The Bear Cave #284

New Activist Reports, Recent Resignations, and Tweets of the Week

Jul 27, 2025

Welcome to The Bear Cave! Our last premium articles were “Problems at 130 Long-Term Underperformers” and “Problems in Chinatown” and our next special investigation comes out Thursday, August 7. Building on our recent reporting, The Bear Cave may also send out timely alerts about U.S.-listed Chinese stock promotion scams we believe are near collapse.

New Activist Reports

Blue Orca Capital published on Nutex Health (NASDAQ: NUTX — $527 million), an emergency healthcare company. Blue Orca alleged that Nutex benefited from a fraudulent scheme by a third-party vendor, HaloMD, which “illegally gamed the arbitration system by falsely attesting to the eligibility of claims and improperly inflating payment offers,” according to recent lawsuits from three different Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates. Blue Orca wrote, in part,

“Nutex’s financial results suddenly and miraculously transformed thanks to arbitration results achieved by HaloMD. In a single quarter, Nutex’s corporate EBIT margin grew from 12% to 44% and we estimate revenue per hospital visit increased from ~$1,500 to ~$3,800. In other words, using a loophole in the [No Surprises Act] law meant to crack down on surprise [out-of-network] billers, Nutex essentially doubled its revenue per hospital visit from pre-NSA levels and these results caused its stock to increase over 20x from its lows.”

Blue Orca added:

“We believe that healthcare services business models that depend on aggressively seeking high out-of-network reimbursement rates are inherently fragile, as the bankruptcy of Nutex CEO Dr. Thomas Vo’s previous company Neighbors Emergency Center and several other examples show.”

Nutex stock fell ~17% this week and Blue Orca predicted it “may rapidly return to penny stock status.”

Spruce Point Capital published on Limbach Holdings (NASDAQ: LMB — $1.56 billion), a building systems solutions company focused on mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure. Spruce Point said it “developed concerns over the company’s aggressive accounting practices” and stated “the market is overlooking increased competition from private equity-backed platforms.” Spruce Point also claimed the company’s growth would decelerate and noted that “Limbach previously included a footnote in its financial statements indicating whether its existing backlog substantially covered forecasted revenue but removed that disclosure in Q1’25.” Spruce Point said the company has “20% - 50% potential long-term downside risk.”

Gotham City Research published on LandBridge (NYSE: LB — $4.31 billion), which owns about 277,000 acres of land used for oil and gas exploration in Texas and New Mexico. Gotham City called the company “a related party scheme” and alleged that “16%-55% of LandBridge’s 2024 revenues are artificially boosted by related parties” so that the related parties can sell LandBridge stock at an inflated valuation. Gotham City highlighted that LandBridge inexplicably earns a royalty rate twice that of peer Texas Pacific Land and that LandBridge’s Audit Chair, Ms. Valerie Chase, previously served as Audit Chair of HF Foods Group (NASDAQ: HFFG), which Hindenburg Research accused of improper related party transactions. Gotham City concluded “shares are worth no more $5 to $24 per share implying 53-89% downside to the current share price.”

Gotham City Research also published on Texas Pacific Land (NYSE: TPL — $22.5 billion), which owns about 900,000 acres in West Texas used for oil and gas exploration and water services. Gotham City said that TPL’s recent stock appreciation is from “price insensitive, forced buyers of the stock” like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. Those firms now own ~25% of the company, following its governance change to become index-eligible in 2021. Gotham City also said Texas Pacific “is inflecting into a lower quality, capital intensive business with less growth” and “will approach $361-$440 per share, implying 53%-61% downside vs current price.”

Independent researcher Lauren Balik published a follow-up article on Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN — $1.31 billion), a coupon company. Ms. Balik highlighted that Groupon vendors are selling large quantities of heavily discounted Microsoft Office software that appears to be compromised by Chinese nation-state actors. Ms. Balik alleged Groupon “is doing little-to-zero due diligence on its software vendor offerings.” Last month, Ms. Balik also highlighted the company’s questionable promotion of discount offers for GLP-1 medications.

Sunshine Research published on Flux Power Holdings (NASDAQ: FLUX — $31 million), a lithium-ion battery company that Sunshine said is “facing a liquidity crunch” and “an imminent delisting without a significant dilutive equity raise.”

BMF Reports published on Aether Holdings (NASDAQ: ATHR — $110 million), a promotional AI fintech company that went public in April. BMF Reports alleged the company “is built on fraud and fake filings” and alleged that insiders may be circumventing a 6-month lockup by selling stock through a shell company.

Recent Resignations

Notable executive departures disclosed in the past week include:

CEO of Dentsply Sirona (NASDAQ: XRAY — $3.19 billion) “entered into a separation agreement” after almost three years and also departed the board. The company has had seven CEOs and nine CFOs in the last ten years. In 2022, the company’s CEO was terminated and the company’s CFO departed amid “an internal investigation into certain financial reporting matters” which ultimately led to a restatement of the company’s 10-K for 2021. In March 2024, the company also switched auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers to Deloitte.
CEO of Globus Medical (NYSE: GMED — $7.38 billion), Daniel T. Scavilla, resigned after a little over three years to become the new CEO of Dentsply Sirona.
Two board members of Kestra Medical Technologies (NASDAQ: KMTS — $850 million), Toby AuWerter and Maxwell Bikoff, declined to stand for re-election after one year of board service. The defibrillator company is down ~20% since its March 2025 IPO and its product is allegedly “impractical with very low efficacy.”
Chief Human Resources Officer of United Parks & Resorts (NYSE: PRKS — $2.82 billion), Michael Rady, resigned with two weeks’ notice after just ten months. Mr. Rady was previously a Human Resources executive at PepsiCo for 17 years. The theme park company best known for SeaWorld has had five CEOs and six CFOs in the last ten years.
Chief Accounting Officer of Quaker Chemical (NYSE: KWR — $2.16 billion) resigned with immediate effect and took the Chief Accounting Officer job at Resideo Technologies (NYSE: REZI — $3.63 billion).
Mr. Ronald Dickerman, board member of Veris Residential (NYSE: VRE — $1.37 billion) and President and Founder of Madison International Realty, resigned after a little over two years “after taking into careful consideration the best interests of Veris shareholders, the demands of his position with Madison and his need to provide Madison with greater flexibility to trade Veris Residential shares in accordance with its fiduciary duty to its fund investors.” Madison holds a roughly 6.5% equity stake in Veris. Last month, the multifamily apartment complex REIT disclosed its Chief Investment Officer departed with immediate effect after a little over three years.

Data for this section is provided by VerityData from VerityPlatform.com

News of the Week

Culper vs Gorilla & Grizzly vs XP

Gorilla Technology Group (NASDAQ: GRRR — $402 million) announced it “resolved its previously disclosed litigation against Culper Research and its founder, Christian Lamarco… via a confidential non-monetary settlement.” In April, Culper called the company “the most ridiculous fraud we’ve written about.” In March, The Bear Cave (not a party to the litigation) also published on Gorilla.
Two weeks ago, XP Inc (NASDAQ: XP — $8.74 billion) “filed a federal lawsuit against Grizzly Research LLC and its principal, Siegfried Eggert, for allegedly publishing a false and defamatory article designed to manipulate the market and damage XP's reputation for profit.” In March, Grizzly alleged funds affiliated with XP, Gladius and Coliseu, have achieved outsized returns largely by selling “predatory investment products that XP pushes aggressively on its Brazilian retail clients.”

“Whistleblower Awards Slow to Trickle as SEC Raises Bar on Claims” (Bloomberg Law)

A new report from Bloomberg Law suggests that the SEC may be taking a stricter approach to paying out whistleblower awards, particularly to activist short-sellers. Bloomberg Law wrote, in part:

“The SEC is denying a record percentage of whistleblower claims, including two in orders that sharply rebuked a previous award to activist investor Carson Block—signs the agency is enforcing rules and scrutinizing claims more strictly than in past years…
Block published a 2010 report alleging wrongdoing by a Chinese company, FocusMedia, then emailed a copy of his report to SEC staff, without filing a formal tip as required by the whistleblower law. Twelve years later, over the objections of its staff, the commission waived its reporting requirements to give him a whistleblower bounty.”

“Kohl’s and Opendoor Headline a New Class of Meme Stocks” (WSJ)

“Individual investors are once again loading up on a group of unloved stocks and taking to social media to defend them from the haters and the short sellers. Meet the cast of the meme-stock craze, season two.”