As Aphria Shares Collapse, Key “Ringleader” Tweets About “Goat F#ckers”

Updated on

From Whitney Tilson’s latest email to colleagues  on the huge Aphria inc (NYSE:APHA) short call (see the full report here)- see our conference coverage here.

It was an incredible day at our shorting conference today! Every speaker, without exception, was outstanding (for a summary of the ideas presented, see: Here’s What Short Sellers Presented at the Tilson Conference), but once again, Gabriel Grego of Quintessential Capital Management stole the show by exposing another company that appears to be engaging in massive fraud. At our last conference in May, it was Folli Follie, and today it was Canadian pot stock, Aphria inc (APHA), which started the day with a $2 billion market cap, but crashed 23% on the NYSE and 28% on the Toronto exchange (and is down another 6% after hours).

Get The Full Series in PDF

Get the entire 10-part series on Charlie Munger in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues.

This Bloomberg article (Cannabis Company Craters After Shortseller Calls It a ‘Black Hole’) summarizes his thesis well:

Gabriel Grego, founder of Quintessential Capital Management, told delegates at a conference in New York Monday that Aphria Inc had diverted funds into inflated investments held by insiders. In a report he ran in conjunction with Hindenburg Research, a forensic analysis firm, Grego said the company, which had a $2 billion market capitalization last week, is worthless.

…Grego said Aphria engineered a mechanism to siphon off money to companies held by insiders in South America and the Caribbean to the detriment of shareholders, according to the report. The short seller said Aphria purchased companies in Argentina, Colombia, and Jamaica in September from Scythian Biosciences Inc., now named SOL Global Investments Corp., which had acquired them shortly before at a “significantly lower” price from three Canadian shell companies.

You can read Yahoo Finance’s Julia La Roche’s article and watch her interview with Gabriel on Aphria inc here: Short-seller Gabriel Grego slams cannabis stock Aphria, shares tank.

 Above are Gabriel’s slides and here is the 49-minute video of his presentation followed by Q&A.

Here is an article by Hindenburg Research, which collaborated with Gabriel on this research: Aphria Inc. : A Shell Game With A Cannabis Business On The Side. Summary:

  • Aphria’s recent C$280m Latin American acquisitions raise major red flags. Our extensive on-the-ground research shows that the transactions appear to be largely worthless.
  • Example: The official registered office of Aphria’s C$145m Jamaican acquisition is an abandoned building that was sold off by the bank earlier this year.
  • Example: Aphria’s C$50m Argentine acquisition publicly boasted sales of US$11m in 2017. A worker at the company, however, affirmed that 2017 revenue was only US$430k.
  • Documents show that Aphria Inc. insiders were likely undisclosed beneficiaries of the deals. We estimate Aphria has diverted upwards of C$700m via such transactions, or ~50% of Aphria’s total net assets.
  • Aphria Inc.  consistently generates negative cash, and its cannabis seems to be of low quality. Interviews with sources describe facilities infested with bugs, stricken with mold, and having failed audit inspections.

Aphria Inc. ’s response has been comical: this morning, it threatened litigation and one of the ringleaders of the scheme, Andy DeFrancesco, called himself a “goat fucker” on Twitter (among other barely literate ramblings) (see screenshot below), then at 3pm the company issued a lame, non-responsive response, which further fueled the stock’s collapse. This tells you all you need to know about the veracity of the charges…

Leave a Comment