explanations are poor, doesn't seem to want to listen to the patient." — Patient review 11/1/17"

"They think Omnia's going to be a big thing. I just don't see it. Grossman even said on the earnings call that non-high frequency is utilized only 15% of the time. There's nothing new...Nevro does not feel that a lot of these other waveforms are going to be utilized with Omnia. It is rather to provide physicians with the perception that they have more options. The utilization of low-frequency and other waveforms besides high frequency will be very low, because one, a lot of Nevro's people don't know how to program those patients well because they've been utilizing the high-frequency algorithm and two, most of the time Senza is what people want. — Senior Nevro ex-sales executive; The market's not changing because of Omnia. The spinal cord stim market is what the spinal cord stim market is. You're not going to get more patients because of Omnia. Right now, you're just playing around in the same old market you've always been playing in, the same market I've been playing in my whole career, and the market's not really changing. — Former Nevro territory manager, one of the longest tenured SCS reps; I don't hear anything, from my team or anyone in my territory, that Nevro's adoption with Omnia is now so much better. Some doctors are trying it out but I haven't heard anything revolutionary about it. — Former Nevro territory manager now at a key competitor"

"“Doctors have been using spinal cord stimulation for PDN for a while, but notoriously it’s very bad for the foot. It doesn’t get to the foot. You can’t get spinal stimulation into the foot without having to stimulate everything along the way, Stimulation doesn’t change the plumbing. Diabetic neuropathy causes pain because there’s shitty blood flow which affects the nerves, which get rewired and interpret it as pain. What’s going to happen with Nevro is what happens with every other spinal cord stimulator for the foot. You can’t get to the foot, so you have to jack up the current, and then you get tolerance and [any pain relief] goes away.” — KOL and high volume implanter; “For diabetic neuropathy, DRG is 100 times better than any other neuromodulation system. Without question. Nevro has one size fits all. It’s not even a question – DRG is the answer, at least anything neuromodulation-related for neuropathy. At least with DRG you are going to have increased blood flow because it’s a real system.” — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter; “The other thing is that a lot of patients with diabetic neuropathy have pain in their feet, the actual feet themselves, and I personally don’t believe Nevro is the best for the feet as the Abbott DRG is better.” — KOL and high volume implanter, who still uses Nevro moderately"

""If you look at true burst, they want you to be about a level up T8/9 which is the sweet spot for burst. So if your electrodes aren't covering that and you try to do burst, you're not going to hit it. For different frequencies, you need to be at the right place on the spinal cord to get that stimulation. If you're at T9/10 where you put your Nevro, you might get it depending on where the affected problem is. You might get the upper thigh but for lower leg, probably not. And you may get other paresthesias that you don't want. You try to do a tonic, but you're to get all rib simulation. The idea that you put it in at T9/10 and get the other frequencies to work is very 50/50." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter; "I've seen some cases where Medtronic was implanted after a Nevro device was in there, I think their docs get a little sloppy with their lead placement because there is no paresthesia. They just kind of put the leads up, pretty much midline, and it's good enough. That was why docs early on were interested - I don't have to wake up the patient during the procedure. If Nevro continues to do sloppy lead placement and try to switch to classic low frequency stimulation, they're going to run into all sorts of problems and unintended consequences." — Medtronic SCS regional manager"

""It’s rare to see a device not working at all, but I’ve seen with Nevro at 6 months that it’s not helping patients." -KOL; "The biggest reason for Nevro explants is device failure. That’s probably the biggest reason, over 80-90%. And then infection rates. But it’s almost always failure. Anecdotally and from the data there’s a range, but it seems to be within about a year. But some of them fail later, within three years." -KOL; "High frequency seemed to have a lot of traction when it first started off. We’re trying to figure out if the initial pain improvement is still there, a year out, two years out, five years out. It seems like a lot of the high frequency implants have been explanted, or exchanged for something else." -KOL; "Abbott is currently doing a study called Prolong. The study’s not specifically going up against Nevro. It’s just using the Abbott device as a salvage therapy for failed spinal cord stimulation patients. But, most of the salvage appears to be for Nevro patients. I think almost 50% of the enrollment so far in the study has been Nevro patients. Abbott’s study was never meant to be a superiority study. The study wasn’t meant to bash Nevro. But Nevro didn’t like that the overwhelming majority of patients that needed to be salvaged in the study were all theirs." -KOL"

""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."

""We find it odd management believes value can be created by separating the business into two mature companies." — KeyBanc, December 20, 2013; "...But we continue to believe [management's] plan doesn't address RL problems for investors... We believe the most favorable outcome for investors under the current plan is a sale of RL, but short of that we see risk to the downside if investors inherit RL shares." — UBS, March 3, 2014; "We believe Red Lobster has a valuable asset base that makes Darden's overall real estate portfolio materially more attractive than it would be without it. We fear management's current plan to spinoff Red Lobster is reactionary and lacking integrity." — Hedgeye, March 12, 2014; "Moving forward with Red Lobster sale or spin. Unless the separation helps drive a significant improvement in operating results, we don't envision this being very accretive to valuation." — Oppenheimer, March 3, 2014; "It remains unclear to us why the combined valuation of the separate companies would exceed current DRI valuation." — Bank of America, March 3, 2014; "Despite Opposition, Management is Moving Forward in Divesting Red Lobster: Overall, we believe the Street is disappointed by the divestiture of Red Lobster on its own." — Sterne Agee, March 21, 2014"

"“We find it odd management believes value can be created by separating the business into two mature companies.” — KeyBanc, December 20, 2013; “...But we continue to believe [management’s] plan doesn’t address RL problems for investors... We believe the most favorable outcome for investors under the current plan is a sale of RL, but short of that we see risk to the downside if investors inherit RL shares.” — UBS, March 3, 2014; “We believe Red Lobster has a valuable asset base that makes Darden’s overall real estate portfolio materially more attractive than it would be without it. We fear management’s current plan to spinoff Red Lobster is reactionary and lacking integrity.” — Hedgeye, March 12, 2014; “Moving forward with Red Lobster sale or spin. Unless the separation helps drive a significant improvement in operating results, we don’t envision this being very accretive to valuation.” — Oppenheimer, March 3, 2014; “It remains unclear to us why the combined valuation of the separate companies would exceed current DRI valuation.” — Bank of America, March 3, 2014; “Despite Opposition, Management is Moving Forward in Divesting Red Lobster: Overall, we believe the Street is disappointed by the divestiture of Red Lobster on its own.” — Sterne Agee, March 21, 2014"

"“I have not seen a big uptick for Omnia in our territory. I think it'll be a dud. We've been pushing hard against their being all in on high frequency, and now allowing low-dose and multiple waveforms even though everything they've done and all their studies are around 10khz. They're trying to get Omnia into some of their old accounts now. If a patient comes in requesting Nevro, that's about the only time that Nevro is getting implanted in other accounts” — Regional sales manager at one of Nevro's largest competitors; “Part of Nevro's messaging is that it's easy to implant. You throw the leads in; you scan T9/T10; there's no in or out testing. It's very simple. But if you need to switch to low-dose and you need to do mapping, you have no idea what you're getting into as a doctor. Nevro never trained a lot of their reps on it. Now they're asking their field to retrain on classic spinal cord stimulation. We leverage that. You've done an about-face and now all of a sudden you're trying to do what every other company is doing. At least in our market, high frequency hasn't been the silver bullet you promoted and now you're just like everybody else.” — Regional sales manager at one of Nevro's largest competitors"

""Great. And then maybe in the final minute or so, just weigh in on capital deployment." — Analyst Jack Meehan; "I didn't see share repurchases come up." — CFO Vadala; "You guys are very disciplined there, too. So how does the environment look for deals? It's been a couple of years since your last notable acquisition. Is it tougher to find the quality deals or is it valuation." — Analyst Jack Meehan; "I think it's availability. Our definition of strategic fit continues to be the same which is tight. We're looking for – we tend to like the bolt-ons. We like the adjacencies in the Lab and the product inspection space. We like targets that can leverage our Spinnaker program, serve the same end markets, so we have good cross-selling capabilities. But the pipeline hasn't changed. Typically when you're looking at that profile of company, it's an availability, whether it's a private company or something like that. In terms of capital deployment, we also do like share repurchases. We continue to use our free cash flow plus option proceeds to buy back our stock. We've been very consistent about that over the years. We don't try to time the market. We're in the market every single day." — CFO Vadala"

""ISS recently adopted a policy regarding so-called "unilateral" bylaw or charter amendments -- provisions adopted without public stockholder approval. Under this policy, beginning in 2015, it will generally recommend withholding votes from or voting against directors who, without putting the provision to a stockholder vote, approved bylaw or charter provisions that have the effect of restricting stockholder rights." — "Governance Issues in Spin-Off Transactions" published by Gibson Dunn on 2/5/15; "Glass Lewis ordinarily gives new public companies a one-year grace period to allow them time to comply with applicable regulatory requirements and meet basic corporate governance standards. However, if the company implements an anti-takeover measure such as a rights plan or a classified board before its initial public offering, without offering a sunset for the rights plan of three years or less or a ‘sound rationale,’ and the measure is not subsequently put to a stockholder vote, Glass Lewis will consider recommending voting against all members of the board who served at the time the measure was adopted." — "Governance Issues in Spin-Off Transactions" published by Gibson Dunn on 2/5/15"

""It’s come down to which group of independent directors shareholders want to oversee the company: Darden’s or Starboard’s? We believe Starboard’s slate is better qualified." — Hedgeye, September 3, 2014; "Investment Thesis: We remain constructive on Darden based on the thesis that multiple near to intermediate term catalysts are in play including the potential spin-off of SRG, increasingly aggressive cost control efforts and the potential sale of a portion of the company’s 600 remaining owned pieces of real estate." — Wells Fargo, September 2, 2014; "Development of propco/opco could be an intriguing possibility to maximize value in remaining real estate ... Based on discussions with J.P. Morgan’s REITs equity research team we believe a 14-15x pretax multiple could be applied to rental income. ...[This] yields approximately $7-8 of additional stock value." — JP Morgan, June 5, 2014; "We are lowering our rating on DRI shares from Neutral to Underperform and cutting our price objective from $55 to $40. Olive Garden (OG) has undertaken a brand relaunch to drive sales but we have concerns that the efforts are failing to gain significant traction." — Bank of America, August 28, 2014"

"“It’s come down to which group of independent directors shareholders want to oversee the company: Darden’s or Starboard’s? We believe Starboard’s slate is better qualified.” — Hedgeye, September 3, 2014; “Investment Thesis: We remain constructive on Darden based on the thesis that multiple near to intermediate term catalysts are in play including the potential spin-off of SRG, increasingly aggressive cost control efforts and the potential sale of a portion of the company’s 600 remaining owned pieces of real estate.” — Wells Fargo, September 2, 2014; “Development of propco/opco could be an intriguing possibility to maximize value in remaining real estate … Based on discussions with J.P. Morgan’s REITs equity research team we believe a 14-15x pretax multiple could be applied to rental income. …[This] yields approximately $7-8 of additional stock value.” — JP Morgan, June 5, 2014; “We are lowering our rating on DRI shares from Neutral to Underperform and cutting our price objective from $55 to $40. Olive Garden (OG) has undertaken a brand relaunch to drive sales but we have concerns that the efforts are failing to gain significant traction.” — Bank of America, August 28, 2014"

"I don't think misleading. However, I think, certain divisions look like they perform better because they're grouped into certain segments. Spine is an example. Now they disclose and its separate. A while ago it wasn't. It was struggling and before actually was losing money and they thought K2M was gonna fix it. Because the goal of K2M was to acquire market share. There was significant overlap and redundancies between K2M and Stryker spine. But the idea was to do a pure spine play and acquire market share. But because of the redundancies and the cost and, and ironically, K2M became the surviving entity, and the headquarters moved to Leesburg. Pricing pressures were significantly hurting Stryker when I was there. Spine was probably experiencing high single digits. One maybe two percent is probably (company) average. There were so many competitors in spine with lower overhead cost that they could drive the price down. Hospitals want single source suppliers. Stryker doesn't leverage the fact that it can sell so many different types of products. Divisions don't communicate or work well together, they're very competitive with each other. — Former Stryker M&A Professional"

""Taft is one of 40 patients interviewed by the AP who said they had problems with spinal-cord stimulators...Twenty-eight of them said their spinal cord stimulators not only failed to alleviate pain but left them worse off than before their surgeries...More than half the patients interviewed by the AP said they felt pressured to get stimulators because they feared their doctors would cut off their pain medications" — Associated Press investigation. "Spinal cord stimulators are some of the most problematic implants, according to various insurers, with a recent study showing a high removal rate...[W]e don't see a lot of success with them at all...Spinal cord stimulators are the most frequent failed medical device for workers compensation claimants at Portland...The devices 'more often fail than succeed,' and he estimates that they cause complications in MEMIC comp patients 90% of the time..." — Insurance trade article. "[W]eak evidence exists that SCS may provide temporary improvement of pain in some patients, but there is no evidence of mid or long term pain improvement." — Washington state study."

"“Everyone again feels that Nevro just cherry-picked their PDN study because diabetics are notoriously not compliant. That's why they have diabetes to begin with. And Nevro cherry-picks picture-perfect diabetic patients that always take the medication, their A1C was always below 7 and that's not realistic. That's not the average American that eats hoagies in Philadelphia.” — KOL and speaker; “If I used these exclusion criteria in my own population of diabetic patients, I could maybe enroll 10% or 15% of them. It was a vast list of exclusion criteria. That study doesn't reflect real-world outcomes. It used the best of the best of the best patients.” — KOL and high volume implanter; “Nevro's trying to put a sexy spin on a therapy that we've already been using forever. The ethics of their study design is questionable, like their exclusion criteria. They're going to have a lot of explants. They don't have the waveform capabilities that other companies have. The diabetic peripheral neuropathy study is just as bad as their original Senza study. It lacks robustness. It's not a level-one study.” — KOL"

""The diabetic neuropathy study is an example of putting lipstick on a pig. It really is. They're saying, wow we have a study that shows us what we already know. I mean, please. It won't change my use or anyone else's of stimulators in any way." — KOL and high volume implanter; "I have been treating idiopathic peripheral neuropathies, diabetic peripheral neuropathies, complex regional pain syndrome, and other types of painful neuropathies with spinal cord stimulation for a long time." — High volume Nevro implanter and loyalist; "We're the biggest stimulator implant unit in Europe. Our experience with Nevro started in 2009 with their EU study. We use it mainly for back pain, back surgery syndrome, and upper/lower neuropathic pain." — High volume Nevro implanter and consultant; "Boston Scientific has been doing stimulators for neuropathy in diabetics for close to 10 years, even with Precision-Plus back in 2004. Now all of a sudden, Nevro has some amazing thing? They're trying to hoodwink. I wish they would have gone after something innovative, something new." — KOL"

"A lot of doctors in Germany are saying that Nevro's device only works for 2 to 2 ½ years and then the patient comes back with more pain. They say it fails and then they have to put in an Abbott or Boston Scientific device. It's a big issue here in Germany. These are credible people. People who do a lot of surgeries and are involved with the society. Every time there's a spinal cord stim meeting, this is an issue that colleagues talk about. People have become nervous and become afraid to use Nevro. — High volume European implanter; The Nevro marketing materials that state a 2% explant rate are just a flat out lie. — High volume KOL; Everyone thinks Nevro has a high explant rate. — High volume implanter; The Nevro explant rate was known all over. At every meeting, colleagues talked about the explant rate being high. [KOL name redacted] explants a bunch of Nevro a week. He was a big Nevro advocate and has a lot of explants. Everyone was drinking the Nevro kool-aid at the beginning. — KOL, high volume implanter"

"Analyst: “It’s supposedly when Microsoft did their ChatGPT, supposedly a lot of the annotation was done in Kenya for $3.00 an hour. I mean is there a difference in the kind of annotation you guys do versus that kind of annotation?” Jack Abuhoff: “Yes, there is. There’s a great deal of difference. Some of the early models that have been built kind of go very broad but very narrow. There’s not a great deal of annotation that’s required. Much of what we do is the complex stuff. It’s going deep into subject matter domains, it’s going deep into use cases.” — 1Q23 Earnings Call. Former Employee: “No...that’s the thing I don’t get and that’s why I say they’re spinning. They’re making more out of it than it is...I am sure that [AI] has a role in their company but I think they’re billing themselves as very much an AI company. When [at the] end of the day, 10 years ago they had 5,000 people banging away at keyboards and they still have 5,000 people banging away at keyboards [now].”"

""Darden also issued its most detailed defense of its planned spin-off (or sale) of Red Lobster. However, it remains unclear to us why the combined valuation of the separate companies would exceed current DRI valuation." — BofA Merrill Lynch, March 3, 2014; "...But we continue to believe [management's] plan doesn't address RL problems for investors... It is still unclear how a spin actually improves core guest targeting capabilities/chances for a sales recovery or why multiple expansion would occur." — UBS, March 3, 2014; "We fear management's current plan to spinoff Red Lobster is reactionary and lacking integrity. They haven't given a plan to stabilize and turnaround Red Lobster, but merely an excuse to cast off the struggling chain." — Hedgeye, March 12, 2014; "Despite Opposition, Management is Moving Forward in Divesting Red Lobster: Overall, we believe the Street is disappointed by the divestiture of Red Lobster on its own." — Sterne Agee, March 21, 2014"

""People get used to high frequency. My hypothesis is that the neurons may re-learn and then the pain can come back." — KOL in Europe; "I've observed, when I and other doctors get together and talk about this, that patients tune out of high frequency faster than traditional stimulators. In one year the devices are all the same and the curves converge. There's no difference in efficacy. Maybe a little bit on the front end but it disappears by 12 months." — High volume implanter/KOL and Nevro user; "You can only beat on the spinal cord so long before a refractory response happens. Look at drugs – ones that effect the nervous system lead to tolerance. I'm saying it's just too much energy and you have to back off. Either the cells are down-regulating and can't hear the noise anymore, or there's an inflammatory response to high frequency and you get cell formation that's impeding the electrical signal." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter"

"“The CEO came from Chevron Phillips Chemical. That is another thing I think they should look at. Take Mark Lashier, he's an expert there, and spin off that business.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “This last Q4 where Phillips came out and their refining margins were so weak, so weak. That is just fundamentally unacceptable... That is a CEO problem.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “We have had significant issues with Mark Lashier, who's the CEO. He is on the hot seat at this point due to these operational issues... There is an open question if he is the right man for the moment for me.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “Mark controls everything and that is not a good thing and as you can see that does not lead to strong corporate performance.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey; “He's doing what's right for his buddies on the Chevron Phillips side which is just not that shareholder friendly.” — Third-party Shareholder Survey"

"Spinal cord stimulation as a first-line treatment is, no...it’s absolutely not a realistic opportunity.. The insurance companies will never cover that. If Nevro’s saying they’ll make stimulators the first line of treatment when a back pain patient comes in, I have never heard of that. — KOL and high volume implanter; As far as stimulators being used for first-line back, this is question that’s been asked for 15-25 years... I don’t see that market being appropriate for spinal cord stimulation. There are a lot of psychological issues as well, so I don’t see non-surgical back as a big market for them or any company. — KOL and Nevro user; Insurers are making it even harder. Getting approval for stimulators is the hardest it has been... stimulators for first-line back....there’s no way that’s going to happen. You can’t go right to a $50,000 treatment. I mean, that’s way outside of the standard care. — KOL and high volume implanter"

""Wow, it's like Zymergen too here. All the same stuff is happening, except it's happening even faster at Ginkgo. The decline in the culture. There was a very fast decline when it got really close to IPO; the culture became terrible, I would say, in a matter of a few months." — Former Ginkgo employee; "As I understand it I think Zymergen actually has products, I mean, they're in partnerships, but I think that they actually have some products that they're working on either themselves or in collaboration with somebody. That's one difference. I can't assess under the hood because when we talked to Zymergen a couple of years ago, they were in the same thing. Zach Serber, the CSO, was the same kind of thing as Jason. They each have their little magical thing that they spin to get deals. You could never really get to what was the secret sauce. I can't tell what's different about them." — Current Joyn executive"

""We agree with Elliott's assessment that there is more upside potential in the refining business...and we think Elliott's presence itself could refocus management towards this business." — J.P. Morgan, April 2025; "We agree that PSX's midstream does not reflect full value. We reinstated coverage of PSX in October and can attest that few midstream investors follow it, as it trades predominantly like a refining stock...selling some midstream assets could unlock value." — Bank of America, February 2025; "Refining performance certainly has significant room for improvement and is key to improving [Phillips 66's valuation] as well as to addressing investor concerns." — Citi, February 2025; "A spin/sale of the Midstream business is by far the single largest source of potential value creation, but is also the strategy to which the management has been the most strongly opposed." — Piper Sandler, February 2025"

"“In 2002, The New York Times published an article about Matthew DiFrisco, an analyst who downgraded Darden's stock to ‘neutral’ from ‘outperform.’ Following the downgrade, Darden's investor relations officer Matthew Stroud canceled a marketing trip with DiFrisco's clients, telling him that he needed to have an ‘outperform’ rating to enjoy such a privilege.” — The New York Times. “Some investors are protesting that Darden's idea of ‘direct engagement’ amounts to returning the phone calls of analysts and investors who agree with its strategy while ignoring calls from dissenters. ‘They've got a history of only engaging with investors and analysts who are supportive of their views,’ said one Darden shareholder, who declined to give his name for fear of retribution from the company. ‘If the board is so convinced [a Red Lobster spinoff] is such a great idea, then put it to a vote.’” — New York Post"

""In 2002, The New York Times published an article about Matthew DiFrisco, an analyst who downgraded Darden's stock to 'neutral' from 'outperform.' Following the downgrade, Darden's investor relations officer Matthew Stroud canceled a marketing trip with DiFrisco's clients, telling him that he needed to have an 'outperform' rating to enjoy such a privilege." — The New York Times. "Some investors are protesting that Darden's idea of 'direct engagement' amounts to returning the phone calls of analysts and investors who agree with its strategy while ignoring calls from dissenters. 'They've got a history of only engaging with investors and analysts who are supportive of their views,' said one Darden shareholder, who declined to give his name for fear of retribution from the company. 'If the board is so convinced [a Red Lobster spinoff] is such a great idea, then put it to a vote.'" — New York Post"

""Reps engaging in the practice of medicine has always been the concern. It’s very time consuming to schedule the patient with a doctor to reprogram them. The majority of the doctors don’t know how stimulators work or how to program them. The rep is in the operating room doing the programming. The doctors are not involved in the programming. They understand at a high level that they’re driving a current through the spine. From a technical standpoint to use the programmer or remote control, not so much." — Former Nevro executive #1; "They’re not health care providers in any way, shape, or form. Some of them are not educated in medicine or science at all, and they’re responsible for the care of patients. You can say that’s definitely not a great thing. If the patients knew what the credentials of some of the caregivers are they would probably be pretty concerned." — Former Nevro executive #2"

"“You can only beat on the spinal cord so long before a refractory response happens. Look at drugs – ones that effect the nervous system lead to tolerance... The pathological changes that may have occurred in patients with Nevro’s HF10 therapy are being studied.”; “I believe, and a lot of other doctors believe, that you can only pound on the spinal cord so much. You’re seeing a shift now, where other companies are pulsing the energy... as a potential way to mitigate the tolerance that occurs in the nervous system.”; “I’m saying it’s just too much energy and you have to back off. Either the cells are down-regulating and can’t hear the noise anymore, or there’s an inflammatory response to high frequency and you are get cell formation that’s impeding the electrical signal.” — Ex-Nevro consultant/speaker and one of the most prominent KOL’s in the space"

""Nevro cherry-picked patients. The criteria to be in the HF10 study was one or less back surgeries... It wasn't a real world study." — Longtime head of one of Medtronic's largest territories; "I mean, they ruled out workers comp patients. They ruled out a significant opioid use. They ruled out even prior spinal cord stimulation." — KOL and one of Nevro's highest volume KOL's/accounts; "They programmed the Boston Scientific patients the same as they had always been done. But in the Nevro arm, we'll pick our patients, like virgin patients with only one back surgery... They did a good job in cherry-picking patients." — Longtime head of one of Medtronic's largest territories; "The biggest problem with their study was the exclusion criteria. They committed the cardinal sin, which is to cherry-pick." — KOL and high volume implanter"

"“I got excited by Nevro. I thought it was the Tesla of spinal cord stimulators...I became increasingly frustrated as I began to see a lot of failures with the device...Nevro is a one trick pony.” —Physician #1, a former high volume Nevro implanter; “Doctors that implanted a lot of devices, they hated Nevro...The only way I know to change that doctor’s practice paradigm is bribing. It works...Doctors are whores.” —Physician #2, a key opinion leader (KOL) in the spinal cord stimulation space; “So, it was a big scam. The way that they manipulated the data was criminal.” —Physician #3, a KOL and high volume implanter; “There were definitely practices at Nevro that pushed patients into implants. They will invariably be audited by Medicare. They’re doing other things that are not on the up and up.” —Former Nevro sales rep"

"“When you look at M&A, you have too many emerging spinal cord stimulation technologies out there. You’ve got Nalu that’s coming out. That came out of Stanford. You’ve got companies like Saluda. They’ve been trying to shop that thing for the last 18 months and they have no buyers and the reason is, how are you going to come in and compete when price erosion is happening all around you?” — Former Nevro executive; “If Saluda could have sold for a couple hundred million bucks, they would have sold it. John Parker has said publicly that he wants a billion dollars for the company. Nobody’s going to spend a billion dollars for that company. Nobody. Nobody. Like $800 million is nuts. Had he positioned it at $500 to $700 million, it probably would have been sold, but John Parker is out of his mind.” — Former Nevro executive"

"When Nevro launched in 2015, I was really interested in the data and how much better it worked than regular spinal cord stimulation. So I used it and was very impressed in the beginning. But then the failures just kept coming. People just kept getting explanted or the pain just kept coming back ...After three to six months it was like clockwork that patients just started shitting the bed. So I just stopped using it...I didn't have a single patient that made it past a year ...I might have 2 back patients that still have it out of 90 I implanted with Nevro. That's not unheard of. There are a lot, a lot, of doctors who have had that experience. I know of a lot of doctors who had a 70-80% explant rate. My overall explant rate is very low. No one can say that my Nevro explants were due to my patient selection. — KOL #1"

""I wouldn't invest in Nevro. I did at IPO. I was thinking of shorting Nevro. Their competitive advantage got eaten away as everyone caught up... They can crush Nevro at a systems level if they want to. The big buys can crush them in hospitals." — KOL and high volume implanter; "I don't see a whole lot of innovation. They're stuck with one product which makes them very vulnerable unlike other companies... Spinal cord stimulation seems over-saturated." — High volume Nevro implanter; "My broker was really pushing Nevro stock because [prominent underwriting bank] was pushing them... I knew the opposite as a high volume implanter. But the bank was still pushing it. I don't know if they didn't know or they didn't care, but I thought Nevro is like a pump in the dump [sic]." — KOL and former high volume Nevro implanter"

"But then, you know, to really get the numbers where they are, this is where... to use your phrase, that sleight of hand comes in—is that, you know when, when you're selling an engine, are you selling an engine or are you selling four modules? And if you start booking engine sales as module sales, and... then also you have assets that have been in the leasing portfolio for quite some time; so, you can, you can, you know, depreciate those down, and you can really boost the numbers on the aerospace side to show the strength on the aerospace to really get that valuation, and really kind of you're robbing Peter to pay Paul internally. You're kind of taking the money way out of the leasing sector and putting that into the aerospace sector and spinning it that way. — Consultant A and former FTAI executive"

"“I also got a sense this wasn't a role that he was expecting and that he's very busy on a lot of other things he's doing. A lot of other things, and I don't know how much attention - I mean obviously he's spending a lot of time on Nevro - but I think there are other people who are running the ship largely and that's sort of the sense I got from these people on the leadership team” — Former Nevro executive; “I don't think he has an appreciation for what motivates the spinal cord stimulator customer...I know for a fact, on the inside, Grossman has said he's scratching his head over why the stock has done what it's done.” — Longtime C-level executive in the space; “It's that they were losing market share, and they didn't know how to explain it away.” — Longtime C-level executive in the space"

""Health Care is 3M’s most attractive business. Long-run organic growth, operating profit, capital intensity, and cyclicality are all better than the RemainCo." — Bernstein (September 2022); "Of 3M’s legacy portfolio, Health Care represented the largest and historically most profitable business within 3M given its highly defendable market positions" — William Blair (July 2022); "The planned Health Care spin-off, expected late 2023/early 2024, should unlock value... The Health Care spin-off will not have the litigation overhang currently facing 3M." — Bank of America (July 2023); "The Health Care spin may create value in the long run by ensuring that a decent chunk of MMM’s earnings are not subject to the liability question marks." — Barclays (July 2022)"

""And then thinking about Spine, we expect to continue to post growth in that space. And we think some of the enabling technology investments we’ve made will continue to pay dividends and on top of, obviously, the K2M acquisition, which has opened up more of the portfolio for new product developments, we do think that we have good confidence in our performance in the quarters to come and well into '22 and beyond." — Spencer Stiles, Group President Ortho and Spine, BofA Conf, May 11, 2021; "So in terms of underlying growth, I mean, we don’t break out guidance in terms of as we think about spine. But we do expect that market and that business to continue to accelerate as the recovery happens in the back half of the year" — CEO Lobo, Q2 2021 Conf Call."

""The Aetna's, United Health's of the world have put up more roadblocks. They make docs call, justify it, deny it. The denials have gone up. Also the delays. I have a couple of doctors who took four months to get patients through a stim trial. The insurers kept delaying it for extra info. Reimbursement was piece of cake five years ago. Now it's getting more difficult. There are more hoops." — KOL, high volume implanter; "Insurers have taken a lot of shots at spinal cord stimulation. In 2015 they tried to split up the coding. We're just kicking the can down the road until the reimbursement gets hammered again. It's just harder to get approved. Doctors are kind of not wanting to do spinal cord stimulation as much." — KOL, high volume implanter"

"Grossman has a history of working with Bess Weatherman of Warburg Pincus who's on the board, and I think they look for companies that are really ground down. They move some people in, move some people out, but at the end of the day, they really control cost. They don't really add true value and that's kind of how I see Grossman. I don't see Grossman adding value to spinal cord stimulation. I don't think he really understands the market. He'll reformat all those guarantees that the reps have. From a revenue point of view, the company should be a lot bigger than it is, but I'm very underwhelmed because when I look at sales capacity, there's 150 more field team now, for about the same amount of revenue. It's crazy. — Former Nevro executive"

""No other home security company is a significant cash tax payer. Importantly, we expect to be very efficient from a cash tax rate perspective. That's going to be driven by two things. First, we expect that we're going to inherit between $1 billion and $1.2 billion NOL at the time of the spin. In addition to that, we have the opportunity to accelerate certain deductions that will allow us to minimize that cash tax rate for a period of time beyond fully utilizing that initial NOL that we inherit... Overall, we expect our cash tax rate will be driven by federal AMC taxes, state taxes and Canadian income and withholding taxes resulting in an overall cash tax rate of between 6% and 8%." — Kathryn A. Mikells, 9/18/12"

"With Phillips, what can they do now that will help them longer-term? In terms of execution, I want them to have a much more independent board. I want them to spin off the CP Chem business or sell it to Chevron. I want them to spin-off the retail business. They are actually selling off the Jet part, which is the retail part, so that's good. I want them to continue divesting. I want them to not have a conglomerate discount. They have a conglomerate discount, but for all the wrong reasons. They just have too many unrelated businesses, and I think that's just not good for them longer-term and it is not good for us. Also need to get rid of midstream. — Third-party Shareholder Survey"

""The timing just worked very well for us right now. K2M has really developed stronger and stronger performance with their new product launches. So the timing just came together right now.... And so I'm very optimistic about the 2 organizations merging very well and performing very well." — Stryker CEO Lobo, Q3 2018 Conf Call. "We expect mid-single-digit performance on a pro forma basis. And then obviously, in 2020, that'll then roll into organic. So we're really excited with the speed of that integration and being able to post these numbers with a Spine business that's been essentially flat for the past 5 years is pretty remarkable." — Stryker CEO Lobo, Q4 2018 Conf Call."

"Following the announcement on Tuesday that Marathon Petroleum would not spin-off its retail segment, several investors we spoke to expressed greater concern on the story. — Goldman Sachs, September 8, 2017; MPC's acquisition of ANDV creates the largest US refiner and adds significant diversification. However, it comes at a cost, with MPC using its chronically undervalued currency to take out ANDV shares at a price that we think is above intrinsic value. — RBC, May 1, 2018; Marathon Petroleum (MPC) is the stock we receive the most questions on, particularly following recent disclosure of an activist position and subsequent outperformance. — Scotiabank, September 10, 2019"

""Slide 6 walk you through a little more about what Peter outlined, that it is our intention within two years of close to list the combined Pigments businesses and do an IPO." — Kimo Esplin, CFO, September 2013; "And I might just add -- and the fourth [quarter] this next year, we will be deconsolidating our TiO2 business and our pigments business." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, June 2015; "It is our assumption at this point that our Company will keep a minority economic [interest]...Obviously, we will be spinning off greater than 51% to allow it to be -- as far as the voting control, to allow it to be a tax free spin." — Peter Huntsman, President & CEO, August 2016"

"With Phillips, what can they do now that will help them longer-term? In terms of execution, I want them to have a much more independent board. I want them to spin off the CP Chem business or sell it to Chevron. I want them to spin-off the retail business. They are actually selling off the Jet part, which is the retail part, so that's good. I want them to continue divesting. I don't want them to have a conglomerate discount. They have a conglomerate discount, but for all the wrong reasons. They just have too many unrelated businesses, and I think that's just not good for them longer-term and it is not good for us. Also need to get rid of midstream. — Anonymous Investor"

""Alcoa Corporation would not exist if it hadn't been for me basically creating it." — Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, February 1, 2017; "[Management] is unequaled in its efforts to put a positive spin on bad news by accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative.... [I]f free cash flow looks bad, it will redefine it.... [S]omeday we will write a treatise on the psychology of earnings reports and presentations. And Alcoa will be our case study.... I think Alcoa is one of the more blatant spin doctors.... [N]othing ever looks bad in management's version of the world, where all the news is good news." — Carol Levenson, Director of Research for Gimme Credit, July 11, 2016"

""Spinning hard drives are very efficient way to do this and they provide adequate bandwidth when you gang them together. Over time in training environments, it went from all flash to mostly hard drives with some flash. That trend seems to be continuing." — Director of Hardware Engineering at Meta (Tegus); "Inferencing does require low latency storage, but it's not a done deal that that storage will have to sit on SSDs." — Data storage product manager at leading hyperscaler; "They are very much putting hard drives in the network attached dedicated storage servers where they need lots and lots of cheap capacity...there's a reasonable case to" — Unattributed source."

"The CEO came from Chevron Phillips Chemical. That is another thing I think they should look at. Take Mark Lashier, he's an expert there, and spin off that business. — Anonymous Investor; We have had significant issues with Mark Lashier, who's the CEO. He is on the hot seat at this point due to these operational issues. — Anonymous Investor; This last Q4 where Phillips came out and their refining margins were so weak, so weak. That is just fundamentally unacceptable. — Anonymous Investor; Mark controls everything and that is not a good thing and as you can see that does not lead to strong corporate performance. — Anonymous Investor"