1) We are short Jin Medical International Ltd $ZJYL, a China Hustle-style charade. Jin sells wheelchairs and parts in China. In 2022, its revenues fell 8% to just $19M. $ZJYL trades at ~45x revenues. At reasonable "peer" levels of 1-6x sales, $ZJYL shares fall 90% or more.
2) $ZJYL went public in March 2023, underwritten by China-focused chop shop, Prime Number Capital. Prime Number is headquartered in a Long Beach home and has already been sued by investors at least twice for alleged roles in other China frauds. Their track record is horrific.
3) In Sept 2023, $ZJYL faced a NASDAQ delisting notice as it fell under the 300 shareholder threshold required for continued listing. On October 24, $ZJYL CEO Erqi Wang filed a Form 144 to sell 545,893 shares. Then $ZJYL fired its auditor, MarcumAsia, and hired DNTW Toronto.
4) Current $ZJYL auditor DNTW appears to have been previously shut down and its partners charged by the SEC for its role in another China fraud, Subaye, which claimed to be running a cloud business that didn't exist. We think the $ZJYL story will end similarly...
5) We think $ZJYL's recent announcements coinciding with the stock's 10x rise are likely conjured up solely to pump shares and avoid pending delisting. We uncovered that each of Jin's December 11 and December 14 "deals" are with related parties - namely CEO Erqi Wang himself.
6) On December 11, $ZJYL claimed it won a 66M RMB ($9M USD) order to sell oxygen chambers to "Conlo Industrial Development." However, Conlo's records show that Conlo is majority-owned by $ZJYL CEO Wang, while records also name $ZJYL CFO Ziqiang Wang and an $ZJYL email address.
7) Similarly, on December 14, $ZJYL claimed to enter an MOU to acquire all or a part of Juangsu Zhongjin Kanglu Information Tech Co. ("Kanglu"). Yet again, Kanglu is controlled by $ZJYL CEO Erqi Wang, and Kanglu owes $4.8M to $ZJYL. In this light, the "MOU" looks like a bailout.
8) $ZJYL hasn't filed results since 3/31 and reported material weaknesses in each 2020, 2021, and 2022. $ZJYL makes related party loans to its CEO Erqi Wang and guarantees loans to Wang's outside entities. To us, $ZJYL's public listing looks like an insider enrichment scheme.
9) On December 26, $ZYJL disclosed that its audit committee chair, Jing Chen, resigned. Chen's resignation is especially concerning given Chen previously served numerous other China frauds. $ZJYL must be especially spoiled if Chen can no longer stand the stench.
10) $ZJYL cleverly reassured investors that Chen's resignation was not due to "disagreement with the Company's accounting policies," but $ZJYL has yet to file financials since the bogus deals, and the notice excludes standard language covering general business disagreements.
11/11) $ZJYL has an appeal hearing set with the NASDAQ for March 14 to stave off delisting. We see no reason that $ZJYL ought to continue trading. We think that NASDAQ and the SEC ought to halt shares to protect investors from yet another obvious China-based con. @NasdaqExchange @Nasdaq
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1) We are short XPEL, Inc. $XPEL. Our full report is now available on our website, culperresearch.com
2) We're short $XPEL for two reasons. First, we believe $XPEL has understated its reliance on Tesla by 5-6x. Second, $XPEL faces an undisclosed, existential threat in its long-time supplier entrotech, which is rendering XPEL useless by going direct to OEMs with paint giant PPG.
3) $XPEL claims TSLA PPFs are just 5% of YTD revenues, but our conversations with literally hundreds of PPF installers suggests otherwise... The 143 installers we surveyed across 26 states told us that Teslas are over 30% of their PPF business, on average.
1) GigaCloud’s $GCT response to our report totally misses the mark.
2) $GCT first claims that its warehouses and trucks are operated not by its own employees, but third parties. This is a lame deflection from our on-ground observations: whether the trucks are owned by GigaCloud or by third parties is not our primary concern: our concern is that we saw so few trucks and such little warehouse activity in the first place. As our initial report stated: “GigaCloud might claim that it outsources its last-mile deliveries using third-party companies as well. However, in this case, we still would have expected to see hundreds of delivery trucks coming and going from the Company’s facilities.” The sparse and haphazard activity we saw at GCT’s warehouses simply fails to square with its claims of a best-in-class e-commerce logistics operation.
3) $GCT then provides a lame appeal to authority by claiming that it has been audited by “KPMG”, but this is again misleading: the Company audited by not by KPMG proper, but by China-based KPMG Huazhen LLP. This is despite the preponderance of the Company’s business based in the U.S. This is also the very same KPMG Huazhen that was charged by the SEC in 2012 for refusing to produce audit work papers for China-based companies and whose 2022 audit inspection found deficiencies at every single audit reviewed.
1) We are short GigaCloud Technology Inc $GCT. Our full report is now available at our website, culperresearch.com
2) $GCT provides solutions for e-commerce furniture sellers, including sourcing, warehousing, and last-mile delivery. In a cutthroat industry, $GCT claims to have grown to over $607M in GMV and $155M in LTM services revenues. As they say, if it's too good to be true...
3) $GCT claims to be running a highly-profitable global logistics operation incl. 14 warehouses with 3.8M sqft using just 73 U.S. employees and 88 global ops employees. Yet industry sources and comps suggest standard e-com warehouses hire hundreds to thousands per warehouse.
1) UPDATE: SoundHound AI $SOUN reports Q2 2023 results after the close today. We believe the Company's recent disclosures imply a horrific print, with cash burn worsening materially to $34.8M in Q2, up on both a QoQ and YoY basis. We remain short.
2) Consider $SOUN's July prospectus disclosed that share count increased from 177.2M on May 9 to 194.1M on June 30 (+16.8M shs). $SOUN also disclosed that from April 1 to June 15, the Company sold 14.0M shs raising $41.9M. This leaves another 2.9M shares between June 16 and June 30.
3) $SOUN traded as high as $5.11 and as low as $3.27 in this period; we assume $SOUN sold the remaining 2.9M shares at an average price of $4.00, raising another $11.5M in cash, for $53.4M in total cash raised from equity sales in Q2.
We are short SoundHound AI, Inc. $SOUN. Our full report is now available on our website, culperresearch.com
2) $SOUN is a flailing AI wannabe trading at 22x revenues that has misled investors regarding both its claims to possess revolutionary AI technology and a massive backlog of $336M in contracts averaging 6.5 years in length. We think both $SOUN's tech and its backlog are bogus.
3) $SOUN claims that it sees "immediate scaling" at restaurants, but the only large restaurant group $SOUN names is White Castle, signed in 2020. Former employees told us that White Castle was merely a trial, and remains contained to just 3 of 300+ locations, 3 years later.
1) Last night, Rumble $RUM reported Q1 2023 results which reaffirm our thesis. We've posted an update on our website culperresearch.com
2) We previously opined that $RUM was massively overstating MAUs: $RUM claimed 80M, we estimated 38M to 48M. Almost magically, after being called out, $RUM now says users fell a massive 40% QoQ from 80M to just 48M.
3) $RUM claims that its user base disintegrated due to the impact of midterm elections. This is an asinine, nonsensical explanation: $RUM had already reported 71M MAUs in Q3 2022 (i.e., pre-midterms). We view the figure as a de facto restatement.