Petmed Express Inc (PETS) Shares Are Still Down 8.2%

Updated on

Bradley Radoff and Joshua Schechter, two investors who make a habit of working together on activist campaigns, have a long familiarity with Omega Protein, a $373 million market cap producer of protein for both humans and animals. Indeed, the pair were significant investors two years ago – before Wynnefield Capital began a campaign that led to it winning two board seats in a proxy fight last year. On Monday, Radoff and Schechter re-emerged after a long period either below the reporting threshold or out of the stock, announcing that they had hired an investment bank specializing in the seafood industry and would push for a sale of the company or capital allocation changes. Six months ago, Omega Protein said it would review strategic alternatives for its human nutrition segment but has yet to announce its decision.

Get Our Activist Investing Case Study!

Get The Full Activist Investing Study In PDF

Also read:

  • Baupost Letter Points To Concern Over Risk Parity, Systematic Strategies During Crisis
  • AI Hedge Fund Robots Beating Their Human Masters

What we’ll be watching for this week

  • How will Pershing Square Capital Management approach the build up to its meeting with the board of Automatic Data Processing next week?
  • Will Glenview Capital Management launch a new proxy contest at Tenet Healthcare as its standstill agreement with the hospital operator expires?
  • Will The China Fund reach the necessary threshold to appoint a new external manager by its adjourned deadline of August 30?

Short update

Shares in PetMed Express are still down 8.2% since the morning of August 23, the day short seller Aurelius Value released a new report on the company, despite rising slightly on Monday. On the day of the attack, PetMed’s response left something to be desired – calling the report “false and defamatory” and threatening legal action did little to stem the blood. Since then, however, the animal medicine company has responded more thoughtfully. On Thursday, it released a new statement saying that opioid-based painkiller Tramadol and anti-convulsant Gabapentin, which is sometimes taken by opioid addicts to enhance euphoria, accounted for just 0.4% of growth in the first half of 2017. Moreover, it suggested it did not know that Google was promoting the pair with non-pet related search terms, repeating the claim in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday. Aurelius, which has a history of follow-up reports, hasn’t tweeted since Thursday.

Article by Activist Insight

Leave a Comment