There is more important issue however - this is the reason why the google internal tests are failing (it's a regression in Angular).

The ng-repeat state is set AFTER the transclusion is linked. That is wrong. It's pretty scary that we don't have any test for this (all the existing tests assert through binding which eventually contains the value even if the state is set later). This branch shows the problem (failing test) including possible fix (the test is passing): https://github.com/vojtajina/angular.js/tree/pr-7565-ng-repeat-state-set-after-transclusion-issue