🐻The Bear Cave #64 + A Special Announcement🐻
New Activist Reports, BullpenCareers.com – An Announcement, What to Read, Tweets of the Week
Welcome to The Bear Cave — your weekly source of short-seller news. If you are new, you can join our email list here.
New Activist Reports
Mariner Research published on PyroGenesis Canada (TSE: PYR — CAD$1.03 billion), a clean plasma company. Mariner wrote,
“PYR has obfuscated disclosure about related parties, has significant conflicts of interest, recognized revenue from a company it partially owned and financed, and has repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered
In response, PyroGensis’s CEO and Chairman called the report “false and intentionally misleading… all of which appears to an attempt to generate panic selling.” PYR stock is up around 800% over the last year.
Fuzzy Panda Research published on Foresight Autonomous Holdings (NASDAQ: FRSX — $307 million), an Israeli reverse merger in the autonomous car data industry. Fuzzy Panda Research alleged the company has ties to penny stock promoters and excessive self-dealing. For example, the company’s chief technology officer is the CEO’s brother-in-law and the head of HR is the CEO’s daughter.
Triterras (NASDAQ: TRIT — $610 million), a “blockchain-enabled” trade finance lending platform, announced that two of its board members had resigned effective immediately, both of whom served on the audit committee. One board member wrote that “it is clear that the Chairman and the company’s interim general counsel’s office have very different views to my own as to the optimal path forward for the company” in responding to fraud allegations made by Phase 2 Partners.
The Bear Cave previously published two articles on problems at Triterras here and here.
BullpenCareers.com – A Free Job Board for Finance Jobs
Hiring in finance is outdated and relies on word of mouth and headhunters. That works for senior roles but leaves behind many young, talented, unconnected applicants.
I am launching a free job board to fix that. The website is BullpenCareers.com and has 24 jobs live now. Uploading a job opening is completely free and takes less than five minutes.
Best of all, I will be building the job board completely in public on Twitter. I made a two-minute video explaining this project and how you can help!
If you are looking to hire talented professionals or looking to get hired, then please visit BullpenCareers.com. With your help, we can make it the best place to find young talent and the easiest place to find a job.
Suspect Audit Partners
EHang Holdings (NASDAQ: EH — $1.53 billion), a Chinese flying car company, informed investors that it “has experienced a delay in preparing its annual report… and the audited financial statements” and will be filing a delayed 20-F.
Lei Yang of Ernst & Young is the engagement partner responsible for EHang. If history is any guide, this should raise concern for investors. According to PCAOB records, Ms. Yang served as the engagement partner for two other public companies in the last three years. One was Luckin Coffee, which collapsed amid fraud allegations. The other company Ms. Yang audited was ChinaCache International Holdings, which was later delisted.
This is not the first time one audit partner has been associated with multiple suspect audits.
Ms. Li Li Shan is the engagement partner at Deloitte responsible for GSX Techedu (NYSE: GSX — $8.17 billion), a Chinese online education company facing numerous fraud allegations. According to PCAOB records, Ms. Shan also was the engagement partner for Puxin (NYSE: NEW — $313 million), a Chinese tutoring company that has fallen over 80% post-IPO, and RYB Education (NYSE: RYB — $79 million), a Chinese preschool company that has fallen over 90% post-IPO.
These may be more than coincidences.
What to Read
“Lots of Jobs Await the Class of 2021. So Does Plenty of Competition.” (WSJ)
“New grads will have to vie with their unlucky 2020 predecessors as the U.S. economy pulls out of a pandemic-led slump”
“How Apple does M&A: Small and quiet, with no bankers” (CNBC)
“Apple CEO Tim Cook told shareholders that the company had bought about 100 companies in the past six years… Apple’s strategy is to buy small companies, often only employing a few people, primarily for their staff, who become employees at Apple.”
“Elon Musk’s War on Regulators” (WSJ)
“The Tesla and SpaceX chief courts conflict with an alphabet soup of government agencies—and generally gets away with it.”
Tweets of the Week
Until next week,
The Bear Cave