Not necessarily true. They could be playing the games of “this guy will get promoted with a P so we can slide a DP to someone else at the MLR.” Or it could be a factor of your SR has to have 3 IPZ to get a DP...and since yours says “if I had a DP to give” this is more likely. The “bottom half” is crap if you just judge by the PRF DP allocation. All my feedback was always “top 1/3” “doing great” etc...but my PRF said “bottom 75%” because it was a P that didn’t say “definitely promote”. There were still a ton of my previous Sq, Gp, and Wg CCs that we’re shocked I wasn’t promoted. Good luck and I’ll buy you a beer if you don’t make it by some weird fluke or hidden super double secret word that wasn’t just the right flavor of happy or glad.