Article: Short-seller calls Manitoba-based company ‘ticking time bomb’

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Short-seller calls Manitoba-based company ‘ticking time bomb’

Kristin Annable, Katie Nicholson, Vera-Lynn Kubinec, 20 July 2017

A Manitoba-based company targeted by a U.S short-seller put on a brave face for investors Thursday, presenting a second-quarter report it says shows it’s on the path to a record-breaking year Exchange Income Corp.’s quarterly results were released under a cloud, announced ahead of schedule after Marc Cohodes revealed he was betting against EIC’s stock earlier this month.

“The reason to report earlier was driven by the uncertainty in the marketplace, and we felt the best way to relieve this uncertainty was with facts,” CEO Michael Pyle said Thursday in a teleconference with investors. The uncertainty was driven by Cohodes’s aggressive short campaign, dubbed Mayday EIF Dividend (the company’s name on the stock market), which carries a host of allegations against the company.
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Article: Short seller Marc Cohodes now bets against Exchange Income Corp.

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Short seller Marc Cohodes now bets against Exchange Income Corp.

Jonathan Ratner, 05 July 2017

Exchange Income responded, calling the attack a “short and distort campaign” aimed at undermining the value of the company’s shares. “The short report was deliberately released immediately following the end of the company’s second quarter when EIC is in a quiet period, and is based on a number of statements, assumptions and opinions with which we strenuously disagree,” Exchange Income said in a press release. Cohodes said the company has increased its debt load by $427 million over the past five years, and issued more than $230 million of shares to fund its roughly $700 million deficit.
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Article: Meet the man who’s betting Home Capital will fail: Wells

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Meet the man who’s betting Home Capital will fail: Wells

Jennifer Wells, 12 May 2017

“I’ve had Cott up there. I’ve had Clearly Canadian. Made a killing. I go back with Kevin O’Leary — Learning Co. and Softkey before that. I had a double dip with Garth and Cineplex Odeon and Livent. Melnyk with Biovail. Canada is great. Canada has been wonderful.” Continue reading “Article: Meet the man who’s betting Home Capital will fail: Wells”

Article: Who Turned Out the Lights at Badger Daylighting Ltd.?

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Who Turned Out the Lights at Badger Daylighting Ltd.?

Joey Frenette, 05 May 2017

Badger Daylighting Ltd. (TSX:BAD) nosedived 14.27% last Friday following an announcement from activist short-seller Marc Cohodes that he?d gotten a short position in the stock approximately four months ago.

In a previous piece, I?d stated that Badger was ridiculously overvalued with a price-to-earnings multiple of 41. Mr. Cohodes also believes that Badger is overvalued and could drop by a substantial amount going forward.

Badger is a rather underrated company that not many investors have been talking about until Mr. Cohodes made his short position public. Badger is in the business of exposing underground infrastructures like pipelines, electrical lines, or any other buried apparatus that needs to be brought to the light of day in a process called ?daylighting.?
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Article: Why I Wouldn’t Touch Equitable Group Inc.

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Why I Wouldn’t Touch Equitable Group Inc.

Joey Frenette, 17 April 2017

Equitable Group Inc. (TSX:EQB) operates through its subsidiary Equitable Bank, which offers a range of solutions including mortgage lending products. Marc Cohodes, a well-known short-seller who has called the downfall of many infamous Canadian stocks, believes that Equitable Group is a “poor man’s Home Capital Group Inc. (TSX:HCG),” which is another mortgage lender that Mr. Cohodes is short.

Unlike Home Capital Group, Equitable Group isn’t riding a huge amount of negative momentum, and the stock isn’t far off its all-time high. Home Capital Group, though, is down over 60% from its all-time high, and it looks like there’s no bottom in sight as the stock continues to fall farther into the abyss.

There’s no question that the Canadian housing market is overheated. Many pundits believe a correction could be in the cards sometime over the next few years. If there was a Canadian housing collapse, then both Equitable Group and Home Capital Group would get crushed, and their investors would lose their shirts.
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Article: Meet this maverick short seller whose favourite pastime is exposing ‘bad companies’

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Meet this maverick short seller whose favourite pastime is exposing ‘bad companies’

Tom Redmond

The Economic Times, 12 February 2017

The roosters start crowing at 4 am on Alder Lane Farm, about an hour north of San Francisco on the edge of Sonoma wine country. While horses stir in their stables and chickens begin to roam the 20-acre property, one of the world’s most fearsome short sellers puts on his usual attire—shorts and flip-flops—and makes his way in the dark to the room behind his garage. Six pinball machines, a gigantic flatscreen, and a pingpong table compete for attention. If not for the Bloomberg terminal in the corner, you might assume this was your typical man cave.

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Article: Cohodes vs Home Capital: Testing the short seller’s claims

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Cohodes vs Home Capital: Testing the short seller’s claims

Amber Kanwar, 27 October 2016

San Francisco-based short seller Marc Cohodes has been shorting Home Capital Group since 2014. He made a number of claims, and raised questions, about Home Capital in an interview with BNN this week. We gave the mortgage lender an opportunity to respond. Below, you’ll find Home Capital’s comments.

Cohodes says Operation Trillium was Home Capital’s response to discovering mortgages that had poor underwriting standards. He believes it was initiated a year before the suspended brokers were announced. “[Operation Trillium] is somewhere between a cover up and a remediation effort,” said Cohodes in an interview with BNN. He believes it was initiated a year before Home Capital disclosed the suspended brokers.

Home Capital did not confirm the existence of Operation Trillium and instead provided this comment: “We refer investors who are interested in the facts to our quarterly disclosure, which includes information on the performance of the mortgages originated by the suspended brokers, the value of loans outstanding that were originated by those brokers, and the progress of our review of those mortgages.”
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Article: High-profile short-seller takes aim at five Canadian companies

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High-profile short-seller takes aim at five Canadian companies
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LUKE KAWA, 05 October 2016

Twenty five minutes into a profanity-ridden presentation at Jim Grant’s Fall 2016 Investing Conference in New York City, Marc Cohodes paused his speech to don a red jacket emblazoned with a maple leaf on the right breast.

So attired, the short seller proceeded to launch into his bearish theses for the collection of Canadian companies he’s betting against.

Mr. Cohodes, the former managing general partner at Copper River Management and current chicken farmer at Alder Lane Farm in California, revisited the cases for why he’s short Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc., The Intertain Group Ltd., Concordia International Corp., and Home Capital Group Inc.

At the conference on Tuesday, he unveiled a short position in Equitable Group Inc., a Toronto-based provider of mortgage financing. The company disputes Mr. Cohodes’s claims about its vulnerabilities.
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Article: Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income

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Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income

Jennifer Ablan, 05 July 2016

Short seller Marc Cohodes, who has famously bet against the shares of six Canadian-based companies including Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc and Home Capital Group Inc, said on Wednesday that he is targeting yet another Canadian firm – Exchange Income Corp.

Cohodes told Reuters that Exchange Income – a Winnipeg-based company focused on opportunities in aerospace and aviation services and equipment, and manufacturing – does not generate enough cash to pay the juicy dividend it provides investors. At about C$33 per share, Exchange Income commands a market capitalization of $1 billion.

Cohodes, who worked at a short-selling hedge fund but now raises chickens in California and invests his own money, has targeted Valeant, Intertain Group Ltd, Concordia International Corp, Home Capital, Equitable Group Inc and Badger Daylighting Ltd. Cohodes told Reuters last month that he is keeping his short position on the Canadian lender Home Capital despite a capital infusion from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc .

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Article: Puzzle Pieces Falling Into Place

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Puzzle Pieces Falling Into Place

KEVIN D. FREEMAN, 28 March 2012

It appears that the Copper River Hedge Fund was shorting the market during the fall of 2008. By all accounts, that would be viewed as a profitable market position. And, in hindsight, the stocks sold short did ultimately collapse as the Hedge Fund had expected. However, Copper River did not profit from the declines. Continue reading “Article: Puzzle Pieces Falling Into Place”

Article: Anger at Goldman Still Simmers

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Anger at Goldman Still Simmers

Gretchen Morgenson

New York Times cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 26 March 2012

Just before the financial crisis began in September 2008, a prominent hedge fund appeared well positioned to take advantage of any turmoil in the markets. That fund, Copper River Partners, had made sizable bets months earlier against companies whose stocks it expected to suffer.

Within weeks, however, Copper River, once a successful $1.5 billion hedge fund, was out of business, having unexpectedly absorbed losses on the very bets it thought would be profitable.

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Article: Overstock’s Byrne claims $5m scalp over short selling

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Overstock’s Byrne claims $5m scalp over short selling

Cade Metz, 09 December 2009

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne has said that hedge fund Copper River Partners paid his company $5m this afternoon to settle claims it colluded to denigrate Overstock and then profit from short positions in the retailer’s shares.

Byrne – who has waged a very public battle over Wall Street short selling – tells The Reg that the $5m payment from Copper River (formerly Rocker Partners) arrived at about 2:30pm Pacific time on Tuesday. According to Byrne, it settles a 2005 lawsuit Overstock filed against the hedge fund. Continue reading “Article: Overstock’s Byrne claims $5m scalp over short selling”

Web: Remember How Naked Short Selling Wasn’t a Big Deal?

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Remember How Naked Short Selling Wasn’t a Big Deal?

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 28 January 2009

Bernie Madoff’s brokerage owed $600 million in stock to its clients, that it, well, didn’t actually have on hand, as in the shares were either never delivered to the brokerage, or far more likely, it just, “Desked the trades” – meaning that it took the client cash, represented the securities as having been bought in the market and delivered (via the brokerage statement the client got every month), but never bothered with buying the shares.

Also known as one type of naked short selling.

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