The Bear Cave #301

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

Nov 23, 2025

Welcome to The Bear Cave! Our last premium articles were “Betting on Tomorrow: A Primer on Prediction Markets” and “Problems at Sportradar Group (SRAD)” and our next special investigation comes out Thursday, December 4.

New Activist Reports

Bleecker Street Research published on Perdoceo Education (NASDAQ: PRDO — $1.85 billion), a U.S.-based for-profit education company. Bleecker alleged that recent enrollment growth was not caused by the company’s “great strategy, student interest, & AI use in recruiting” but was instead caused by fraudulent enrollments “using stolen identities to enroll online ‘ghost students’ to siphon off federal aid.” Bleecker added:

“To test PRDO’s controls, we applied to CTU using multiple fictional identities, including applying as SpongeBob SquarePants, using a Krusty Krab email address. All were admitted. Zero upfront identity checks. Immediate direction to FAFSA.”

Bleecker also highlighted that insiders have sold $44 million in stock in the last year, ~58% of their total holdings.

Hunterbrook Media published on Archer Aviation (NYSE: ACHR — $5.26 billion), an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft company. Hunterbrook highlighted that the company did not fly its Midnight aircraft at the Dubai Airshow, despite promotional claims that the company “looked forward to flying Midnight at the event.” Hunterbrook also said it was long Archer’s rival, Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY — $11.9 billion), based on its several successful flights at the Dubai Airshow.

In May 2025, Culper Research alleged Archer “systematically misled, deceived, or outright lied to investors about virtually every supposed milestone related to its development and testing of its eVTOL aircraft.”

NINGI Research published on Critical Metals (NASDAQ: CRML — $749 million), a lithium and rare earth elements mining company. NINGI alleged the company “constructed its entire narrative on geological fantasies and engineering impossibilities.” NINGI also raised concerns about the company’s leadership, citing past regulatory sanctions and “a long list of failed companies,” including four past public companies affiliated with CRML’s CEO that later fell more than 90%.

Deep Credit Research, an anonymous blog, published on Better Home & Finance (NASDAQ: BETR — $707 million), a tech-focused mortgage origination company. Deep Credit Research wrote, in part,

“BETR is pinned against a warehouse leverage covenant that all but forces the company to continuously issue new equity just to maintain its current level of mortgage lending. Not to grow. Simply to maintain the status quo.
We are seeing a tug-of-war between retail hype creating demand and the leverage pin creating supply, but hype is fleeting and supply creation inevitable. A slide back toward its pre-meme ~$15/share levels doesn’t look far-fetched.”

The author concluded that BETR “is not your run of the mill meme stock. It is one of the most structurally safe short bets.”

Gotham City Research published on Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM — $25.1 billion), a physical and digital document storage company. Gotham City alleged the company “manipulates adjusted leverage & EBITDA to artificially reduce reported leverage to 5x when we calculate it as 9x” and noted the company “is under scrutiny from government agencies and facing lawsuits over its suspect accounting and exploitative business practices.” Gotham City said the company has over 50% downside and has transitioned “from a melting ice cube to a house on fire.”

Recent Resignations

Notable executive departures disclosed in the past week include:

CFO of Helios Technologies (NYSE: HLIO — $1.73 billion) “has been separated from the company” after just one month. The hydraulics and electronics company is audited by Grant Thornton LLP.
CFO of Watts Water Technologies (NYSE: WTS — $9.09 billion) “is leaving to pursue a new opportunity” after less than four months.
CFO of Xerox Holdings (NASDAQ: XRX — $335 million) “will be departing to pursue new opportunities” after eleven months. The company has had four CEOs and four CFOs in the last ten years and was profiled in The Bear Cave’s list of “Problems at 100 Long-Term Underperformers.”
Mr. Joseph Tseng, board member and Audit Chair of YD Bio (NASDAQ: YDES — $596 million), resigned “purely for personal reasons” after just two months. The company delayed disclosing the October 27 resignation by about three weeks. The Taiwanese biopharmaceutical company is down ~15% since its August 2025 SPAC merger.
Chief Global Development Officer of Papa John’s (NASDAQ: PZZA — $1.32 billion) “departed from his position” with immediate effect after a little over one year. The pizza chain has had five CEOs and six CFOs in the last ten years.

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

News of the Week

“Defamation Lawsuits Against Activist Short Sellers and the Future Stock Performance of Suing Firms” (Grizzly Research)

“A previous empirical study by Brendel and Ryans (2021) has shown that stocks of firms that choose litigation to respond to short seller reports exhibit a strong price underperformance in the long run. We present an updated study based on 1,100 short activist publications against 906 target firms from January 1, 2018, to August 1, 2025. 24 lawsuits were filed by target firms against the publisher; in all 24 cases, the firm’s share price failed to long-term recover against the S&P 500.”

New Paid Stock Promotions

Notable paid stock promotion campaigns detected this week by StockPromotionTracker.com include:

ATRenew (NYSE: RERE — $901 million) paid $10,000 for sponsored research through Zacks SCR.
A2Z Cust2Mate Solutions (NASDAQ: AZ — $224 million) paid “$60,000 per quarter for a total of 365 days” to Investor Brand Network.

“Blue Owl private credit fund merger leaves some investors facing 20% hit” (FT)

“Blue Owl (NYSE: OWL — $21.9 billion) has blocked redemptions in one of its earliest private credit funds as it merges with a larger vehicle overseen by the asset manager in a deal that could leave investors with large losses.”