The Bear Cave #286

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

Aug 10, 2025

Welcome to The Bear Cave! Our last premium articles were “Problems at Pheton Holdings (PTHL)” and “Problems in Chinatown (Part 2)” and our next special investigation comes out Thursday, August 21.

The Bear Cave also recently launched StopNasdaqChinaFraud.com, an open database to expose rampant stock promotion of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. So far, the database has accumulated over 100 submissions from the stock manipulation group chats.

New Activist Reports

NINGI Research published on Marex Group (NASDAQ: MRX — $2.52 billion), a London-based financial services company with a specialty for commodities markets. NINGI called Marex “a financial house of cards built on a multi-year scheme of accounting manipulation, intercompany transactions, and fake profits” and alleged the company used off-balance-sheet vehicles to conceal trading losses. In addition, NINGI highlighted that Marex’s leadership has sold over $30 million in stock in the last four months and Marex’s CEO previously worked at Lehman Brothers for 14 years and was promoted to CFO in June 2008 shortly before its collapse.

In response, the company said it “rejects this malicious report as a transparent effort to manipulate the share price to enable NINGI to profit from the short position it previously built” and “will report its second quarter results on Wednesday August 13, where we look forward to the opportunity to update the market on our recent performance and respond to analyst questions.”

Morpheus Research published on Collective Mining (NYSE: CNL — $809 million), a Canadian mining company drilling for gold in Colombia. Morpheus largely alleged that “a significant portion of the company’s activities are occurring on untitled land” and that the company could face “significant penalties.”

Gotham City Research published an update on LandBridge (NYSE: LB — $3.95 billion), which owns about 277,000 acres of land used for oil and gas exploration in Texas and New Mexico. Gotham City raised more concerns about the company’s related-party deals and wrote, in part,

“LB only has a dozen employees, your long-time CFO/CEO abruptly left last year, and your auditor does not audit your internal controls for financial reporting. Worse, 2 out of 3 of your audit committee members oversaw serious accounting problems in their prior companies.”

Two weeks ago, Gotham City called LandBridge “a related party scheme” and alleged that “16%-55% of LandBridge’s 2024 revenues are artificially boosted by related parties.”

Keith Dalrymple of DF Research published on Willscot Mobile Mini Holdings (NASDAQ: WSC — $4.43 billion), a mobile office and site storage solution provider. Mr. Dalrymple alleged the company “has an end-of-life fleet and a looming debt bomb.” Last year, Mr. Dalrymple alleged that the company’s fleet “contains old, decrepit and otherwise unrentable units” and its financial results are inflated by massively underinvesting in CapEx.

Last week, Snow Cap Research published on FTAI Infrastructure (NASDAQ: FIP — $572 million), a logistics and energy company spun out from FTAI Aviation in July 2022. Snow Cap called the company “an overleveraged collection of infrastructure assets that are bleeding cash and we believe are headed for an imminent liquidity crisis.”

Ragnarok Research, a 17-year-old short seller, published on Blaize Holdings (NASDAQ: BZAI — $325 million), an AI-powered computing company. The original report appears to have been deleted after alleged threats from the company and then reposted by White Diamond Research. The report alleged that a recently announced landmark customer partnership is non-substantive and noted the customer “had their website registered a mere two weeks before the deal was announced.”

Recent Resignations

Notable executive departures disclosed in the past week include:

CFO of RingCentral (NYSE: RNG — $2.59 billion) resigned effective immediately after just eight months. The company has had four different CFOs in the last five years.
CFO of eLong Power Holding Limited (NASDAQ: ELPW — $191 million) resigned with immediate effect after a little over one year. The China-based lithium-ion battery company is down ~60% since its October 2024 SPAC merger.
CFO of Greenfire Resources (NYSE: GFR — $309 million) departed after nearly two years. In February, the company’s CEO also departed after nearly two years. The company is down ~55% since its September 2023 SPAC merger.
CFO of Centrus Energy (NYSE: LEU — $4.06 billion) “resigned to pursue other opportunities” after nearly two years. In June, the nuclear energy company’s Chief Compliance Officer also departed “in order to pursue another opportunity.”
CFO of Acadia Healthcare (NASDAQ: ACHC — $1.78 billion) stepped down “to pursue the role of President and Chief Operating Officer at another company” after a little over two years. In February 2024, January 2025, and February 2025, Acadia Healthcare was on the SEC’s B7A FOIA exemption list, indicating a potential long-running SEC investigation. In September 2024, Acadia paid a $1,386,000 civil penalty “for using employment, separation, and other agreements that violated rules prohibiting actions to impede whistleblowers from reporting potential misconduct to the SEC.” The company’s VP of Operations and Chief Medical Officer both departed last year and The Capitol Forum has raised allegations of improper patient care at Acadia facilities.
CFO of CareDx (NASDAQ: CDNA — $637 million) “entered into a release of claims agreement” after nearly three years. The company has had seven CFOs over the last ten years.
CEO of Agilon Health (NYSE: AGL — $360 million) resigned effective immediately after a little over five years and was replaced by two interim co-CEOs. In December 2022, Citron Research published on Agilon Health and highlighted headwinds from a Supreme Court decision on Medicare overpayments. The company is down ~97% since its April 2021 IPO.
Mr. Anish Melwani, board member of Lotus Technology (NASDAQ: LOT — $1.38 billion), departed the board with immediate effect after nearly two years. In June, the company’s former CFO and board member, Mr. Alexious Kuen Long Lee, departed the board with immediate effect after nearly four years. In April, another board member resigned after just three months and in December 2024 a board member resigned after nearly two years “for personal reasons.” The Chinese luxury electric vehicle company is down ~80% since its February 2024 SPAC merger.

Editor’s Note: Last week, The Bear Cave highlighted the departure of Five9’s CEO, Mike Burkland, as a “notable departure.” However, The Bear Cave omitted that Mr. Burkland’s departure was for health-related concerns around his previously disclosed cancer diagnosis. As such, The Bear Cave has removed the resignation from last week’s list and apologizes for our oversight.

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

News of the Week

“Short Sellers' Information Acquisition: Evidence from Interviews with Activist Short Sellers and Analyses of Short Reports” (Academic Paper)

“Using in-depth interviews with nine activist short sellers and an analysis of 820 short reports from 2010 to 2021, we examine how they source, process, and communicate evidence. The interviews reveal a three‐stage workflow—idea generation, thesis validation, and report writing—in which they strategically tailor disclosures to balance credibility, legal risk, and anticipated counterarguments.”

Roblox Bans Schlep

Roblox (NYSE: RBLX — $89.2 billion) issued a cease and desist to young Roblox YouTuber “Schlep,” who earned a large following online for exposing predators on the Roblox platform. Similairly, in 2021, Roblox sued YouTuber RubenSim after he raised repeated safety concerns about the platform. Following the latest action, the hashtag #FreeSchlep went viral on X, raising new concerns about the platform’s safety for children.

“An anatomy of a Chinese Pump and dump: How Edwin Dorsey's PTHL piece gave birth to a classic opportunity to dissect tick-by-tick data and infer how Chinese scammers fleece retail traders.” (Ragnarok Research)

Ragnarok Research highlighted the manipulation occurring in U.S.-listed Chinese companies and made the noteworthy discovery that the pump-and-dumps occur more frequently during the second half of the year, given the prevalence of Chinese holidays in the first half of the year. In addition, Ragnarok found trading volumes of some manipulated stocks dropped dramatically on Chinese holidays. Follow Ragnarok @ResearRagnarok on X.

ARR Partners is looking to hire a Junior Portfolio Manager for its global long/short equity strategies. Learn more here and apply here. Christian Putz of ARR Investment Partners was previously featured on Sunday’s Idea Brunch and was honored with the HFM European Performance Award in the category Global Equity Under $500M.