The Bear Cave #296

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

Oct 19, 2025

Welcome to The Bear Cave! Our last premium articles were “More Problems at DraftKings (DKNG)” and “Problems at Better Collective A/S (BETCO)” and our next special investigation comes out Thursday, November 6.

New Activist Reports

NINGI Research published on CCC S.A. (Warsaw: CCC — 11.8 billion Polish złoty), a Polish footwear company. NINGI alleged that the company’s recent turnaround “is an illusion” and the company is “fabricating growth by ‘selling’ hundreds of millions in unwanted inventory to a captive, insolvent franchisee called MKRI.” NINGI Research alleged that CCC is acquiring its insolvent franchisee to cover up the questionable transactions and highlighted that CCC’s auditor “previously took issue with the company’s premature revenue recognition practices.”

In a rebuttal post and video conference, the company claimed NINGI’s allegations were “false” and made “to profit from short positions.” NINGI responded that the company’s rebuttal video “inadvertently [confirmed] many of our findings,” including an admission “it is significantly behind on its store expansion targets.”

NINGI Research separately raised concerns about a buyout offer for Grindr (NYSE: GRND — $2.49 billion), a dating app catering to gay communities. NINGI highlighted that one of the insiders participating in the buyout offer is undergoing a margin call related to personal loans for his Grindr stock, among other issues. Last month, NINGI called the company “an ad-saturated, and glitch-ridden toxic wasteland.”

Recent Resignations

Notable executive departures disclosed in the past week include:

CFO of Capital Bancorp (NASDAQ: CBNK — $479 million) resigned “due to a personal decision to pursue another opportunity” after a little over one year. The predecessor CFO had also departed after a little over one year.
CFO of HF Foods Group (NASDAQ: HFFG — $126 million) “separated from the company” with immediate effect after one and a half years. The company has had eight CFOs in the last ten years, is audited by BDO USA, and has fallen ~75% since its August 2018 SPAC merger. In June, four board members departed and the remaining four-person board has an average tenure of six months. In March 2020, Hindenburg Research alleged the company was backed by pump-and-dump artists and “transacted with at least 43 separate related-party entities.”
CFO of Murphy USA (NYSE: MUSA — $7.47 billion) departed with immediate effect after just one and a half years.
CFO of Semler Scientific (NASDAQ: SMLR — $351 million) resigned “to pursue another opportunity” after a little over two years. The healthcare technology company “adopted Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset” in 2024 and is audited by BDO USA.
CEO of LendingTree (NASDAQ: TREE — $778 million) “passed away unexpectedly yesterday in an all-terrain vehicle accident” eighteen years after founding the lending marketplace company.
Ms. Mamatha Chamarthi, board member of Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB — $48.8 billion), resigned just two days after joining the board. Ms. Chamarthi previously served as Chief Digital Officer of Goodyear Tire (NASDAQ: GT — $1.96 billion) and appears to have departed that role last week. On September 30, an anonymous Reddit account published allegations that a non-profit leadership organization co-founded by Ms. Chamarthi accepted a “generous donation” from Accenture and Accenture’s CEO, Ms. Julie Sweet, while Accenture was allegedly bidding on consulting and outsourcing contracts for Goodyear. In April 2025, a different Goodyear executive, Mr. Chris Delaney, President of Europe, Middle East and Africa, departed after a scandal involving an affair with his Goodyear secretary and the murder of his wife.

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

SEC Halts Premium Catering Stock

The SEC temporarily halted trading of Premium Catering Holdings (NASDAQ: PC — $118 million) until October 30 “because of potential manipulation… through recommendations made via social media.” Overseas stock manipulation groups used the SEC halt as a tactic to further manipulate investors, according to screenshots published on StopNasdaqChinaFraud.com.

For example, one stock manipulator wrote via WhatsApp that “stock suspensions are almost always positive news… Once trading resumes, the stock will definitely surge upward. That’s just how the industry works.” The stock manipulator also claimed to have “insider intel that PC and CoreWeave are in talks about a partnership.” In a different message, the stock manipulator wrote that “the current trading halt is due to the U.S. government shutdown.” A different stock manipulator claimed that “the company voluntarily applied for a trading suspension” to prevent excessive speculation about its potential “partnership” with CoreWeave.

CoreWeave is a leading AI cloud computing company and Premium Catering Holdings focuses on “Halal food catering services to foreign workers and others in Singapore.”

Other stocks that appear to be subject to overseas stock manipulation schemes include TryHard Holdings (NASDAQ: THH — $384 million), Robot Consulting (NASDAQ: LAWR — $163 million), Picard Medical (NYSE: PMI — $717 million), and recent IPO PomDoctor (NASDAQ: POM).

News of the Week

Paid Stock Promotions

Notable paid stock promotion campaigns detected this week by StockPromotionTracker.com include two email campaigns for Silver47 Exploration Corp (OTC: AAGAF — $169 million), sponsored research for Health In Tech (NASDAQ: HIT — $170 million), and an email campaign for VisionWave Holdings (NASDAQ: VWAV — $185 million).

“Bucket shops, crypto, and flash crashes” (John Hempton)

“An exchange that doesn’t buy the underlying asset they have promised their clients is known as a ‘bucket shop.’ This comes from the 1920s practice of gambling houses ‘trading’ in stocks but really keeping all the money in a bucket.”

“AppLovin Nonconsensual Installs” (Ben Edelman)

“Mobile adtech juggernaut AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP — $203 billion) recently faced multiple allegations of misconduct. Allegations run the gamut—privacy, ad targeting, even national security and ties to China. I was among the researchers consulted by skeptical investors this spring, and I was quoted in one of their reports, explaining my concerns about AppLovin installing other games without user consent.
Today I argue that AppLovin places apps on users’ Android devices without their consent. As a maxim says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but I embrace that high bar…”

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