SPAC Attack

bear a short seller. We speak with one of the best in the industry, and of course we will close out the episode with our tradition the craziest thing I saw in markets this week? And please, if you saw something crazy, give us a call and let us know about it on the Bloomberg Podcast hotline at six ft six three to four three f nine, Oh, and leave

us a voicemail. Maybe we'll play it on the show. Also, you can tweet in our general direction at podcasts and let us know the craziest thing you saw on markets and we'll we'll perhaps bring it up in the show. I got a couple of crazy things, Sarah, get ready, I'm coming in hot. I'm gonna see if you can top yours from last week because I'm still impressed um

by it, Mike. But also I do want to say we got a reply from one of our listeners on Twitter who reached out in response to one of our crazy things from last week, so I also have that tweet handy for us to read out. Absolutely good. We like the interaction, so keep the tweets coming, keep the voicemails coming. We're happy to hear, uh, you're crazy. Thanks. In just a general opinion of the show, who you think would be a good guest. We're open to all

your suggestions here and what goes up Sarah. Before we introduced our guests, I gotta give a shout out and thank you to my friend Dave. I'm actually in my friends basement right now because there's work being done at my house and these guys are making a lot of noise and making even more noises my my darn dog will not shut up. So thanks to Dave for letting

me squat in his basement. Here well as Dave a listener of the podcast, I'll probably listen to this one if I tell him, Okay, gave a shout out and his kids got one of those cool video game chairs. You know, I feel like Captain Kirk here sits in the chair, if only you had the big headphones onto. I know, I know, I need I need more, I need more gear. But as you said, uh, Sarah turning

the show this week, actually second time on the show. Uh. He's the founder and chief investment officer of the hedgephone spruce Point Capital Management. Uh. He's very successful short seller and researcher into companies and short ideas. His name is Ben Axer. Also, Sarah, I'm claiming this guy is a Jersey guy too. I know, I don't think he lives there anymore, but he is a Jersey guy at heart to the show. Let's be clear, that's South Jersey, not

North Jersey. Oh boy, yeah yeah, I'll say being from Florida, making that South versus North distinction is pretty pretty important too. That's important Ben, as uh, Sarah alludes to in the introduction. You know, you've kind of made your your name and your fame as a short seller. But your fund is a long short fund, and I'm just curious, I know, especially in the ball utility earlier in this year, was it almost time to take your your short seller hat off and start looking at long So I mean, any

opportunities on the long end for you this year? Yeah, I mean certainly, um in March when there was a lot of forced the leveraging and forced selling, that was you know, a good time to rebalance the book a little bit, you know, take some opportunistic gains on the short side, um, and look to rebound, look to find you know, opportunistic longs. More of our longs are you

know index hedges. You know, with what we're trying to do, We're trying to find fundamentally flawed companies with poor governance, bad accounting, short those and be you know long and underlying index like and industry index and then create alpha right by benefiting from the decline and the the overvalued or poorly organized security and uh you know be headed with some some underlying index there. So yeah, it was a great time to rebalance and uh, reorganize and rethink

about the strategy um in the post COVID world. So, like you said, you like to really dig into statements, balance sheets and and find issues with accounting. But I am just curious. There's this one index that I track often just kind of as a sentiment indicator of what's going on in the market, and that's a Golden SAS basket of the most shortage stocks, and it hit a record high. I tweeted about this, and my little claim

to fame, I guess is that it went viral. Jim Chaino's brought it up in a conversation and mentioned that of Bloomer Reporter had written R I P shorts And I do want to get your sense like, yes, yes, you focus on individual companies, but if you look at this market from a whole, how difficult has it been to be someone who really does make a business or make a profit from being bearished on companies? No, it's been.

It's an incredibly difficult and it's getting more difficult. I think the biggest impediment to successful short selling is you know, monetary policy and and what the Feds you know, looking to do, which is, you know, bring rates to ultra low, ultra low levels that make you know, holding cash, you know, unattractive.

I mean, I'm I'm constantly looking at you know, interest rates and what what banks are offering, how yield savings banks, which at the beginning of the year we're offering to two and a quarter two and a half percent and now offering sixty basis points. So you know, you look at inflation and then you you take the after tax gain on holding money and how yield savings account and you're losing money, right, So, UM, the money, relatively speaking,

is going into the market. Some people view the market is attractive UM, and that's pushing up valuations, which makes it very difficult to short individual securities, particularly individual securities that are heavily you know, index owned UM. As you said, now there's an index that even tracks most shorted UM stocks. I mean there's an index for almost everything, and then

you have a lot of money following index behavior. So what we're trying to do is find stocks that are not heavily indect owned, that are heavily retail traded or hedge fund owned. That way, we know there's an act an active holder that we can communicate with and try to convince them of our alternative viewpoints on the stock. So so yeah, it's gotten more difficult. It's it's very m rate dependent, index dependent, but there are still ways to be successful by you know, navigating what works and

what doesn't. Well. Sorry, I like that humble brag you got in there about your tweet that went viral. That was that was well done that. I had a viral tweet recently too. It was I was drinking a beer at a bumble bee landed in my beer and drek itself to death and I took a video of it. That tweet went viral too, but maybe not as cool as your. I I saw that video, that's the one that went viral, like that was sort of baby fire.

I kind of felt bad for the bee people. A lot of people were mad at me for not saving that be, but I'm I'm a little chicken. It was a good been, a good Jersey beer cane. I couldn't. I could not let that be get away with drinking too much of it. But Charah's your point about the

most shorted uh you know uh index Goldman index. But I think if I know your process a little bit the way I do, I think you you probably tend to stay away from the type of sort of popular, crowded shorts that end up on a list like that. Is that sort of an intentional thing? Um? You know, you try to sort of go where other shorts you know, aren't really crowded into and making it sort of the position susceptible to a squeeze. Yeah, now that's a great point, Mike.

Um I would say some of my least successful shorts have been ones that you know, the short interest has been over ten or fift it indicates some level of crowded nous and or you know, there's already a well known short thesis in the marketplace. Um So, our better success has been with companies short interests under five percent, ideas not heavily socialized. You know where we scour the public, you know, blogosphere and don't see any evidence that anyone's

talked about a particular stock. Um you know, we've written two reports recently, one on son Nova, another one on GFL environmental relatively undiscussed companies still multibillion dollar market caps where we can be a leading voice, you know, companies of low short interests, where you know the risk of

a squeeze is low. So, Ben, something that I thought of a lot about lately, and I feel like we hear about constantly is how the coronavirus is changing trends and what that may mean and Oftentimes people point to big mega cap tech companies or the likes of Zoom, which we are using right now, UM, that really enable people to work from home, that enable a digitized environment.

And I'm curious from your perspective the way you think if there are any trends that you see really emerging from what's happened in and lasting and how you can then funnel that into possibly your process or just a

broad investing process in general. Yeah. Absolutely, We're definitely looking at how covid has reshaped the universe and the world we know and certainly you know, one of our key early conclusions was that the you know, internet and e commerce was gonna was going to really grow its share of the consumers um purchasing behavior. You know, we identified a company earlier this year that we we've showed him been public about called Prestige Brands. UM. They're a roll

up of OTC branded products. UM. These could be throat lozengers or other things you might find in a write aid or a CBS in the drug store. They have a relatively undeveloped e commerce strategy, you know, under ten percent of their sales re reconnerce and they celebrant, you know, a branded product when you know, for example, if you go into CBS or Walmart, you might find a store

brand at a cheaper price. So you know, in the COVID world, you have high unemployment, you have consumers looking to save money UM, and you have consumers looking to shop online. So a company like Prestige Brands, we believe it's ill suited for this with a higher price product and a very undeveloped e commerce strategy. So you know, absolutely we're thinking about this. I mean, these are going

to be longer term impact trends. We had always been vocal in our belief that you know, a vaccine and a resolution to this pandemic was going to take longer than anticipated. They were continuing to think about ways and UM which companies are going to benefit and and being a disadvantage in this new paradigm. Yeah, but I know some of your early successes were with companies from Trying

that had had listed in the US. I feel like that's come full circle now where there's so much scrutiny on those companies that the Trump administration obviously putting a lot of threats and pressure on UM potentially delisting them and you know that sort of thing. Has that opportunity set sort of been exhausted or maybe not exhausted, but you know, it seemed to be a very sort of not to say shooting fish in a barrel, but but almost a very lucrative, you know, fertile place to look

for shorts, say five to ten years ago. Is that Are there still opportunities there? Or has the rest of the world caught up with the people who were looking skeptically at China and and even the regulators in the US catching up this undergreen. Yeah, that's a great question. I would say, Um, it's definitely gotten harder UM in the quest to find, you know, find, exploit, uh and

hold accountable Chinese investment scams UM. The first generation that I was involved with back in two thousand, eight, nine and ten, exposing those companies, it was like shooting whether they say fish in a barrel or ducks in a barrel. UM. Some of the frauds were very obvious. UM. But it's like a cat and mouse scheme, right the uh you know, the mouse got smarter and figured out, you know, how to avoid the cat. UM. So successive generations of Chinese

frauds have been harder to identify. And also I would point out, you know, getting information out of China's been very hard. I mean, the Chinese are very attuned to the fact that short sellers are looking at their stocks here in the New York Stock Exchange in the NASDAK and so accessing information UM that was more easily available ten years ago is getting harder. And frankly, that's you know, one of the reasons, you know why we've been spending a little bit less time on our shorts in China.

We've actually found more success up in Canada. We've spent a lot of time looking at the Canadian market, which is very receptive to short selling, has been receptive to us UM and I we think is you know, underserved from a short selling perspective, But there are still opportunities globally. China has definitely gotten harder, but other markets, other companies from around the world to come here certainly are good opportunities for us to know, to really dig in. So

sticking with factors then that make your job harder. You mentioned the FED earlier on in the show Monetary Policy. Looking even further than that, because I remember the last time you came on the show, we discussed how fed policy and decreasing regulation I'll throw right now although the economy needed it, but fiscal policy and a growing deficit, all of these factors right now which are really helping stocks rise in general. At the same time, though, do

they make your job at all easier? The fact that there are companies that can prosper, that can grow in this type of environment that maybe otherwise wouldn't be able to do so, or have other underlying issue is at stake that can be pinpointed. No, that's a great question. Actually, Um, there are puts in takes with everything right, I would say the opportunities currently are that we're seeing very immature,

very poorly diligence companies come public probably prematurely. Um. You've probably heard a lot about the bulliance and frost in the spack market. Special purpose acquisition corporations raising money UM, some with almost very limited defined purposes going out buying companies and helping them accelerate their I p O process quicker than the traditional route. That certainly has caught our attention because those companies has said, we believe are a

little bit less diligence UM and and a little premature. Um, so those are those are good opportunities to SPACs and even the traditional I p O s that are that are coming public now you know, we're seeing them come public with less regulatory scrutiny to I mean, the SEC is lower the bar a little bit in terms of you know, a company not necessarily needing an audit or certain at testations. Uh, if they're below a certain threshold level. These are opportunities for us, no doubt. Um, well, you know,

and we certainly welcomed them each thing. You say that because I think when the whole we work to baccle went down, you know, and they you know, couldn't get that I p O to the finish line. Um. I think a lot of people interpreted that as, uh, you know, it's it's tough to get sort of a questionable company to public markets. But you're you're not finding that to

be the case. It sounds like no. I mean, one thing that we like to look at is, uh, you know, companies are very keen on promoting their EBITDA or their adjusted EBITDA with we work. I remember the whole pushback was, you know, we work defined a community EBITDA, which you know it was highly adjusted. I mean, look, we wrote a report on company called GFL recently and they had or run rate EVA DA and it came with a paragraph this long of disclaimers about what how they were

defining it. And these are big red flags. I mean, invest just have to get really comfortable with language and EVA DA that you could drive a truck through um and all the assumptions that management can put into it. But this is a classic sign of a you know, of a bolt market when companies are able to sell highly, highly adjusted, highly aggressive interpretations of EVA DA. So you said,

these are classic signs of a bowl market. And every time I hear that, it's so amazing to me because to some of these might seem like late cycle signals, but we just experienced a recession and the fastest fall into a bear market on record. I mean, when you see what's going on with SPACs, when you see other factors as you just mentioned, of the sort, what does that tell you about where we stand in the market cycle, Because it just seems like everything is so twisted lately.

I think it speaks and and recent evidence points to the fact that the cycles are getting shorter and they're getting more severe. I remember not long ago in December of eighteen, when you know, Donald Trump was ratcheting up his China trade war rhetoric, and the market corrected pretty swiftly in in December, and then with COVID and slow down,

the market correct even bigger. I can't tell you what the next shock shock is going to be, but it wouldn't surprise me if we haven't an even bigger draw down, you know, next time. Each each of these cycles, you're seeing liquidity getting Look, cycles are good and necessary, particularly in my industry, where you know, you have headge funds selling strategies and their ability to produce alpha and manage risk.

And then what happens is, you know, when the market corrects really swiftly, you find out who who's doing what they're saying, and you know who's really managing risk and who's not, and the ones that aren't are getting you know, wiped out of the system. And you know, the general liquidity in the market we found has been going down. So I would expect, you know, more ciglicality. I would expect the magnitude of the draw downs and the intensity

to increase each time. And yeah, and and and I think possibly diminishing returns to what the FED can do. I mean they've already pulled out unprecedented you know, measures and buying ETFs, and I don't know how many more arrows they have left in the quiver to solve increasingly growing, growing problems. And start Just one note to listeners. You know, Ben mentioned a few of these stocks. He's he's short

just out of interest of fairness to them. I'm gonna try to dig up all the comments those companies have made in response to Ben. No offense been some some of them not very friendly towards towards you, as you're gonna expect. But but he's rattling, rattling them off left and right. So I'll try to find them and we'll we include those comments at the end of the episode.

But I encourage anyone who's interested in this, you can read pretty much everything bends are are written about a company on his website at spruce Point was it spruce Point Capital dot com? Beent spruce Point caps dot com, Ye, spruce Point Cap And there's some fact that your whole method I find fascinating. I mean that's really deep dive and heavy duty research. So we will include the company's comments,

um and anyone. You know, obviously, as an investor, you have to do your own due diligence and and it's interested in what Ben has to say, read his reports, uh, and and make up your own mind. Uh, you know, but we will include any comments we've gotten from the companies at the end of the episode comment comment. There's several no comments. Yeah, there's no I was hoping you'd

only talk about the ones who had no comments. That makes a lot easier, but there's there's and you know, and anyone, anyone who's paid attention to this stuff knows that the judge and jury and this obviously is the market. So we'll see how these trades work out. We always like to point out to like in some cases where you know, we we have a short recommendation, the stock goes up, well, the whole market's gone. You have to measure, like how has it gone up relative to the industry

in the market. What we find is a lot of the times that the names that we've written on they tend to underperform um and that's really where the you know, alpha has generated. So you do obviously a lot of digging into balance sheets and a lot of accounting work, and I want to get your takes. Something I've been thinking a lot about because I read a report that talked about how now about of the SMP five hundreds

value is from intangible assets? How do you possibly view intangibles when that's not necessarily something that's going to show up in writing on a balance sheet? Or is it something that you guys think about when you are thinking about a new short position. No. Absolutely, And the GFL environmental I keep referencing is is one that we wrote about as a perfect example. I mean, they're a roll up of over a hundred and forty plus companies in

the waste management industry. And you know, every time you buy a company, you buy the assets of the business, you buy the people, and then sort of everything above that that you can't ascribe value to is typically goodwill and intangibles. It's sort of a plug. Think of it as an accounting plug, accounting magic. You know, it's a measure to a degree of how much a company is overpaying,

you know, for an asset. And you know, in the case of GFL, they have six and a half billion dollars of goodwill from acquiring so many businesses to the point where you know, good will is almost of their market cap, which is an extreme measure in that industry. But but yeah, I mean goodwill is highly susceptible to impairment because you know, what we do at Spruce Point is look to see, Okay, you know, any company can buy another company, but how how do they perform post

acquisition and did they pay a fair price? And a lot of times we find serial acquires like GFL that are buying so many businesses they bite off a little bit more than they can chew and and end up having to impair that goodwill down the road once it becomes clear that the businesses haven't performed up to expectations and or they've overpaid for that. So, yeah, goodwills and intangible is definitely, certain certainly something we look heavily at.

We look to see what percentage of the balance sheets assets um they are and also you know how big is that goodwill and intangibles relative to other companies in the industry to assess, you know, how aggressive or conservatives management been in their accounting for for deals. But I wanted to go back to something you pointed out earlier. You said you're finding a lot of opportunities in Canada. I wonder if that's if there's something systemic at play there.

You know, are the Canadian regulators sleep on the job or is it Canadian investors are too polite to be short dollars? Maybe I picture them being very polite. Is is there any or is it just one of those pockets of the market that's just been over overlooked by guys like you for some reason. I think it's been it's been overlooked, But I think structurally there's a little bit of a difference there. Um. I think it's more

of a retail driven investor market. They do have you know, institutions and pension funds, but it's not as deep, um and developed as as it is here. Um. So you find a lot of a lot of you know, retail participation. You also have to understand the Canadian economy is slightly different than ours, right um. Particularly they have heavy natural resources, a lot of gold and silver mining and resource mining. So those are certainly industries that are prone to uh

promotions so to speak. You know, where promoters promote that they have the next world's greatest gold mine, for example, um, somewhere up in the Northern Yukon UM. But no, I think it's a little bit more retail driven, a little bit less develop from an institutional point of view, and also fewer, I would say, there's fewer research coverage providers UM in Canada, and particularly alternative research research providers. You

won't you won't. You don't find any independent firms independent of the major banks you know, up in Canada, So that that's another reason there's opportunity there. Yeah, but I know a lot of times hedge fund managers don't want to say what their returns are year to date. Uh. But if that's the case with you, can you tell us good year, bad year? What kind of year you having? I can tell you you know, we're still in business. We haven't laid anybody off. We haven't. We haven't laid

any boy anybody off. And you know we're selectively looking to hire two. So I'm not allowed to talk about rich earns, you know, publicly. But you know, I still have my hair left, the most important, that's the most important I have. I haven't. I haven't lost you know, too much hair this year, and uh, you know, everything everything is good on our And I can just say that well, that's great to hear, and you know, you

make a good point. I've actually been experiencing more hair loss this year than usual, and maybe it's just because yeah bad, I find hair everywhere really horriful. Ok, well, I get it. In my house. You know, three daughters and a wife. It's like, uh, well, no, you're not. My daughter shed a lot though, I don't. I don't get it. I didn't realize you you shed as much hair. I've done pretty good. I'm proud of I've got a pretty good rug on top. Still, just throw that out

there for the listeners who don't know. I think we're getting to the crazy part. Is it's getting a little crazy, sir. Oh yeah, the crazy part isn't is an our hair discussion. The crazy part, Charlie Pellet will have to tell us stand clear of the craziest things we saw in markets this week. All right, Sarah, I'm double dipping. I've got to.

But let's start with you. Let's hear what you got alright, So this one's for you because I know you love alternative investments and yeah, so it's pretty alternative, but it's not as alternative as Michael Jackson Ivy bag I will say that Ben, this was Mike's most recent crazy thing. He really went off the grid with that one. Um. But this was a headline that came across the Buck

terminal this past week. And it's a JP Morgan sees frequent flyer points as alternative for investors, and the lead re JP Morgan wants to help turn airline and hotel loyalty points into an asset it can to stock or corn futures. Um. So basically it's this idea that JP Morgan wants to go ahead. They're working with Affinity Capital Exchange to let companies turn ward programs into a standardized

exchangeable currency that can be traded by institutional investors. UM. So pretty pretty interesting, uh, And I had to raise it in the alternative space look and can More importantly, can JP Morgan spoof it? I don't know if you saw they just they just they just set out a billion dollars. Can they spoof a market that they've created? Well, well, the exchange hasn't been created yet, so to be seen back, I gotta say I've heard crazier ideas. I don't know.

I it's definitely crazy, Sarah, I give you props for that right. Well, that's the thing. It's it's an alternative investment, but it doesn't seem that alternative in this day and age. I mean you also think about a lot of these airlines putting loyalty points down as collateral. Uh in, I mean it seems like it's almost a logical progression. Maybe is that stuff transferable? I guess they would have to agree to get the companies to to allow to be transferred.

You know, Charlie Pellett is the expert on airline points and credit points. That guy's always got like five credit cards opening and shutting, and he's got a pocket full of CBS poopons. The guy knows. The guy knows that space pretty well. Everything. Ben, how about you? Have you seen anything crazy this week? Oh? Boy, every day is a crazy day. Um yeah, I mean you know what's crazy? Speaking of JP Morrigan, you know, we released a new

report on Sonova Energy. They're basically a solar financing company. Right now, alternative energy stocks are very hot on fire so to speak. Um, I guess possibly discounting, you know, democratic win and and maybe some more support of these money losing businesses. But you know it with Sova, there Um, you know, we think they're overvalued because they're not really a solar company, but they just financed the solar installation.

And GP Morrigan of all of all banks that we were just talking about, you know, upgraded their set dur and upped all the price targets, including for Senova, and uh, you know, JP Morgan um should probably receive a gift from the chairman of the audit committee of Senova because you know, when the when the price of Senova rose yesterday, he unloaded a couple hundred thousand shares. So we always

look to see what insiders are doing. And you know, when insiders are are selling on an on a nice upgrade front from a bank, um, you know, that's something that always catches our eye. That's pretty interesting. I like how you bring it back home. There been nice well done, well done, All right, Sarah, I got a good one. I don't know I like yours though. This is some stiff competition this week. So we just had recently the

twelfth anniversary of Leman Brothers failure. And what I find remarkable about this story is that twelve years later, everything's still not resolved, and in fact, there are invest ster's in two subordinated bonds from Lehman that just found out they're gonna get paid. They're gonna receive a payment, uh

in sometime in December, I believe it is. Now. They haven't said the size of the payment, but these was it was one was a five million dollar issue and the other was in euros, a two hundred million euro issue. They were called enhanced capital advantage preferred securities, So I don't know how enhanced they were, but uh. The Bloomberg story notes that the less bid on record for one of them was at less than one cent on the dollar, So who knows what the pain is, but but it'll

be something. Maybe that one that less than one cent bid will end up being a good trade. Who does? But did you also find this on and I, you know, this was what most read. That's one of my other tips is I always look at the most read stories of the week, and I think people are asmazed as I was that a it's it blows my mind that this is still going on twelve years older, that it's everything's not resolved and how long that's. You know, it just gives you an idea of how big of a

blow up that was. And how messy it was. Yeah, I mean they're getting their they're getting their pay day, for sure, but then here's my Twelve years later, they're still on the job for the same case of the billabill hours. I'd love to see a total tally of of legal billbill hours for the Lehman brother It's got to be in the millions of hours. But I can't even imagine. I can't even here's my fun one from

the Alternative Assets space. Barack Obama's high school basketball jersey from nineteen seventy nine is up for auction at Julian's Auctions, California based auction house. Barack Obama's high school basketball jersey nineteen seventy nine, Sarah, I'm guessing no one would buy the shorts from that air. The shorts were basketball shorts were atrocious in that air. My favorite part about it. His number was twenty three, just like Michael Jordan's, but

but a couple of decades earlier. And you know what time it is, start It's time to play prices right on what you would bid for Barack Obama's high school jersey YouTube? Ben, what's your what's your bid? Barack Obama's high school. Does it? Is it autographed? It's bast ball jersey's not all. I don't believe it's autographed. And I don't think they had names on the jerseys. Alably they don't. It's gonna say it. Does it say Obama on the back?

That makes they don't say, They don't say if the if the name is included, I'm assuming not, just for my general knowledge of nineteen seventy high school basketball, dating myself a little bit there been, but also it comes with a yearbook with pictures of him. Uh, nice form, nice shot with the jersey on, and I mean look as a novelty. If the proceeds went to charity for a couple of grand you know, I'd wear as a

Halloween May Halloween costume. Alright, Sarah. I. Sarah's usually the high ball bidder on these things, Ben you Ben's I was so terribly off last week, but so was our guest. Um. But but you know what, I'm gonna bring it much lower this time around, and I'll go with I'll go with. Okay, Sarah was saying, I'll pay that, but someone will. Sarah was willing to bid two hundred fifty k for Michael

Jackson's I V Bag Bloodstained. Albeit at ivy Bag talk about Froth in the market, I think Sarah's our poster child for Froth in the alternative. So the auction house and you know who knows how accurate this is, they're hoping for a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand for the jersey. See, I was I was gonna go with two hundred again, but because I was so terribly off last week, I always said, you know, there's absolutely no way I can say that once again. Um, I

don't know. I uh, I don't know about you. I'm from out Florida, big Heat fans. So it was watching the Heat Lakers game Wednesday and they kept showing Obama as one of the virtual fans, and I don't know what who or who he was talking to, but he just kept looking at the camera and speaking. Obviously here he was saying, that's pretty good series. Yeah, except for the blowout that we had favor the opposite way that I was hoping. Um No, but I do want to read that tweet that we got from one of our

listeners too. So this comes from at David Taggart David Taggart pet macro dot com and last week we spoke about Amazon and Echelon and this supposed prime bike that was coming out for five hundred dollars. There was this huge saga back and forth. Anyway, UM, so you know this, this kind of comes back to you too. I don't know if anyone's called a cameo. You know that app or that website that you can go on and you can get a celebrity um to say happy birthday or

whatever it is to anyone. But with this, uh listener did was he shared with us that the Peloton girl, her name is Monica louise Um. She's on Instagram and also on cameo and another Twitter user at typical VC booked her, the girl from that now infamous Peloton commercial, to actually send a cameo UM to Sitron Research because they infamously put out a short call on Peloton and it's honestly hilarious. It's it's it's hysterical, especially if you've

seen that went horribly wrong. That is pretty funny. All right, Maybe we'll book some of bench shorts for some cameos just to get under his skin. Do any of them have some bad commercials out there? Not that I know of, not so much. Whoever thought a bad commercial would be the basis of a good short It's amazing, but I guess it didn't last long. And finally, Sarah, I want to read those comments from some of the companies that Ben has written about. Um. GFL Environmental responded to Ben's

report after it came out in August. Uh He said Spruce Point Capital's commentary on the company is consistent with a quote short end distort strategy. Lead Independent Director Dino Chiesa said that the board had reviewed the allegations and found them deeply flawed. He said the board stands by its management team and that gfl's financial disclosures are accurate in all material respects, appropriate, and comply with all regulatory requirements.

Uh CEO Patrick Dvigi also issued a statement. Uh He too, called the statements by Spruce Point misleading, said they contained factual errors. He did not specify what the factual errors were. He said he believes the acquisitions are quote solely intended to benefit the author of the report, who has disclosed that it stands to realize significant gains in the event that's the stock price of g f VL declines and

I did receive a response from Sonova Energy International. This is via Kelsey Holtberg, the chief of Staff in the Office of the CEO. The statement reads quote, we disagree with the substance and merit of the report as disclosed in the form for shares sold by the chair of the Audit Committee were sold pursuing to a ten B five one plan and serted into an advance of Spruce Points Report in accordance with SEC rules and the company's policies.

We have not yet received response from Prestige Consumer Healthcare to Ben's report. We will update you with any comment where we received from them in future episodes. That does it, Ben Acler. We're gonna have to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining us this week. Thank you my pleasure. Let's do it again, SI absolutely what goes up. We'll be back next week. Until then, you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal website and app,

or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more listeners can find us. And you can find us on Twitter. Follow me at at Sara Panzac, Mike is at Reaganonymous, and you can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at podcasts. Also thank you to Charlie Pellett of Bloomberg Radio and the voice of the New York City subway system. What Goes Up is produced by Jordan Gospore. The head of Bloomberg podcast is Francesco Levie.

Thanks for listening, See you next time.